For one senator, case is personal

Little sister looked up to her two older brothers, Mel and Ralph. Mel used to drive her to school. When he got married, Margarita would come over to his house and hang out with her new big sister, Kitty.

Then life took one of those screeching turns that leave lasting marks. At 14, Margarita started to lose her hearing. Then she began having problems walking. Talking became difficult as her face froze.

Barely 22, she died in 1983 of neurofibromatosis, a debilitating disease that can cause tumors, like those of the famous Elephant Man, and attacks the nervous system. Doctors were able to operate on three tumors, but the one in her brain stem was untouchable.

To understand Sen. Mel Martinez’s motivations in getting Congress involved in Terri Schiavo’s fate, you have to know about Margarita. This is where the personal turns into the political, where inevitable parallels are drawn by heartstrings that no law-school training can undo.

“She was the apple of my eye,” Martinez told me Wednesday as he recounted what drove the former trial lawyer to an unprecedented feat in Schiavo’s case. “Those last two years of her life, Margarita lived much like that muchacha.”

The muchacha, Spanish slang for girl or young woman, is Terri, though Margarita – unlike Terri – could think and reason.

Over and over again, state and federal courts have sided in favor of Terri’s husband. Michael Schiavo says Terri, who collapsed 15 years ago and whose doctors have testified is in a persistent vegetative state, wouldn’t want to live this way. Terri’s Catholic parents believe she wouldn’t want her feeding tube disconnected.

It’s a case that has divided Americans, though 65 percent say Congress shouldn’t have intervened. It strikes at the very nerve of America’s ethical, moral and legal core. People feel passionately one way or another, sometimes all in the same day.

Political opportunism?

Sure, there are members of Congress who are making calculated moves. Religious conservatives have made no secret that this is a test case with anti-abortion-rights ramifications. A memo circulating in the Senate talked up the pluses of keeping religious conservatives happy, and the minuses for Democrats, like Sen. Bill Nelson, if they were to disagree.

Had Martinez simply wanted to make Terri’s case a Rorschach test for pro-life fervor, he could have stuck with the House version of the legislation, which sought to radically change the way states consider such cases. Instead, Martinez worked feverishly with Democratic senators, liberals like Tom Harkin, of Iowa, to come up with a law that applied only to Terri.

“Where someone is incapacitated and their life support can be taken away, it seems to me that it is appropriate – where there is a dispute, as there is in this case – that a federal court come in,” Harkin said.

Terri’s case has energized advocates for the disabled. Harkin, who co-authored the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act, persuaded his fellow Democrats in the Senate that there was nothing to gain by playing obstructionist. Now he and Martinez are talking of working together to draft legislation that would broaden protections for people with disabilities.

“You’re always going to find me on the side of the underdog. This is about a disabled person and constitutional rights,” Martinez said.

And about how one little girl named Margarita left her mark on a senator’s soul.