Many of us still remember the case of Terri Schiavo, the former Pennsylvania woman who became a cause célèbre as her husband and her parents fought a highly publicized and prolonged series of legal disputes as to whether to terminate Schiavo’s life support.
Schiavo had suffered brain damage that left her in a permanent vegetative state, and her husband Michael Schiavo argued she would not have wanted to live that way. In 1998, Terri Schiavo’s husband successfully petitioned the Sixth Circuit Court of Florida in In re Guardianship of Schiavo, 780 So. 2d 176, 177 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 2001), to remove her feeding tube. Schiavo’s parents insisted she could recover and vehemently opposed Michael Schiavo’s efforts to remove her feeding and hydration tubes. (See Schiavo ex rel. Schindler v. Schiavo, 403 F.3d 1223 (11th Cir. 2005).) By the time Terri Schiavo’s life support was terminated after a seven-year delay in 2005, the case involved 14 appeals in the Florida courts; five suits in federal district court; Florida legislation struck down by the Supreme Court of Florida; federal legislation; and four denials of certiorari from the Supreme Court of the United States. As Schiavo left no written instructions in case she became disabled, the case focused national attention on living wills, exposing both the importance of having one’s wishes documented, and the importance of having a designated health care agent.
