What began as a small family tragedy ultimately became a national and international sensation, drawing the attention of the world’s most powerful lawmakers, religious leaders, and celebrities. Without being able to speak a word, one helpless woman forced all of them to grapple with the most vital questions we will ever be asked to answer in this life: Which lives matter? When we are at our most vulnerable, who should decide whether we live or die? 

All of us in the faith and culture writing business can recall those moments in our young lives when we became politically aware. For me, one of those moments was the murder of Terri Schiavo, a young disabled woman whose family’s fight against her court-sanctioned death made headlines around the world. I hadn’t yet been born in 1990, when Terri first collapsed under mysterious circumstances and suffered the brain damage that would leave her locked in for life. But by the early 2000s, when her estranged husband was seeking to remove her basic nourishment and end it all, I was a budding young pro-lifer. My mother, a staunch conservative commentator with a keen interest in constitutional law, followed and documented the case closely. I became invested, because she was invested. But I wasn’t just copying Mom. I understood for myself the difference between good and evil, between life and death.

Terri’s feeding tube was removed for the last time on March 18, 2005, and the family would lose its heroic battle two agonizing weeks later on March 31—symbolically, during Passiontide. Both then-Gov. Jeb Bush and President Bush signed legislation in a last-ditch effort to save her life, but with the state courts against her, she was doomed by constitutional gridlock.

Read More