On October 17, 2007, 16-year-old Javona Peters was admitted
to Montefiore Medical Center to undergo a ventriculostomy, a routine procedure
that involves boring a hole in the brain to drain cerebral fluid into a
cavity. As a result of a rare allergic
reaction to a routine anesthesia agent, Javona was deprived of oxygen for an
extended period of time. Now, she is
blind, deaf, and unable to move, think, or eat on her own.
After doctors declared Javona to be in a permanent vegetative
state, her mother, Janet Joseph, asked the hospital to remove Javona’s feeding
tube and allow her to die. The request met
resistance from Javona’s father, Leonard, who refused to authorize pulling the
plug on his daughter. “It’s not up to me
to decide who lives and who dies,” Peters said.
Although his stance has shown signs
of wavering, the conflict has the potential to end up in litigation. At a January 7th hearing in a
Bronx courtroom, Javona’s mother will attempt to get full custody of her
daughter in order to sue the hospital for malpractice and possibly end her
daughter’s life.
For many, the case is reminiscent of that of Terry Schiavo,
a Florida woman who spent fifteen years in a permanent vegetative state after
collapsing in her home in 1990.
Schiavo’s husband, Bill, petitioned the court to end her life by
removing her feeding tube in 1998. Her
parents objected vehemently, filing a slew of legislation that included five
suits in Federal District Court, fourteen appeals, an attempt by a Congressional
committee to designate Schiavo for witness protection, four denials of further
judicial review from the Supreme Court, and a controversial piece of legislation
known as the Palm
Sunday Compromise, which provided for further federal review of the case.
Schiavo’s parents eventually exhausted their appeals.
In the aftermath, many politicians and media pundits were
highly critical of Congresses’ intervention in the matter, claiming it to be a
breach of the constitutional
separation between the legislative
and judicial branches of government.
Although the Schiavo legislation was championed by conservatives,
three of the current GOP presidential hopefuls have condemned Congresses
interference in the family’s decision.
Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney stated in a May debate hosted
by MSNBC that “the decision of Congress to get involved was a mistake,” and
Senator John McCain and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani have also repudiated
the Congressional action.
The legislation passed by a vote of 203-59 in the House of
Representatives in 2005, and received the necessary unanimous approval in the
Senate. Current Democratic Presidential
Candidates Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards, Joe Biden, and Chris
Dodd all could have thwarted the bill by casting a single no vote, but declined
to. However, Obama, who had only
recently been elected to the Senate when the vote was taken, declared in an
April 2007 MSNBC Presidential debate that not preventing the legislation was
his “biggest
political mistake.”
So far, no Presidential candidates have taken a position on
the Javona Peters case, and if the matter comes to a close without litigation
it’s unlikely that any will. But, if Ms.
Peter’s fate is eventually determined in a contentious legal battle, GOP
candidates looking to bolster their ‘conservative credentials’ may chime in. Both Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney have
fought off numerous allegations from conservatives about the weakness of their
respective positions on abortion, and could use the Peters issue to increase
their appeal to hard-line, pro-life Christians. However, a more likely
candidate to seize the issue is former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee.
The darling of evangelicals, Huckabee proclaims on his website
that “no candidate has a stronger record on the sanctity of life” than he
does. In a primary season that gets more
cutthroat by the minute, don’t be surprised if he uses the case of Javona
Peters as a pulpit to further distinguish himself from the pack.
By: Daniel Lawton
