Terri Schiavo Case Study

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Terri Schiavo was a 26 year old woman who collapsed at her home in February of 1990. Schiavo had no flow of oxygen to her brain for several minutes, causing her to fall into a persistent vegetative state. Although she was severely brain damaged, she still maintained a heartbeat with blood flow, and was able to see and move her limbs with impaired vision (Lynne, 2005).However, it was still necessary that Schiavo have a feeding tube to sustain her life. Terri 's husband believed that she would have wanted to be taken off life support and die a natural death, claiming he heard her say “If I ever have to be a burden to anybody, I don’t want to live like that.” (Lynne, 2005). Schiavo 's parents disagreed, arguing that Terri always executed a