Not Dead Yet, News Item

Not Dead Yet the resistance in Black Gothic Lettering

7521 Madison St * Forest Park, IL 60130 * Voice/TTY: 708-209-1500 * Fax: 708-209-1735 * TTY: 708-209-1826

Terri's Lawyer's Closing Argument

Ms. Pat Anderson began by presenting a very basic question to the judge: How to sift, analyze and decide whether Terri lives on the basis of all the doctors' testimony in the hearing? Say, a nose count?

She said instead that the credibility of the medical witnesses is the key. And the fit of the key is molded by their bias and behavior. Bias includes whether any of the physicians who spoke actually treat any patients like Terri. None of the husband's doctors do.

Bias is also affected by whether the doctors at the hearing keep up on advances in rehabilitative literature and practice. The Right-to-murder-the-disabled doctors freely admitted that they do not do this.

Time has a lot to do with bias, too. Anderson reminded the court that Terri's attending physician for years has only spent ten minutes with her every four months -- when he can manage it.

Another expert hired by the husband out of Terri's medical care fund came to court and treated all he surveyed as if, "he didn't have time for this foolishness...where we can only talking about a matter of Terri's life or death."

Ms. Anderson really took to task physician Cranford, the husband's witness who likes being called Dr. Death. He took time to come to Florida in order "...to talk about termination of life for people with disabilities...his area of expertise for twenty-five years...not to talk about Terri Schiavo."

Then the attorney moved on to the idea of untried therapy for Terri. Some of it is considered just "too" new in old journal articles and with more uneducated doctors. Most is standard therapy that has been the norm in health care facilities across the country for a long, long time...but somehow never for Terri.

Her husband, as health care surrogate, decided a long time ago on sub-standard care for her. In fact, part of that poor care has been to deny her the speech therapy needed that might be helping her communicate disagreement now. Bottom line is that she could speak post-injury a dozen years ago and cannot today.

Anderson said the doctors who want to kill Terri now are practicing an "intellectual disconnection" that filters all of Terri's humanity through the sieve of what people with disabilities like hers are not expected to be able to do.

Indeed, even when she has a cold now like the rest of us, her symptoms are missed and go untreated. Why? Because, hey, it doesn't matter. She has a severe disability after all.

The lawyer asked over and over again, "Is it fair or equitable to keep saying that we are not going to help you because 'you have brain damage'?"

The attorney then moved to the high number of coincidences the husband's doctors noted. She herself noted that during the hearing we had seen the "...biggest videotaped stream of coincidences ever if it was only reflexes."

Finally, the attorney noted Terri's years of enforced isolation and asked if any of the rest of us would still be as responsive after similar treatment. Ms. Anderson then leaned into the microphone at her podium and won my heart forever with this:

"Terri has shown us her spirit and tried as hard as she can under the circumstances to say, 'I'M STILL HERE!'

Wouldn't she already be dead if she wanted to be? Wouldn't she have already have given up?

You see here the human spirit very nearly crushed under the most unimaginable circumstances.

Don't we at long last owe Terri Schiavo a chance? Don't we at long last owe Terri Schiavo a chance?"

Rus Cooper-Dowda