Terry Schiavo dies in hospice

Terry Schiavo’s unfortunate plight was bigger than the life of just one woman. It pitted family against family, government against church, and asked the impossible questions on the meaning of life and death. Schiavo suffered a heart attack in her Florida home, and by the time the paramedics arrived had not been breathing for several minutes. Due to the oxygen starvation her brain had nearly shut down. Terri woke up from a coma after two months, but her consciousness was in doubt. Disputes raged on whether to remove her feeding tube, in according with the wishes of her husband, or keep her alive, as her family insisted.

On this day, March 31, in 2005, Terri Schiavo died after feeding tube was removed for the second time. Four years prior, at the request of her husband the tube was taken out, only to be replaced several days later.

In the end, the case galvanized political groups across the spectrum. Pro-life groups insisted that Terri’s life was special and should be preserved at all costs, while disability-rights groups said Terri herself would not have wanted the kind of existence she was put in (it did not help that she left no living will.) After Schiavo’s death, an autopsy revealed her brain been damaged so massively that, in the words of one expert “no amount of therapy” could have recovered her.