I’ve probably revisited the struggle over the life of Terri Schiavo in a backwards fashion. I – like other disability rights advocates and activists – have a good memory and were deeply involved in the efforts to stop the removal of Terri Schiavo’s feeding tube.
What that means is that our memory of the struggle is far different than the majority of the public, who mostly believe that the Congressional bill passed hastily by Congress was something the Republicans “pushed down people’s throats.” For varying reasons, political interest groups at both end of the spectrum prefer that the public misremembers events that way.
Below is a C-Span broadcast from March 19, 2005. It features Senators Tom Harkin, Rick Santorum, and Mel Martinez – all of whom played key roles in writing the bill that granted review in federal court of Terri Schiavo’s case. Harkin, a long-time ally of the disability rights community, explained his role in the passage of the bill and how that in rare cases a federal review might be necessary. All of the Senators express hope that a broader bill can be worked out in the future to apply to a broader group of individuals. All express gratitude for bipartisan cooperation on the Congressional bill.
I am lousy at doing transcribing – so I apologize for the lack of a transcript. Please note especially Harkin’s defense of the efforts.
For most people, this will probably be the first time they’ve heard the remarks – since virtually every major news organization – radio, cable, network and print – ignored this press conference and the bipartisan nature of the agreement that allowed passage of “Terri’s bill.” Video below:
That bipartisan moment didn’t last long. It actually started to unravel several days before this press conference. Senator Martinez inadvertently passed a memo to Senator Harkin that listed a list of “Republican talking points” that involved ways the Schiavo case could be used to attack Democrats. The memo was written by an aide to Senator Martinez, who professed ignorance over its contents at the time.
After Terri Schiavo died, several leaders of Conservative interest groups started using the unsuccessful court challenge as a political rallying cry:
As the vigil in Florida ended for Ms. Schiavo, who was severely brain-damaged, conservatives said the refusal of the federal courts to step in underscored the need for Senate Republicans to end the ability of the Democratic minority to filibuster President Bush’s judicial nominees.
Dr. James C. Dobson, the founder of the evangelical group Focus on the Family, said the judges who would not stop the removal of Ms. Schiavo’s feeding tube were ”guilty not only of judicial malfeasance — but of the cold-blooded, cold-hearted extermination of an innocent human life.”
Tony Perkins, the president of the Family Research Council, said: ”It is a tragic, unfortunate but avoidable event that should awaken Americans to the problem of the courts. It is no longer theoretical. It is life or death.”
Right-Wing interest groups and leaders weren’t the only ones looking to further polarize the public – and revise history – in the name of political gamesmanship.
In mid-April 2005, DNC Chair Howard Dean announced that Democrats would make the Schiavo case an election issue:
Dean, who has called congressional intervention in the Schiavo case “political grandstanding,” singled out House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) for his leading role in the matter.
“This is going to be an issue in 2006, and it’s going to be an issue in 2008,” Dean told about 200 people at a gay rights group’s breakfast in West Hollywood, “because we’re going to have an ad with a picture of Tom DeLay saying, ‘Do you want this guy to decide whether you die or not? Or is that going to be up to your loved ones?’ “
Dean, a practicing physician until he became governor of Vermont in 1991, added: “The issue is: Are we going to live in a theocracy where the highest powers tell us what to do? Or are we going to be allowed to consult our own high powers when we make very difficult decisions?”
Before Schiavo’s death, the Republican-controlled Congress passed legislation giving her parents the right to take action in federal court to have her feeding tube reinserted, but no judge intervened. Schiavo’s husband had fought for years to withdraw the tube, arguing that she would not have wanted her life extended.
Although Democrats voted for the measure, Dean said it provided an opportunity to showcase what he called Republican intrusiveness in the lives of Americans.
This is far from a complete list of those who promoted a revisionist history of the Schiavo strruggle for their own political ends, but it’s pretty representative.
On the right and the left, both bet on the same revision of history – that the battle over Terri Schiavo was a chapter in the “culture wars.” In the end, it would seem that Howard Dean won the “bet” over who would be best served by that revision.
The real losers, of course, are people under guardianship or a conservatorship. The atmosephere at present is poisonous in terms of revisiting what kind of protections people whose decisionmaking is in the hands of others might need.
What a sick, sad man you are. Crusading against the rights of the disabled, and convincing yourself that your mindless, thoughtless, heartless pro-life position is the opposite of what it is.
I do not know what it took to break you as a human being. But you ARE broken. Your soul is ruined. You want to force the disabled to suffer, because you think your convictions about life are more important than their suffering. It’s the mindset of a rapist. Nobody really matters to you.
I’m a disabled man, and I would gladly spit in your face.
Wonderful post, and I honestly didn’t see any coverage on this at ALL in the media.. thanks for the link..
Dear “Anonymous”:
If you were better informed, you’d know that there were over a dozen national disability rights groups that endorsed that legislation. I don’t know if you are disabled or not – anonymous posters can claim to be anything, after all – but you might be comfortable at a Tea Party rally – I hear that spitters are valued there. People with Parkinson’s, though – not so much.