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New "Terri's Law" moves toward passage

The Leg. is moving forward quickly with a new version of “Terri’s Law” which promises to intrude upon many people’s rights to make end of life decisions.

Lawmakers proposed a measure Monday that would block doctors from denying food or water to someone in a persistent vegetative state with the intention of causing death, setting the stage to prevent the removal of Terri Schiavo's feeding tube on Friday.

The House Judiciary Committee voted 8-3 approving the new measure, which would make exceptions for living wills and specific verbal instructions. The bills, if put on an expedited path, could come up for final votes in the House and Senate as early as Thursday.

Schiavo, 41, is severely brain damaged and has been at the center of a long and bitter court battle between her parents and her husband, who wants to remove her feeding tube so she can die. A judge has cleared the way for the procedure at 1 p.m. Friday.

Also on Monday, the Department of Children & Families appealed a judge's denial of its request for a stay on the removal of the tube for the next 60 days while it investigates allegations that Schiavo was mistreated by her husband.

Under the measure, family members would no longer be able to make decisions for patients who left no specific instructions — unless they were empowered to do so by a written directive.

An earlier version of the bill could have applied to all incapacitated people, not just those in a persistent vegetative state.
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"They're proposing to violate the rights of a smaller category of people — I don't think we should be exultant over that," said Howard Simon, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida.

The Florida Bioethics Network — a group of doctors, nurses, social workers and medical college professors — said the bill would be a setback to more than a quarter-century of advances in end-of-life decision making for Floridians. Florida is considered to have some of the nation's more advanced laws giving people the power to control their lives until the end.

"This is a train wreck of a bill," said Kenneth W. Goodman, co-director of the Florida Bioethics Network and head of the University of Miami Bioethics Program. "While they are trying to stick it to Michael Schiavo ... no one asks people who are real guardians in Florida what they thought of it. This bill will derail guardianship law in Florida."
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Gov. Jeb Bush's general counsel assisted in negotiating the language of the bill, said House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. David Simmons, R-Altamonte Springs, though a Bush spokesman said it was too early to say whether he would sign it into law.
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This is the second time the Legislature has considered measures aimed specifically at keeping Schiavo alive. In 2003, lawmakers passed a bill that allowed Gov. Jeb Bush to order doctors to restore Schiavo's feeding. That law was then thrown out by the Florida Supreme Court.

The House and Senate bills were each to be considered in final committees Tuesday.

Goodman said the legislation would create barriers for people who want to control the end of their lives.

It also "misjudges" the medical use of artificial nutrition and hydration tubes, which are intended to be used as a "bridge" when someone suffers a debilitating medical problem until they can get better, he said. Goodman said those devices are not intended to be permanent.

People in a persistent vegetative state cannot feel pain, the bioethicists argue, and deaths from the removal of water and food are considered painless and humane.

All you hear from the other side is a bunch of easily rebuked myths concerning Terri’s imminent miraculous recovery and hate talk about Michael Schiavo and the state ganging up to murder Terri through the cruel process of starvation. They even compare Michael to the Nazis.

A sign directing reporters to Thursday's press conference misspelled her name as "Terry" Schiavo. Representatives from almost a dozen conservative and Christian groups attended, as did some of the 17 disability organizations supporting the Schindlers, including the National Spinal Cord Injury Association.

They talked about her "death sentence" and "execution." They said it was illegal to starve animals to death. They said she was treated worse than death row inmates.

"Even the Nazis were hesitant to use starvation and dehydration as a means of inflicting death," said Paul Schenck of the National Pro-Life Action Center. "They reserved it for only their most cruel acts."

Groups at the press conference included National Right to Life Committee, Family Research Council and Religious Freedom Coalition. On their Web sites, the groups encourage people to write and call their member of Congress, as they did Florida lawmakers in 2003.

It’s all about milking the credulous for as much money as can possibly br wrung out of them. These groups don’t know “Terry” Schiavo from Adam, but they see a vast source of quick cash in the well-meaning rubes who are easily led by duplicitous language that invokes a false sense of hope and implies a cruel and unusual death.

The truth is:

Courts have repeatedly found that Terri would not want to be kept alive in her current state.

Her current state is a persistent vegetative state. Much of her brain is gone, replaced by fluid. She cannot recover.

Removing her feeding tube is a humane and court sanctioned way to end her life as she herself would want done.