Marching to Death - The Roe-vs-Wade-Schindler-Schiavo Connection

Nancy H. Murray

In the United States of America the killing of innocent human beings is prohibited by law. Or is it? Over 1.6 million human beings are routinely, legally killed by abortion under court sanction each year. The U. S. Constitution gives “rights” not to human beings, but to “persons.” The Supreme Court abortion decision of 1973 ruled that human beings before birth, i.e., in the womb, were not persons because they were not “capable of meaningful life.” Today, the life of a young woman, Terri Schiavo, is threatened for similar reasons.

In an attempt to rid the world of these non-persons, Germany set the pattern. The Holocaust, Germany’s “final solution” began with the legalization of abortion in 1933 by the Nazi government. Eugenic abortion and euthanasia projects, like twin wraiths, marched hand in hand through the 1930’s.

In 1938, the Euthanasia Society of America was formed with the intent to legalize active voluntary euthanasia. The group recognized it was up against formidable obstacles, namely the law and the cherished principle of Americans, “the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” A strategy must be devised. The Society’s name change reveals its progress. It became the Society for the Right to Die and in 1992, Concern for the Dying. Euthanasia advocates began to assert there is a constitutional “right to die.” They promoted the replacement of the sanctity-of-life ethic with the quality-of-life ethic and blurred the distinction between legally mandated ordinary care and not legally required extraordinary care.

A propaganda machine went into action. The new unalienable “right-to-die” found its precedent in the right to privacy protection granted by the 1973 Supreme Court’s Roe vs. Wade decision. Decisions about dying could simply be included under the privacy cover. The media consistently refers to the Terri Schiavo case raging in the public eye as a “right-to-die” case.

The Society moved into full gear in the late 60’s and 70’s with its introduction of the seemingly innocuous living-will documents. Eileen Doyle, R. N. writes, “All of the living-will type of legislation is geared to blur the distinction between ordinary and extraordinary care. The long-term purpose of right-to-die or living-will legislation is the great propaganda value in conditioning people, state by state, to accept that they have a right-to die. In some cases such conditioning may result in a duty to die.

Karen Ann Quinlan– The woman who failed to die

In the 1980’s two women who suffered severe brain damage became national icons in the right-to-die debates, Karen Ann Quinlan and Nancy Cruzan. At 21, Karen Quinlan collapsed at a party after consuming alcohol and drugs. She lapsed into PVS, a “persistent-vegetative-state” and in a much publicized struggle her family fought in court to remove her from her life-support machinery, a respirator.
In its verdict, the New Jersey Supreme Court cited the abortion decision of Roe v. Wade in stating the right to privacy “is broad enough to encompass a patient's decision to decline medical treatment under certain circumstances in much the same way as it is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision to terminate pregnancy…”

The respirator was removed; however, Karen Quinlan kept breathing. When her parents were asked if they were going to remove the feeding tube, her father replied they would not and that God would determine when Karen Ann would die. Quinlan lived for another nine years dying in a New Jersey nursing home in 1985.

In the tortuous route the Schiavo case has taken through Judge George Greer’s courtroom, a life-long friend of Terri’s, Diane Meyer testified that Terri disapproved of the Quinlan’s decision to remove their daughter from life-support. Meyer said, "There was an incident when I told a poor joke about Karen Ann Quinlan. I remember distinctly because Terri never lost her temper with me. This time she did," Meyer testified in 2002.

“She told me that she did not approve of what was going on or what happened in the Karen Ann Quinlan case.” Meyer said the incident happened in the summer of 1982. Greer dismissed Meyer’s testimony indicating Terri Schiavo’s opinion on end-of-life issues due to the use of two present tense verbs in Meyer’s testimony. Instead Judge Greer accepted word-of-mouth testimony from Terri’s husband Michael, his brother and his sister-in-law, who claimed they overheard Terri say she wouldn’t want to be kept alive artificially.

David Gibbs, attorney for Terri Schiavo’s parents said, “The court discredited Ms. Meyer's testimony because of its own mistaken conclusion that Karen Ann Quinlan was dead in 1982. In reality, Ms. Quinlan was very much alive in 1982," Gibbs wrote. "Ms. Quinlan did not die until 1985, some nine years after her court case ended and her respirator was removed."

Nancy Cruzan – Do carrots cry?

In 1983 twenty-five year old Nancy Cruzan suffered massive injuries as the result of an automobile accident. She was diagnosed as in a persistent vegetative state, PVS, although she wasn’t in pain nor was she dying. There were vast differences in the Quinlan and Cruzan cases. Quinlan was on a respirator requiring extraordinary medical care; Cruzan’s life was maintained on a feeding tube. Prior to the push to legalize euthanasia, such care was designated as ordinary or normal.

When the Missouri Supreme court denied the parents’ request that Nancy’s tube feedings cease, the case went to the U. S. Supreme court. On June 25, 1990 (four months after Terri Schiavo’s collapse), the court ruled 5-4 against the withdrawal of tube feedings. In Cruzan v. Harmon, 110 S. Ct. 2841 (1990), the court decided that the U. S. Constitution does not include a “right-to-die.”


However, the case was decided under a Fourteenth Amendment liberty right to refuse care, not under a right to privacy. The court further ruled that a state may (but does not have to) require that there be clear and convincing evidence that an incompetent patient would want artificially provided food and water withdrawn.

After the Supreme Court ruling the parents went back to court and Judge Charles Teel accepted the testimony of three people who said Nancy had spoken with them in the past about her wishes regarding such circumstances in which she now found herself.
Nancy’s distraught nurses asked, “Do carrots cry? Nancy cries,” and “We don’t want her blood to be on our hands.” The tube feedings were stopped and Nancy died in December 1990. The hospital administrator remarked, “Man’s laws said it’s all right, but this doesn’t change moral law.” Several years later Nancy Cruzan’s father committed suicide.

Enormous strides
The euthanasia movement has made enormous strides in the public arena. The “pro-choice” ethic used so effectively by the abortion providers has been the main impetus in softening up the public getting them to accept the quality-of-life ethic over the sanctity-of-life ethic. To be a person you must think, function and lead a meaningful life. Failing this one falls into the same category as the fetus, a non-person, unable to be sustained outside its mother’s womb.

The constitutional right to privacy gave a woman absolute control over her body. That right is now extended to the right to choose one’s own death, or more ominously the right of guardians to choose death for those who do not meet certain standards. The designation of ordinary food and water, a human right, is now considered medical treatment and can be denied.

Terri Schiavo mysteriously collapsed in 1990. Terri, who is severely brain damaged, nevertheless breathes on her own; she is maintained on a feeding tube to the abdomen. Terri’s husband, her guardian, wants the tube removed and for Terri to die by dehydration/starvation. Terri’s parents are fighting in court for her life.

History records Holland as the one country that took a stand against the Nazi euthanasia program. Holland’s physicians united in their refusal to kill innocent human beings. The Netherlands was the first nation to legalize euthanasia in 2001. Today, Holland euthanizes infants and sick children. It can happen here. The Schiavo case is poised for a choice. The Schindler vs. Schiavo case asks America to choose.