Schiavo, Theresa Marie (“Terri”)

(b. 3 December 1963 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; d. 31 March 2005 in Pinellas Park, Florida), brain-damaged patient who became the focus of the lengthiest and most contentious right-to-die case in American history.

Schiavo was born at Nazareth Hospital in Northeast Philadelphia to Robert S. Schindler, an engineer, draftsman, and industrial equipment dealer, and Mary Lee (Tammaro) Schindler, a housewife. She grew up in a pleasant four-bedroom suburban home in Huntingdon Valley, Bucks County, Pennsylvania. She, her parents, and her younger brother and sister were a close-knit, devoutly Roman Catholic family. She attended Our Lady of Good Counsel School in Southampton and Archbishop Wood Catholic High School in Warminster, graduating in 1981. She was shy but friendly, and not a good student. She did not date. Just five feet, three inches tall, she weighed about 200 pounds during her senior year. She went on a crash diet and lost between fifty-five and seventy pounds in a few months. Around this time she may have become bulimic.

She met Michael Richard Schiavo of Levittown, Pennsylvania, in 1982 when they were both students at Bucks County Community College in Newtown, Pennsylvania. He was the first boy she ever kissed. They became engaged after dating for five months and were married on 10 November 1984 at Good Counsel. In 1986 they moved to Saint Petersburg, Florida, where her parents had retired. In Saint Petersburg, Schiavo worked as a clerk at an insurance agency. The Schiavos had no children.

Before dawn on 25 February 1990, Schiavo suddenly collapsed in the hallway of their apartment. She went into cardiac arrest for about five minutes, which decreased the flow of oxygen to her brain and caused permanent damage, including the loss of cognitive function and partial blindness. Paramedics could not resuscitate her. They transported her to Humana Northside Hospital in Saint Petersburg, where she was put on full life support. She emerged from her coma in May 1990 but remained in a persistent vegetative state for the rest of her life.

Upon admission to Humana Northside, her blood potassium was 2.0 milliequivalents per liter. The normal range is 3.5 to 5.0. She had recently been living on little more than iced tea to keep her weight between 110 and 120 pounds, which is probably what reduced her potassium. Doctors diagnosed the potassium imbalance as the cause of her collapse, but this diagnosis was never proved. The true cause will never be known.

Schiavo’s husband won a malpractice suit in 1992 and received $300,000 for loss of consort and $700,000 for his wife’s medical expenses. Until about that time contact between Schiavo’s husband and parents was cordial, but after her father and husband quarreled at her bedside on 14 February 1993, relations soured. On 29 July 1993 the Schindlers sued to remove Schiavo’s husband as her legal guardian, thus initiating the bitter court fights that would eventually find their way to Florida Governor Jeb Bush and the highest levels of the federal government.

The Schindlers claimed that Schiavo’s husband wanted her dead so he could maximize his financial gain from the malpractice award. He claimed that he was only honoring her wishes for a dignified death. The sworn affidavits of the nurses Carolyn Johnson on 28 August 2003 and Heidi Law on 30 August 2003, both of whom cared for Schiavo in nursing homes, supported the Schindlers’ accusations that her husband was abusive, uncaring, and greedy.

In 1995 Michael Schiavo began living with Jodi Centonze, who bore him two children. The Schindlers considered this an extramarital affair and maintained that if he wanted a relationship with Centonze, then he should have divorced Schiavo first and relinquished her guardianship to them.

In his report of a full body bone scan done on 5 March 1991, the doctor W. Campbell Walker wrote, “The patient has a history of trauma.” This revelation surprised Schiavo’s parents. They began to suspect that she may have been the victim of spousal abuse. The neurologist William Hammesfahr believed that her rigid, elongated neck, which paramedics noticed just after her collapse, was consistent with strangulation. The medical examiner Jon Thogmartin disproved both Walker and Hammesfahr’s opinions at the autopsy on 1 April 2005. Thogmartin thus exonerated Schiavo’s husband from the suspicion of foul play and dishonorable motives that had been a factor in the case while she remained alive.

Schiavo’s husband petitioned in May 1998 for her medically assisted nutrition and hydration (MANH) to be discontinued so she could die comfortably. He won this case on 11 February 2000. The Schindlers appealed several times, always unsuccessfully. Her MANH was stopped on 15 October 2003. On 21 October the Florida State Legislature empowered Governor Bush to take extraordinary action. By his order, the MANH was restored on 22 October, but by then irreversible liver and kidney damage had occurred. After more wrangling in both the courts and the media, her MANH was stopped on 18 March 2005.

Schiavo died peacefully in her husband’s arms at Woodside Hospice on 31 March 2005. Her body was cremated after autopsy and her ashes were buried on 20 June 2005 in Sylvan Abbey Memorial Park, Clearwater, Florida, according to her husband’s wishes. Her gravestone reads in part, “Departed this Earth February 25, 1990. At peace March 31, 2005.” In 2001 Schiavo’s parents founded the Terri Schindler Schiavo Foundation in Saint Petersburg to fight for her life. Since her death, its purpose has been to educate the public about end-of-life issues, to advocate for reform of medical guardianship laws, and to offer support for families of brain-damaged patients.

Even before her death, Schiavo’s case had already become a mainstay of the scholarly literature in biomedical ethics. Shortly after her death, popular and polemical books appeared on both sides of the debate, such as Mark Fuhrman, Silent Witness: The Untold Story of Terri Schiavo’s Death (2005); Diana Lynne, Terri’s Story: The Court-Ordered Death of an American Woman (2005); and Jon B. Eisenberg, Using Terri: The Religious Right’s Conspiracy to Take Away Our Rights (2005). Two biographies appeared on the first anniversary of her death, one written by her family, Mary Schindler, Robert Schindler, and Suzanne Schindler Vitadamo, A Life That Matters: The Legacy of Terri Schiavo (2006); and one written by Michael Schiavo with Michael Hirsh, Terri: The Truth (2006). An obituary is in the New York Times (1 Apr. 2005).

Eric v.d. Luft