A year and a half ago, just two weeks before I moved from San Diego to attend SF State, I received a late afternoon phone call from a friend I’ve known for nearly a decade.

The news was grim; a mutual friend of ours, a man I’d shared an apartment with since the late 1980s, had died that morning after slipping into a diabetic coma.

I’d always known Alex would die before I did, but I was still stunned at the unexpected news when it happened. I didn’t know what to say or do.

A half hour later, I found myself weeping uncontrollably at a gas station across the street from my apartment as I prepared to make the 500-mile trip back to the Bay Area.

In the end, I could do nothing to bring back my friend. Alex was dead, he was gone and I just had to live with his loss.

But as I write this, Terri Schiavo lies, waiting to die, in a hospice in Florida. By the time you read what I’ve written, Terri Schiavo may already be dead.

The 41-year-old woman, wife and daughter, still clings to life, despite the demands of her estranged husband and a ghoulish group of lawyers and right-to-die supporters. Schiavo has now survived for nearly 11 days without food or water, but it’s unlikely that she’ll last much longer before succumbing to either dehydration or starvation. Her death will not be quick, and because she cannot communicate with doctors, there’s no way to know how much pain she will endure before she dies.

But for Schiavo’s friends, family and loved ones, her death will be particularly galling. In this case, Schiavo does not have to die.

I think many Americans are under the impression that Schiavo is on full life support, attached to machines that keep her alive. If so, they’re wrong. Schiavo needs no extensive battery of medical equipment to live. Her heart pumps, her lungs function and her body can deal with maintaining the basic needs of life. All Schiavo needs is a feeding tube to supply her with nutrition, the same way you and I need breakfast, lunch and dinner to supply our bodies with nourishment. Schiavo is not comatose, nor is she completely unaware of her surroundings, as several hospital room videos on the
web site http://www.terrisfight.org/ demonstrate.

Religious arguments aside, I can’t think of a single reason that Schiavo should die.

Schiavo’s continued life is a threat to no one, except perhaps the one person most responsible for her death. While her husband Michael claims that Schiavo would not wish to live in a vegetative state, his motives are somewhat suspect since he now has children from a subsequent liaison. Because Schiavo left no written evidence of her feelings on the subject, her life will end based on the words of a man who may feel he’s better off without the burden of a bedridden wife.

Supporters of assisted suicide claim that men and women should have a choice to die rather than endure the pain and suffering of a lingering terminal illness, yet Schiavo cannot make a choice on her own. Her probable death in a few days time won’t be voluntary, and whatever rights she should have to choose will effectively end the moment she dies.

Schiavo’s impending death will amount to little more than a state-sponsored execution, a legalized murder without the usual niceties. Where convicted criminals receive lethal injections in a nod toward human kindness, Schiavo won’t even get a last meal.

None of this is to say that there aren’t situations where people should have the right to make their
own life or death choices, but Schiavo’s case is not one of them. Although chances are slim that Schiavo will ever fully recover, she should have the opportunity to do so if she can.

Death is a permanent solution to what looks to me like a temporary social contention between more than only Schiavo’s parents and her husband. Ultimately, Schiavo is the one paying the price for an always contentious debate between the liberal left and the religious right over the true value of life.

Schiavo’s death won’t solve the wider social dilemma, but it will deprive her of the most precious present any of us can ever have – the gift of life itself. Without that, what else is there to consider?