By the time you read this, Teresa Schiavo may be dead of starvation as required by Florida Judge George Greer.  Thousands of people have produced millions of words on this subject.  I should write nothing, unless I have more to offer than the MSM (mainstream media).  I do.

Personal experience colors what I say.  On 1 January 1994, my mother was taken to Mission Memorial Hospital in Asheville with serious injuries from an auto accident.  She’d suffered both a heart attack and a stroke after the accident.  She was in a coma, but still alive.

Seven years before, her life was saved in that same excellent hospital, by emergency surgery to repair an aorta aneurism.  She spent a week in intensive care, and told both her sons that she did not want to be “hooked up to tubes again.”  In 1994, my brother was in a different hospital after the accident; decisions on my mother’s care rested on me alone. 

Four different medical specialists were called in.  I took their advice.  I talked to all the grandchildren.  Ultimately I made not just one decision, but a series of them, leading directly to my mother’s death, four days later.

I have not yet steeled myself to write the complete history of those four days. Someday I should, because advances in medical care mean that many more Americans will face similar decisions about family members.  I understand what Terri Schiavo’s family are going through except the extraordinary time those burdens have been on their shoulders and their hearts.

That said, what can I offer on this subject?  For the best medical discussion, I recommend Charles Krauthammer’s excellent column this week.  On the legal side, events now are a direct consequence of a legal failure seven years ago, and the arrogance of judges who cannot admit error and merely dispense with the case, rather than take the tougher path and decide it.

The attorneys for Terri’s family should have filed for her divorce from Michael Schiavo seven years ago.  He was clearly guilty of adultery.  She was clearly blameless.  I’m unaware of any divorce action brought by a “next friend” for a woman who cannot speak.  But I am aware of divorces the other way – husbands and wives who obtained divorces from spouses who were profoundly disabled, or in prison, or who had disappeared.  Turnabout is fair play.

Had Michael been removed as the husband, he would not have been named, or continued, as her guardian.  Therefore, what is happening now would not have occurred.

Then there are Michael’s reasons for bias.  He had three personal reasons at home (a “wife” and two children).  He had hundreds of thousands of reasons in the bank (a million-dollar malpractice settlement).  But Judge Greer also had reasons for bias.

In Florida, judges are subject to retention elections.  In his last election, Judge Greer received substantial contributions from at least five lawyers who have represented Michael over the years.  This is a matter of public records in Florida.  None of the MSM have bothered to research and report on this.

Speaking of bias, ABC had its own mini-Rathergate this week.  ABC touted a “memo circulated among Republican Senators” which sought to make political hay from Terri Schiavo.  The memo is a fraud.  It contains references any Senator or staffer would have known not to use concerning legislative business.  It also lacks the standard cover sheet and initials of sender for all intraSenate memos.  This fraud story was broken by www.Powerline.com; they have the details.

Like CBS, ABC rushed to broadcast with a forged document because it didn’t ask competent experts whether it was false.  ABC was in a rush (dare we say biased?) to attack the Republicans.  The bias has continued in an ABC poll that misstates the facts of the Schiavo case to produce false results.  A day after this memo was exposed as a fraud, Lanny Davis cited it as true on Fox News.  Given Davis’s history, that was predictable.

Lastly, on the Internet I’ve seen a brain scan of Terri Schiavo   She has a larger gap of fluid than in a normal brain.  But I’ve also seen the scan of a woman with a similar void – who was given up for brain dead – who recovered, and who corresponded with me and others, and released her medical records, to present an alternative to the assumptions of “experts.”

What we have here is a gross failure of common sense and decency in state and federal courts.  Terri Schiavo should be in the physical custody of her parents, who love her, not in the hands of her “husband,” who wants her dead.  Her soul now and forever is in the hands of God.