Framing the narrative in the Terri Schiavo story

The role of the Religious Right

The case of Terri Schiavo is not uniique, and people are removed from life support as a matter of course all the time. What is of interest in this one particular case is what is reveals about the power of the religious right in contemporary American society, since this one case would not be elevated to a national soap opera were it not for the intervention of the forces of the religious right, and the behavior of the congress and the senate in this matter are a clear demonstration of the power the religious right currently holds over the Republican party, and thus over the larger American society, since Republicans control all three branches of government.

Because the Terri Schiavo story has been ‘framed' by the religious right, the arguments being presented are the political arguments of the religious right, and the themes are that science is not to be trusted, and thus there is no need to believe doctors, miracles can and do happen all the time, and judges are activist liberals with a sworn hostility to ‘the right to life' which has been proven time and time again by the fact that the religious right still has not been able to overturn Roe versus Wade (although they are making some progress in that direction). What is required is a clean sweep of the judiciary, with judges being replaced by radical right wingers, combined with the destruction of the concept of ‘checks and balances' and a concentration of power in the executive branch of the government. These issues have always been typical causes of the religious right, who have been foiled in their attempts to ban books or videos and dictate the private lives of American citizens by what they call ‘liberal activist judges' who throw out religious right laws and thus are held responsible by the religious right for what they call ‘the crisis in moral values.'

The religious right are by definition ‘right wing authoritarians' and as such they believe that the role of government, in an ideal society, is to act as an enforcer of rules which maintain a strict status quo, since according to RWA thought, all humanity is evil by nature, and require firm authoritarian rule as a result (this type of thinking permeating many of the books of the Older Testament, which describe a punitive and dictatorial theocracy ruled over by one single individual with all powers concentrated in the executive branch - you can make note of this ideology in such books as ‘Kings' where ultimate power, including the power of the judge, is concentrated in the hands of Kings, who are then judged to be either successful or failed depending on how authoritarian their policies are and how strictly they enforce a system of rigid religious hegemony. Lack of rigidity is always condemned as a sin in books like Kings, and such a descent into the foul pits of freedom of thought or liberty are always then said to be the root cause of every sort of disaster, including such things as crop failures and the greatest of all failures, the loss of battles in warfare. It is typical for Right Wing Authoritarians to combine superstition with their politics and thus we find that the religious right continues this ancient tradition, blaming such things as a bad tornado season on ‘liberal activist judges.'

I have a page which summarizes a psychological analysis of the RWA online here -> Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition - A Summary ... what it comes down to is that Right Wing Authoritarianism is a fear based ideology - fear of change, fear of collapse, combined with an intense distrust of human nature, which is product of past experience, and shows itself in such doctrines as that of ‘original sin' which is a theological encapsulation of RWA belief in the essential wickedness of humanity, which is then used as justification for a type of theocratic fascism.

What are the facts of the case?

"Her CAT scan shows massive shrinkage of the brain. Her EEG is flat--flat. There's no electrical activity coming from her brain."Neurologist Dr. Ronald Cranford, University of Minnesota Medical School,examined Terri Schiavo for Florida state courts, New York Times, March 23

The Internet is currently awash with urban legends and a flood of factually incorrect information, most of which can be sourced back to the religious right and their slanderous accusations against Terri's husband, as well as to their disdain for both the judiciary and the concept of separation of powers and their rejection of science and evidence, which is not limited to this one case, but also to such crusades as that in the public schools where they continue to lobby hard to have the doctrine of a six thousand year old universe taught as a science in the classroom. A similar manner of thinking informs all religious right ‘information' on the case of Terri Schiavo in that you find the same rejection of evidence in favor of mythology..

Terri Schiavo does not have her frontal lobes. In an attempt to counteract the propaganda assault of the religious right, her husband, Michael has promised to release full details of Terri's autopsy to put the matter to rest. According to the doctors in the case, her brain is ‘massively shrunken' and she now only has the more primitive areas of her brain near the brain stem, a small area that is apparently not much bigger than a fist. This area controls reflexive actions, such apparent actions as sleeping and wakefulness. Individuals with PVS (persistent vegetative state) smile, grimace, sigh, moan, make grunting sounds, shed tears, and make sudden motions, but in Terri's case, there is no conscious activity associated with these random reflexive actions. The video tapes released by her parents were the heavily edited results of many hours of video taping in an attempt to ‘get a response from Terri', with these coincidental random responses then spliced into what to some people might seem like convincing evidence that ‘Terri is a conscious and responsive individual'.

According to the doctors, Terri's brain waves a flat. She is flat lining. This is to be expected, since consciousness depends on having a cerebral cortex, the frontal lobes of the brain, and Terri has only a fluid filled sack where her frontal lobes once existed. Even personality has been demonstrated to reside in the frontal lobes, and there have been cases where a victim of a brain injury in this region changed from a mild mannered and friendly individual into a sinister, deviant and cruel individual, since even such things as ‘moral values' and temperament are physiologically based. This evidence is rejected by the religious right since it would tend to bring into question the ancient belief that people have something called ‘a soul' which is where personality and consciousness reside, and which is also responsible for bad conduct, which then requires the ‘salvation of the soul' (bringing up all sorts of interesting questions about how one goes about judging a brain damage victim - does it depend on whether or not they ‘accepted Jesus' before that damage was done to their cerebral cortex - this doctrine of ‘saving souls' is once again just a theological mystification of a RWA political doctrine and the true purpose here is to enforce conformity and engender a means of social control).

PVS is not a coma. People come out of a coma. People do not recover from massive brain damage, although now the religious right is trying to suggest that people can grow new brains in the same way that they grow new skin over a wound. Terri is not in a coma. She is massively brain damaged.

Urban legends

Quotes from article on philly.com ...House Majority Leader Tom DeLay - who has never met the woman - has the nerve to proclaim, "She talks and laughs and she expresses happiness and discomfort."Senate Majority Leader and doctor - Bill Frist - diagnosed Schiavo from the videotapes, declaring that she has "a severe disability similar to what cerebral palsy might be."One doctor got TV time declaring that Terri Schiavo can be cured. William Hammesfahr was introduced several times as having been "nominated" for a Nobel Prize. This was based on a letter sent on his behalf by a congressman...the issue (is) presented in terms like "barbarism" (Tom DeLay) "execution" (the Vatican) "medical terrorism" (DeLay again).

A page on the Internet, in the Free Lance-Star, titled The government is guilty of murder in the Schiavo case. provides a good summation of all the urban legends that have taken on a life of their own out on the Internet, as such things so often do (I was just thinking this week how useful I find the Internet to be as a working and research tool, while at the same time it has totally changed the dynamics of myth making and urban legends, which now spread around the planet at the speed of optical fibers).

According the article,

"Her husband has claimed that her wishes were to not be kept alive artificially.He was the one who wanted her to be taken off the feeding tube. He didn't want her to receive medical attention that could have allowed her to get better."

Much has been made of the million dollars which was allotted in an court case for Terri's care, and the slanderous story is being spread that states that ‘Michael has refused care' because he is ‘waiting for that bitch to die' so that he can then continue what is called on the Internet ‘Michael's playboy lifestyle', as he then is free to spend that million bucks on wine, women, and song. The truth of the matter is that Terri Schiavo is being taken care of for free by the hospice in an uncharacteristic act of charity displayed by the ‘privatized' American medical system (you often hear stories of people being thrown out of hospitals, or not being allowed into hospitals, or people selling everything they own and going bankrupt), and the reason for this act of charity is that the money for Terri's care has been depleted and is now gone. Michael will not a dime off his wife's death. That slanderous story is an urban legend. There are also stories going around that ‘Michael has consistently denied Terri all care. This is not true. Back in the beginning Michael apparently went for some truly bizarre treatments, much as desperate cancer patients are known to do, including such things as the insertion of platinum electrodes into Terri's brain, the theory being that somehow these implants would ‘jump start' her brain and get those brain waves going again (her parents at the time supported his decision to pursue these unusual therapies).

The article continues,

From the actions that he's made, it seems as though he wanted her to die.He doesn't take care of her.Terri Schiavo's parents are the ones who interact with her--and ultimately want her to be alive.Yet her parents' obvious love means nothing in the eyes of the government. The life of an innocent person will be snuffed out, courtesy of the government, an estranged husband and unelected judges.This entire situation seems wrong. Her husband has abandoned her and started a new life with another woman, and has had children by the woman. No court will issue an order to save a life. These are the courts that sentence or pardon murderers. And now, they are making the decision to let a defenseless woman die.I agree with what President Bush said regarding the matter: that keeping someone innocent alive should be everyone's priority.

This piece provides an interesting synopsis of the political analysis supplied as a framing narrative by the religious right. All the elements are there. The sinful, adulterous husband. The liberal activist judges. The contempt for scientific evidence. For example we are told that Michael, "didn't want her to receive medical attention that could have allowed her to get better." First that slanderous accusation is not true, as is demonstrated by some of those weird therapies that Michael became involved in many years, with the support of Terri's parents. So we have another one of those slanderous factually incorrect assertions, an urban legend in short. What is even stranger is the general level of ignorance about the nature of brain damage being displayed, for we are told that with proper care, no doubt the care of her loving parents, medical treatments are available that would have allowed Terri to ‘get better'. You often hear terms like ‘improvement in Terri's condition', and therapy that would allow her to grow and develop as an individual. Apparently people are either misinformed about the nature of her brain damage or they remain ignorant or contemptuous of the facts, since when your cerebral cortex is a fluid filled sack you do not ‘get better' nor does your condition ‘improve'. All the millions of dollars on earth will never make it so. Such a statement is remarkably ignorant, and is typical of that ‘treatment for Terri's brain' talk that is flying around on the Internet.

That such nonsense has gained something of a following is not surprising when you consider that the religious right is real busy promoting such fallacies, and spreading disinformation of the worst sort, and given how intertwined the Republican party has become with the religious right, even politicians up on Capital Hill, have been making fools out of themselves by jumping on the band wagon in the hopes of securing those religious right votes in the mid term elections.

Examples of this are easy to find. For example, the Christian Post tells us that,

Supporters of Terri Schiavo carried their protest to Washington as her parents gave yet another plea for their daughter's life, Monday, March 28, 2005."She's still communicating, she's still responding. She's emaciated, but she's responsive," Bob Schindler, Terri's father, told reporters after a morning visit with his daughter, saying that she showed facial expressions when he hugged and kissed her. "Don't give up on her. We haven't given up on her, and she hasn't given up on us... Bob insisted it was not too late to save his daughter.Terri is "fighting like hell to live and she's begging for help. ... She has just incredible strength to live," Mr. Schindler said.Outside of Terri's hospice, nearly 100 protestors stood their ground. Several, however, made their way to the nation's Capitol to press the President and Congress to intervene with police order or any other viable action.

This ongoing communication is a remarkable achievement for a woman with a brain about the size of an orange, who has no cerebral cortex or frontal lobes. The Right Wing Authoritarian political perspective that informs this ‘news article' is apparent when you consider the call for the executive branch to run rough shod over the legislative branch, even if this means sending in police forces to reinsert Terri's feeding tube, and other elements of the religious right have been calling for the President to send in the National Guard, an echo of the civil rights movement in the past when President's sent in the National Guard to see to it that black children were allowed to enter schools. Thus there is an attempt to frame this argument as one of ‘civil rights.' The article then goes on to deliver the predictable assault on the concept of the separation of powers and the legal branch, while being critical of devolution of power from the executive branch, a political perspective typical of the religious right...

"I have not seen any means by which the executive branch can get involved. My legal counsel has talked to the Schindler family and their lawyer over the weekend," the governor said. "My heart is broken about this."At least two more state-filed appeals are pending, but those challenges are going before an appeals court that had rejected the governor's previous efforts in the case.Protestors in Washington meanwhile challenged Congress to find Florida Judge George Greer in contempt for declining to reinsert Terri's feeding tube "in contempt" of the subpoenas issued by both the House and Senate for Schiavo.

Pat Robertson's website is also involved in spreading misinformation. IN this case an attempt is made to falsely equate PVS with a coma, and the Robertson site also makes the remarkable claim that people, given time and proper medical care, do grow new brains, so Terri should be given the chance to grow back her missing brain. It is a right to life issue here, and then the article also attempts to equate the loss of brain with other ‘disabilities' as though somehow not having a brain was a ‘handicap', much like losing the use of your legs, and in the same way there is no reason to think that just as someone without the use of their legs cannot carry on, similarly one would expect brainless people to also have the chance to once again become full, productive members of society. If people without brains are not kept alive forever, then truly all people with disabilities are in great peril.

Robertson's site must counter the medical facts of the case, and this is attempted by making a mother into a medical expert, and a second doctor was also called into make a diagnosis, not in person, but rather by watching those heavily edited tapes created by Terri's parents. The mother is given to say,

"Scientifically speaking, you can't tell PVS from a coma," I challenged the medical community at the time...Happily, time proved the doctors to be in the wrong about my mental state as well as my daughter's state of PVS when she finally awoke from her coma,"

This is a medical falsehood. People with PVS go through a cycle of sleeping and apparent wakefulness. People in a coma are unconscious. And Terri has no brainwaves, not to mention not much a brain remaining, while people in a coma still have their brain intact. However the article on the Robertson site needs to counter medical evidence and the judicial system and attempts to do this by contrasting the superior medical knowledge resulting from a mother's love with the highly questionable science of today and the cold cruelty of the judicial system.

The Robertson site then tosses out another propaganda salvo, as this expert mother states,

Terri Schiavo was issued an "Order of Execution" from Florida's Judge George Greer even though she has not been re-evaluated for pvs in more than five years. That original evaluation consisted of a bedside observation and did not take place in a clinical setting. My question is, was Terri even awake during her exam? Did she dislike the doctor and therefore decide to give him the cold shoulder?

One might be led to believe that one of those cold hearted sinnners with no respect for ‘the right to life' made a cursory determination that Terri should die, and thus it has remained. For we all know just how incompetent doctors and judges can be. Terri has had scans of her brain, which show it to be massively shrunken in size, and she has no brain waves. This suggestion above is false and slanderous, and a desperate piece of propaganda, but if the religious right is going to maintain the proper level of hysteria through the mid term elections, something has to be done to counter the medical evidence in this case, and thus they bring forth ‘an expert mother,' who tells us that,

"doctors and scientists are learning the brain can regenerate itself... for one believe Terri is not PVS, but alert enough to respond and communicate to her friends and family."

Once again, I say, a remarkable achievement for a woman with no frontal lobes. They also have an ‘expert docto'r who made a diagnosis based on watching those edited tapes. Since the religious right was unable to find a brain surgeon to make the required diagnosis they have to settle for a speech pathologist, who then overrules the court and medical system by reevaluating Terri's condition..

Pam Hyink, a certified speech and language pathologist in private practice in Boulder, Colorado, who had sent Judge Greer a signed affidavit on Terri's behalf, has seen the videos of Terri and agrees that her PVS diagnosis is false.Said Hyink, "In my 34 years of practice in working with the disabled, there is no question in my mind that Terri Schiavo communicates. I feel Terri could be taught to use body language such as eye gaze, tongue signals, head turning or eye blinks in order to communicate in consistent ways. Terri's husband, Michael Schiavo, has argued that Terri would not have wanted to live her life ‘incapacitated.' Does Terri share that same opinion? Why hasn't anyone asked her? Terri needs a fair chance, a fair and appropriate evaluation by a communications specialist"

The Robertson article then goes on to equate not having your frontal lobes with ‘other disabilities', and then suggests that the elderly in nursing homes and people in wheel chairs will be next.

Framing the narrative in the Schiavo story

The above is an example of the truly bizarre framing narrative being supplied by the religious right which is the political force which is behind the singling out of this one case of life support. There is another narrative, more moderate sounding in tone, which has been settled on by parts of the mainstream media in America, which has the advantage of being more acceptable sounding to middle America than the scientifically hostile right wing extremism of the RWA (and for some reason the media has been sucked into the vortex of this case, and even up here in Canada the soap opera is being followed closely, with interviews of prominent members of the religious right, as though somehow this is how a society debates the issue of life support.)

The more moderate, watered down framing narrative that has been supplied by the filtering mechanism of the mainstream media tells us that what we have here is a controversy between an uncaring husband who has abandoned his wife to live with another woman as opposed to a loving and caring family who only want the right to take care of their disabled daughter. And that sounds like a reasonable request, which probably explains why the religious right has latched onto this particular case with the ferocity they have displayed. Such an argument might play in middle America, and the religious right is always looking for ways to take extremism into the mainstream, this case being the perfect showcase for their hostility to both modern science and their campaign to establish an authoritarian executive branch at the expense of the judiciary they so passionately detest given the propensity of judges to throw out their attempts to dominate and dictate to society (the essence of the authoritarian ideology).

It is this supposedly ‘moderate' sounding framing narrative that I want to bring into question here, by asking ‘Who needs therapy here.' Now we are told that what we have here is a cold hearted and uncaring husband who has abandoned his wife for another woman. What is being neglected here is the fact that Terri Schiavo died almost fifteen years ago. What remains is her animated corpse being maintained on life support. The loss of a brain is not a ‘disability' and despite the expert opinion of some mother people do not grow new brains. Life support for those without a frontal lobe is not a ‘disability issue'. People can live with damage to their bodies, but no one can live without a cerebral cortex. Are we to believe that if Michael Schiavo was to bravely stand by the side of the animated corpse of his wife for the rest of his life, this deed would be an ‘heroic' demonstration of his featly to ‘the sacred vows of marriage'. Obviously Michael Schiavo went through his grieving process and eventually came to accept that his wife was gone. People do get married again and go on with their lives after their partner dies, and Terri is no longer with us. She hasn't been with us for fifteen years. She would need a brain for that and she doesn't have one. She is not disabled. The loss of your frontal lobes is not a ‘handicap'.

Which leads me to conclude that is it Terri's parents who require therapy. They have never learned to live with their loss, and now, after fifteen years of refusing to deal with their grieving process, they have become hysterically disturbed, are living in some kind of bizarre fantasy world and indulging in all kinds of wild conspiracy theories, while at the same time rejecting the facts and turning instead to mythology and fantasy. There is no therapy that can overcome the loss of frontal lobes.

Just yesterday a preacher from the religious right was interviewed on television, and he was on the way to Washington to see if it was not possible to use police state methods and encourage the executive branch of government to use law enforcement methods to forcibly reinsert that feeding tube. They called him a ‘supporter of Terri's parents'. Now a real minister would not be playing right wing political games with this case, but rather would be giving some much needed counseling to those who obviously need therapy the most, Terri's parents. A responsible minister would be doing everything possible to help them to come to grips with reality and accept the fact that Terri is gone, she has been gone now for fifteen years, and she is not coming back. The delusional hope they are allowed to cling to since they still have their daughter's animated corpse must be challenged so that those two people can get on with their own lives.

I am surprised by just how desensitized some people seem to have become in that they are unable to see the obvious. Terri's parents have the rest of their lives ahead of them. We are told that what we have hear are two loving parents who only want the chance to care for their daughters remains. In effect, what we are told is that is psychologically healthy for two parents to want to devote their days and nights to the care and nurture of their daughter's animated corpse, because that really is what it comes down to here. This sort of strange behavior might make Terri's parents into heros of the right wing ‘right to life movement.' After all, after destroying the rest of their lives in the constant care and service of their daughter's corpse, which they just cannot release and let go, they will then go on to their rewards in the ‘next life', which is a good reason for them to destroy whatever remains of this life. In the end, you see, life really doesn't matter to the religious right, as this case so clearly demonstrates, Michael is attacked and faulted for getting ion with his life and for letting his wife go, being called an ‘adulterer' who ‘abandoned his wife', and a ‘cold, uncaring husband' as compared to Terri's ‘loving, caring parents'. It is Michael who is showing signs of being well balanced and psychologically healthy while Terri's parents are showing signs of going over the deep end.

Michael has the rest of his life ahead of him, and he is getting on with his life, which is not a crime, but a healthy development. The same cannot be said of Terri's parents, and thus we can find good reason to fault those ministers of the religious right who are less concerned with life and more concerned politics, as is demonstrated by the contempt they are displaying by ‘supporting Terri's parents', which means destroying what remains of the rest of their lives.

Can anyone seriously believe that this life time should be spent given constant nursing care to the corpse of their daughter? All sorts of images float through my mind, images of Terri back in her old bed room, where she used to stay when she was a little girl. The room is decorated just like Terri had that room back in those days. She is dressed in that cute jump suit she liked so much, and beside her in bed is Bobo, her favorite teddy bear, in the hopes that perhaps all these familiar surroundings might ‘jog her memory' and provide some of that much needed therapy she has so far been denied, and thus aid in Terri's ‘recovery' from having her brain destroyed, thus allowing ‘Terri to get better'. Her mother's days will be taken up with the constant care required when someone has turned into vegetable, and she will require constant turning to prevent bed sores, and has already required a number of minor amputations caused by problems she has which aggravate this situation. She has constant medical problems, various infections, including repeated vaginitis, but then her parents do have their life savings, and being the loving couple that they are, they should have the freedom to spend every dime taking care of Terri's corpse at home, instead of retiring like normal well adjusted people do, and they can even sell the house if they have to, and get an apartment, with two bedrooms, of course, one for them and one for Terri's corpse.

These are hard words, but someone needs to say something. Well damn that is weird, and just thinking about the whole thing is giving me a severe case of the creeps, similar to that really weird feeling you get watching some of those really creepy movies. If people had sensitivity then they would realize that something is just desperately wrong here, and there is someone who needs therapy and it is not Terri, who cannot benefit from therapy, because she is for all practical purposes an animated corpse. She's dead. People need to let go. Michael has done this. Her parents obviously have not, and are now embroiled de eply in the weird politics of the religious right, small pawns in some much bigger game.