Editorial: Terri Schiavo case is sad all round

The United States is different from other countries. Founded in an era of individual liberty, the new republic was remarkably immune to the social attitudes that developed subsequently in Europe and its later colonies. Today the US remains a country that in the eyes of others can be socially cruel but compassionate to a fault where individuals are concerned. Never more so than this weekend when the federal Congress and even the President dropped whatever they were doing and rushed back to Washington to enact urgent legislation to restore life support to a woman who has been in a vegetative state for 15 years.

The rest of the world looks on in amazement. Doctors have no doubt that the woman, Terri Schiavo, is not going to recover her faculties. Her body has been fed by means of tubes since a heart attack in 1990 left her comatose. Her legal guardian, her husband, wanted her to die with dignity, her family want her kept alive. The courts in their home state, Florida, have considered the case and upheld her husband's right to have the feeding tube removed. But state politicians and Governor Jeb Bush, responding to the entreaties of the grieving family, passed a law to allow the Governor to restore the feeding tube, which he did.

The Florida Supreme Court ruled the state legislation unconstitutional and the case was taken to Washington. The Federal Supreme Court supported the state court's decision and the tube was removed. That is when federal politicians answered the family's plea and went into urgent session at the weekend. Once both houses of Congress had agreed on a bill it was rushed through and President Bush made the journey from his Texas ranch to the capital especially to sign the bill into law. It does not restore the feeding tube but allows a federal judge to make that decision pending another judicial review of the case.

It is not just individualism that distinguishes American political attitudes but these days it is religion, too. Religious belief in the sanctity of human life, or at least innocent human life, keeps abortion in the forefront of American politics to a degree seen nowhere else. Abortion is always an underlying election issue there; every candidate for office is quickly assessed to be "pro-life" or "pro-choice". Nominees for judicial appointments are questioned most closely on their attitude to the abortion-permitting decision, Roe v Wade. The case of Terri Schiavo resonates deeply with pro-life politicians and pro-choice people know it. A decision which would normally be resolved quietly and privately by doctors and family has become a charged political issue.

Decisions to withdraw life support can never be easy. Normally it would not be done until the immediate family is calm and reconciled to the inevitability. In this case the family is far from convinced, even after 15 years, that the now 41-year-old woman is irrecoverably brain-dead. They alone claim to see signs of consciousness. They contest the husband's view on the grounds that he has formed a relationship with another woman and they have had two children. This does not necessarily discredit his conviction that the Terri Schiavo he knew would not have wanted to be kept alive like this.

In the end families who face this decision have to trust the advice of doctors, as do the courts if the question comes to them. There seems to be no medical disagreement that Mrs Schiavo has no prospect of recovery and all courts to have considered the case so far have found no legal grounds to keep her body artificially alive. The politicians who have answered the family's call are in no position to contest the medical conclusions. At best they are acting from political, compassionate or religious motives; more likely most are appealing to a righteous minority whose influence on last year's election has been exaggerated. They have given this unfortunate family a small, temporary triumph in a probably futile fight.