Terri Schiavo's case offers a scary lesson to us all.(Reprint)

Editor's note. This first appeared in the October 2 Philadelphia Inquirer and is reprinted with the author's permission.

In 1990, at 26, Terri Schiavo suffered a heart attack, and her brain was temporarily deprived of oxygen. She survived her medical crisis only to run into an equally threatening legal crisis.

Her husband and guardian, Michael Schiavo, has placed her in a hospice among the dying. He is trying to have her feeding tube removed, and he sees his struggle in the context of not needlessly prolonging his wife's suffering.

But her parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, to whom she still responds with radiant smiles, consider her severely handicapped rather than dying, saying that she wants to live but has not yet had the opportunity for rehabilitation. How can it be said that Terri Schiavo would not want to live in her condition, they ask, if she hasn't had enough rehabilitation to determine whether it is permanent?

After hearing testimony on both sides, Florida Judge George Greer found the pessimistic testimony more persuasive and ordered the feeding tube removed as of October 15. Terri Schiavo's parents have argued before U.S. District Judge Richard Lazzara that before that happens their daughter should be allowed to have speech therapy, which may improve her ability to swallow.

Terri Schiavo seems to have fallen out of a logical world into a weird, in-between space where the arguments do not make sense. For example, George Felos, her husband's attorney, contends that she can't be allowed to swallow because food might get into her lungs. As death is a certainty without food, this argument seems odd.

To understand it, we must enter into the hospice way of thinking, which is not easy to do. In hospice, the problem with food in the lungs is just that it is life-threatening. This situation is undesirable for different reasons, perhaps because it is something that the staff is responsible for avoiding, or because it causes discomfort.