The Media Still Can’t Get Facts about Terri Schiavo Right

This article was published by the National Review online on November 23, 2023.

Wesley Smith

By Wesley J Smith

Terri Schiavo was cruelly dehydrated to death almost 20 years ago, and the media still can’t get the facts right.

Terri’s case has come up again in media stories discussing the nomination of former congressman Dr. David Weldon to head the CDC. As usual, there are misreporting and wrongful implications when Terri’s case is discussed. Thus, the Raw Story report stated:

He is also well known for his role in the Terri Schiavo controversy, where after a Florida woman suffered brain death, Congress attempted to intervene against her husband’s right to terminate life support. Weldon in particular used his credentials as a doctor to dispute Schiavo’s diagnosis.

Schiavo family in March 2006

Terri was never diagnosed as brain dead, which is legally deceased. She was either in a persistent or minimally conscious condition, which is very much alive.

I’ll get to the legislation in a moment, which was not as controversial at the time as the story implies.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post story also goes astray:

Weldon, who served in Congress for 14 years from 1995 to 2009, attracted national attention for his involvement in the case of Terri Schiavo, a brain-damaged Florida woman whose family’s attempts to remove her feeding tubes and end her life attracted national attention — and prompted interventions by congressional Republicans. The attempt to remove Schiavo’s feeding tubes was a “grave injustice,” Weldon said on the floor of Congress in 2003. He petitioned her family in 2005 to personally review her case.

No, her family — siblings and parents — fought valiantly in the courts to keep her alive. Her estranged husband fought to hasten her death by removing her feeding tube. Why do I say estranged? At the time of the legal battle, he was living with a woman he called his “fiancé” (whom he later married), during which time she bore his two children. If that isn’t marital estrangement, I don’t know what is. At the very least, it created a profound personal conflict of interest between Michael and Terri that received far too little shrift.

As to the supposedly controversial legislation and “intervention by House Republicans”: Weldon’s bill was among the most bipartisan laws passed during the George W. Bush presidency. In the House of Representatives, 45 percent of the House Democratic caucus who voted supported the bill. It received unanimous consent in the U.S. Senate, including from Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Tom Harkin (who was a prime mover in support of the bill), Harry Reid, and Dianne Feinstein, etc. If only one senator had objected, the bill would have failed, but none did.

The Terri Schiavo case was a tipping point in this country’s morality. Before her death, people couldn’t believe we dehydrate cognitively disabled people to death. Afterwards, majorities supported such actions. But that doesn’t remove the bite of injustice inflicted in the name of compassion on Terri and her blood family. If we are ever to a return to a more just society that cares for the most vulnerable among us rather than seeing their deaths as beneficent, it is important to keep the story straight.

Author’s note: After this post published, the Washington Post edited its discussion on the Terri Schiavo case to accurately state that the husband wanted her feeding tube removed, rather than the family, as originally reported in the story and criticized by me as inaccurate. The paper did so without acknowledging the change, i.e., a stealth edit. Journalism dies in darkness.