When facts don't fit the opinion

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By Ellen Goodman, Globe Columnist  |  June 19, 2005

THE MEDICAL examiners delivered their autopsy report in the most matter-of-fact tone. Terri Schiavo's brain had atrophied to half the normal size for a woman her age. Her eyes, the focus of that famous videotape, saw nothing. She was blind.

Case closed? As the press conference replayed, the television screen spelled out a question: ''Does This Change Opinions?" Did the facts of a case that had so divided the country, so politicized the fate of one woman, actually make a difference?
For Schiavo's parents, the answer was no. The Schindlers still insist their daughter related to them and tried to speak. Their lawyer said it only proved ''she was not terminal." The president said only that he ''was deeply saddened by this case." His brother, the governor of Florida, said he would still try to keep Schiavo alive.

And if the autopsy changed the opinions of politicians such as Doctor/Senator Bill Frist, who disgraced his first profession by diagnosing a videotape, they were not in the mood for apologies.
This case was never solely about medicine. But the question on the TV screen illustrated the times we live in -- times when facts can exist in a separate universe from opinions. And a country in which science is not seen as a matter of black and white but increasingly of red and blue.

At the height of the Schiavo furor, I saw a protester carrying a sign: ''How do you kill someone while she's smiling at you?" Now we know beyond any doubt that Terri Schiavo couldn't smile. Does this fact change even one opinion?

Ellen Goodman's e-mail address is [email protected]