A heavily publicized victim of both bad medical luck and the ongoing battle between the forces of religious conservatism and secularism was Terri Schiavo, who died in Florida in 2005 after having been disconnected from life support.
A sufferer from bulemia, Schiavo had gone into a coma in 1990 due to a potassium inbalance. Two years later, her husband sued her physician for malpractice and won a judgment of a little more than $1 million. Not long thereafter, he and Terri's parents began to disagree over her care.
Told that his wife would never recover, husband Michael asked a court to allow the removal of his wife's feeding tube; her parents opposed doing so. A long, convoluted legal battle followed.
The state of Florida, encouraged by Gov. Jeb Bush, passed what was dubbed Terri's Law, to let the state to order the feeding tube left in place. In 2004, the state's Supreme Court ruled that law unconstitutional, and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review the decision.
More legal action and even more political posturing followed, turning the comatose woman into a political football. In the end, the tube was removed and Terri
Schiavo died soon thereafter.
The Left called her demise an act of mercy; the Right called it medical terrorism and judicial murder. Sadly, her case had become part and parcel of the larger debate over abortion and stem cell research.
A year after Terri's death at age 41, both Michael and her parents published their own book giving their side of this sad, controversial case.
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