PINELLAS PARK, Fla. — "Michael, why are you afraid to let Terri live?"
The sign outside Woodside Hospice, where Terri Schiavo has been without food or water for six days, hints at the villainous motives protesters ascribe to her husband, Michael, in his quest to let her die after 15 years in what doctors have called a persistent vegetative state.
Demonized by his in-laws, antiabortion activists and the religious right, Michael Schiavo has become the target of accusations that he caused her heart attack and collapse with abusive, violent behavior; that he fabricated the story that she wouldn't want to live this way only after collecting more than $1 million in a malpractice claim; that he has sabotaged her therapy and barred her friends and family from comforting visits; and that he wants her to die so he can marry a woman with whom he has lived for the last few years and fathered two children.
Michael Schiavo has vehemently denied the accusations of abuse, greed and heartlessness in interviews and to investigators, and an independent report to Gov. Jeb Bush and the judicial system two years ago said "the evidence is incontrovertible that he gave his heart and soul to her treatment and care."
Terri Schiavo, now 41, suffered a heart attack Feb. 25, 1990, the result of a potassium imbalance brought on by an eating disorder.
The heart attack temporarily cut off oxygen to her brain. Schiavo, now severely brain-damaged, can breathe on her own, but cannot eat or drink.
The exhaustive 2003 report by Jay Wolfson, professor of public health and medicine at the University of South Florida, noted that Schiavo took his wife to California for experimental treatment in fall 1990, when a thalamic stimulator was implanted in her brain. Some neurologists now consider that an obstacle to further MRI scans to assess her brain function.
Wolfson further detailed the chain of events that led to a falling-out between Michael Schiavo and his in-laws, Bob and Mary Schindler, after four years of extensive treatment led doctors to conclude that Terri Schiavo had no meaningful connection with her surroundings or prospects for improvement.
In these waning days of the conflict over who has the right to make a life-or-death decision for Terri Schiavo, neither medical facts nor judicial rulings have lessened the vitriol from those who have sought to demonize her husband for his contention that she wouldn't want to live this way.
