– News for March 22, 2005 – NPR News – Charles Osgood – CBS Hourly News – Gordon Skene Sound Collection –
March 22, 2005 – a day of contrasts, but only if you were looking past the headlines.
On this day, the dominating story was the Right-to-Death issue over comatose Terri Schiavo and the matter of a feeding tube.
On February 25, 1990, at age 26, Schiavo sustained a cardiac arrest at her home in St. Petersburg, Florida. She was successfully resuscitated, but had massive brain damage due to lack of oxygen to her brain and was left comatose. After two and a half months without improvement, her diagnosis was changed to that of a persistent vegetative state. For the next two years, doctors attempted speech and physical therapy and other experimental therapy, hoping to return her to a state of awareness, without success. In 1998, Schiavo’s husband, Michael, petitioned the Sixth Circuit Court of Florida to remove her feeding tube pursuant to Florida law.[3] He was opposed by Terri’s parents, Robert and Mary Schindler. The court determined that Schiavo would not have wished to continue life-prolonging measures,[4] and on April 24, 2001, her feeding tube was removed for the first time, only to be reinserted several days later. On February 25, 2005, a Pinellas County judge again ordered the removal of Terri Schiavo’s feeding tube. Several appeals and federal government intervention followed, which included U.S. President George W. Bush returning to Washington D.C. to sign legislation moving the case to the federal courts. After appeals through the federal court system upheld the original decision to remove the feeding tube, staff at the Pinellas Park hospice facility disconnected the feeding tube on March 18, 2005.
Meanwhile in Minnesota – a teenager, armed with a Glock, a 12-gauge shotgun and a .22 semi-automatic shot and killed five people, wounding seven others before committing suicide. It was the single worst school shooting since Columbine. Tribal leaders said the shootings were “one of the darkest and most painful occurrences in the history of our tribe.”
All that, and a lot more going on this March 22nd in 2005 as reported by NPR News – The Osgood File and CBS Hourly News.
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