The religiously inclined in America, and across the globe, have taken Mrs Schiavo’s case to their heart and believe a vulnerable woman’s right to life is being denied. But the courts found in favour of Mrs Schiavo’s husband, her legal guardian, who argued that she would not want to be kept alive in a vegetative condition. Many people who may not necessarily believe that Mrs Schiavo should be allowed to die nevertheless accept that her fate is a matter for the courts, and in matters of life and death the rule of law must prevail.

Attachment to the rule of law is certainly a foundation stone of our civilisation. But so is respect for the moral principles on which our civilisation has been built. And it has often been through religion that those moral principles most central to civilised conduct have been preserved and defended. One does not need to be a member of any church, or a subscriber to any established faith, to appreciate the ethical debt we owe in the West to our Judaeo-Christian inheritance.

To take just one example, our notion of the role that judicial intervention should play in interpreting the law owes a great deal to Jewish tradition. Take the resonant story of the judgment of Solomon. Presented with a child whom two women claimed as their own, Solomon proposed depriving both of the baby by the decision to divide the child into two. One woman acquiesced, the other protested, and by their reactions the woman with the real bond of love to the disputed child revealed herself.

Invoking Old Testament justice may seem anachronistic in an age of advanced medical technology. But the importance of respecting the bonds of love has a profound bearing on Terri Schiavo’s case.

After Mrs Schiavo collapsed in 1990, her husband sued for medical malpractice and claimed that he wished to secure resources so that he could care for her for the rest of her natural life. The court awarded Michael Schiavo $300,000 for loss of companionship and awarded Mrs Schiavo around $700,000.

Mr Schiavo’s conduct since then does not suggest that he has exerted himself to provide the duty of care that he was awarded money to ensure. A year after winning his case on the basis that he wished to nurse his wife,he refused to allow doctors to prescribe antibiotics for a serious infection. In contrast to the position he held when suing for compensation, Mr Schiavo argued that his wife would not wish to live in her disabled condition. Had she died, Mr Schiavo would have inherited her $700,000.

Medical records show that, while her husband was exercising his guardianship, what some of us might consider Mrs Schiavo’s best interests were not well served. Her teeth were not cleaned and five had to be extracted. Mr Schiavo melted down her wedding and engagement rings to make a new ring for himself. And Mr Schiavo now has a relationship with another woman by whom he has two children.

Terri Schiavo’s parents, who oppose her husband’s desire to see her dead, have offered to take on themselves the burden of providing her future care. Mr Schiavo once barred them from even seeing her. And now that her death — at the time of writing — looks to be imminent, thanks to the court’s decision to back Mr Schiavo and deny her nutrition, her parents have had their wish for a Catholic burial overruled.

What would a Solomon come to judgment conclude from this pattern of behaviour? Who really has her best interests at heart? The husband whose heart now seems to be pledged elsewhere? Or the parents whose heart will be broken by her death?

One does not need to believe in any sort of religion to find one’s own sympathies with Mrs Schiavo’s parents. And while I do not share their Roman Catholic faith I am nevertheless grateful for their Church’s teachings on matters of life and death. There is a moral tradition of natural law, going back to Aristotle’s time, which urges us to do what we can to protect innocent life. Whatever its corruptions and abuses, the Roman Catholic Church, the Church of Aquinas and John Paul II, has upheld the need to protect the vulnerable and voiceless from having their fates decided by the powerful on the basis of utility or expediency.

It is because I believe that tradition still has much to teach us that I am troubled by the fate of Terri Schiavo. She requires no life-support system to survive, she breathes unaided and needs no technology to perform any bodily function. She is brain-damaged, not braindead. The sole outside intervention in her life is the provision of food and water by tube. Now that intervention has been stopped, at the request of her husband, she will slowly die of dehydration and starvation.

Even those found guilty, beyond reasonable doubt, of capital crimes in Florida at least have the right to a speedy execution. But while there is still reasonable doubt about Terri Schiavo’s wishes she is condemned to a lingering death.

You do not, I say again, have to believe that God plays any part in the affairs of Man to see that something big has been forgotten in this case.

michael.gove@thetimes.co.uk

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