From the March 1, 2005 Miami Herald, by writer Fred Grimm:
Political war kills all hope of dignified death
In a southwest Missouri cemetery, the tombstone over Nancy Cruzan's grave invokes a dilemma of our times. ``Born: July 10, 1957; Departed: January 11, 1983; At Peace: December 26, 1990.''
Her grave marker, with an etching of an EKG graph forming the words ''thank you'' before descending into a flatline, has become a local landmark. Tour buses stop on the way to Branson.
For nearly seven years, after a devastating brain injury, Nancy Beth Cruzan lingered in a netherworld while the courts struggled to find the legal demarcation between a horribly diminished life and death. As the case worked its way up to the U.S. Supreme Court and back, it ignited irreconcilable political and religious and philosophical clashes that seared the nation. The case finally returned to a Jasper County, Mo., courtroom in December of 1990. Judge Charles Teel ruled that the family could have their daughter's feeding tubes disconnected. ``I suspect hundreds of thousands of people can rest free, knowing that when death beckons they can meet it face to face with dignity, free from the fear of unwanted and useless medical treatment.''
It didn't quite work out that way.
Right-to-life radicals tried to storm Cruzan's hospital a few days later. Finally, 12 days after Judge Teel's order, on Dec. 26, 1990, Nancy Cruzan's body ceased functioning. But her death hardly brought finality to the issue.
FLORIDA REPRISE
Earlier that same year, a young Florida woman collapsed from a potassium imbalance, leading to a heart attack. An interruption in the supply of oxygen to Terri Schiavo's brain caused a permanent loss of cognitive function. And the Florida case reprised the same brutal, divisive, emotional struggles that had erupted in Missouri.
Like Nancy Cruzan six years earlier, Terri Schiavo had lapsed into a perpetual, mindless repose. Her state-appointed guardian, in 2003, reiterated earlier findings: ``Highly competent, scientifically based physicians using recognized measures and standards have deduced, within a high degree of medical certainty, that Terri is in a persistent vegetative state.''
Doctors noted another condition in Schiavo that recalled the hopelessness attached to Cruzan's case. Neurological tests and brain scans indicated that her cerebral cortex, the center of human awareness, had essentially liquefied. Both women's bodies could register certain disarming physical reactions, but there was no hope for recognition, communication, thinking, knowing.
Neither the diagnosis nor the Cruzan precedent has been enough to staunch an endless struggle to keep Terri Schiavo breathing. Her husband and legal guardian has fought since 1998 for the right to remove the tubes that keep her alive. He's up against Terri's parents, right-to-life advocates, disability activists, the conservative media, a reactionary Legislature and a governor who courts the Christian right.
Read the rest here. |
