The right to die not absolute

Unless her family gets a court injunction within a couple of days, Terri Schiavo will die of starvation in ten days. She has been in a coma for the last 13 years of her life at a Florida hospice. At the age of 26, she suffered a heart attack that has left her unable to take care of herself or communicate. She is kept alive by a gastric tube inserted into her stomach that provides the basic nutritional requirements for life.

Her family claims she retains powers of recognition, despite being mute and paralyzed. They have a videotape showing Ms. Schiavo reacting -- so they say -- to her mother leaning over her bed. Her husband, however, claims that nothing remains of her other than a beating heart. What her family sees as reactions are in fact mere reflexes, he maintains. After she was in the coma for seven years, Mr. Schiavo testified that she had expressed her desire to die rather than live only because of life support, and in 2001 her feed tube was removed for three days. But an appeal by Ms. Schiavo's family resulted in a timely court order to put her back on life support.

It has become a case of husband versus family, and neither takes a pleasant stance. One advocates death; the other fights for a quasi-life.

Ms. Schiavo's husband has a point. After thirteen years, is there really a chance that intensive therapy will miraculously succeed in Ms. Schiavo learning how to feed herself? But her family's concerns are no less important. Their accusations of Mr. Schiavo's shady behavior force us to question how much we can trust his opinion on his wife's condition. Why, for instance, was the family not allowed to visit their daughter? Mr. Schiavo has had a child with another woman, but refuses to divorce Ms. Schiavo, stating that he does not think her family will carry out her wishes to die rather than live in a vegetative state.

While it is easy to stigmatize a man who wants to let his wife die, this should not cloud one's vision. An honorable, virtuous man would stand up against all critics to ensure that his wife's desire to die with dignity would be fulfilled. But to many, Mr. Schiavo's behavior indicates that he is neither honorable, nor virtuous, nor even a loving husband.

The US Supreme Court ruled in Cruzan v. Director, Missouri Department of Health that the quality of a person's life -- whether that person is in a normal or vegetative state -- cannot be a deciding factor in taking a person off life support unless they made a living will to do so. In absence of a living will, Florida wisely enacted a right-to-die law that allows person who has made their wish to be taken off life support if ever in a vegetative state known.

If Ms. Schiavo's verbal wishes to have the plug pulled had been verified by others, then they should have been respected -- despite her family's pleas. Since only her husband asserts that she had such a wish - something contested by her family -- disconnecting Ms. Schiavo from life support is not the proper solution in this case.