Terry Schiavo passed away Thursday morning, ending the most heavily litigated -- and most politicized -- right-to-life dispute in U.S. history. The issues surrounding her death, however, will likely continue to be debated for years to come.
House Majority Leader Tom DeLay bemoaned Schiavo's death, which came 13 days after her feeding tube was removed, threatening that, "the time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior."
Despite the outcry of DeLay and social conservatives, ethics scholars on campus generally said the court's decision was the correct one.
"My position as an ethicist is that a husband has the right to make these decisions," said Aine Donovan, director of the Ethics Institute. "The wife did stipulate to her husband that she didn't want to live in that state. If she hadn't said that it'd be different."
"If she was in a PVS [persistent vegetative state], which almost all neurologists over several years asserted, then there really was no ethical controversy," said Bernard Gert, head of the philosophy department. "Everyone agrees that a person in that state should be allowed to die."
Despite their opinions, many social conservatives and pro-life advocates disagreed with the Schiavo decision. Members of Dartmouth Students for Life fell into this category, advocating the idea that Schiavo's case constituted a grey ethical area and that the courts should favor keeping her alive.
"Doctors cannot honestly say what is going on in the brain of a patient in Terri's situation, and with this being the case, we should be erring on the side of life, and not on the side of death," said Zach Rubeo '05, president of DSL. "Pulling Terri Schiavo's feeding tube out constitutes a proactive move to end her life."
President Bush, his brother Jeb Bush and Congress all intervened on Schiavo's behalf using similar logic. Nearly all Americans agreed, however, that government interventions in the case constituted a breach of privacy. In an ABC News poll, 70 percent of Americans called Congress' involvement in the situation inappropriate.
Even a conservative judge who upheld Alabama's ban on sex toys admonished Bush and congressional Republicans Wednesday for pursuing the matter "in a manner demonstrably at odds with our founding fathers' blueprint for governance of a free people -- our Constitution."
Until her death Thursday morning, one of the most contentious issues surrounding the case was her level of consciousness, which was heavily disputed by Schiavo's parents who said that she was able to react to them. However, Gert supported doctors' view that the severely brain-damaged woman was clearly in a persistent vegetative state in which she was awake but not conscious.
"They thought they were getting a reaction but they weren't. It's perfectly acceptable to think that. All doctors, except one right-to-life doctor, I think there were eight of them, said she was in a permanent vegetative state," Gert said. "It's understandable that the Schindlers didn't understand that. Frist, who's a doctor, ought to have known better."
Donovan, on the other hand, highlighted the need for people to file living wills so that these types of contentious ethical questions don't have to be asked of family members. She voiced her surprise over the public involvement in the case, noting how frequently similar decisions are made.
"The important point that the American public is missing is that this is common and happens privately," Donovan said.
Schiavo suffered a heart attack and was rushed to the hospital on Feb. 25, 1990. She had remained in a persistent vegetative state for the last 15 years.
