Public Opinion and Activism
The seven-year case generated a great deal of public attention and activism. There was extensive media coverage and both sides courted public opinion. In 2000, the Schindlers created the Terri Schindler-Schiavo Foundation to garner support. During the weeks when Schiavo's feeding tube was removed in 2005, activists kept up an around-the-clock vigil outside her hospice. The protests were described as loud but non-violent. There were dozens of arrests, with most being for crossing a police line with water for Schiavo.
Two polls conducted shortly after Schiavo's feeding tube was removed for the final time in 2005 showed that a large majority of Americans believed that Michael Schiavo should have had the authority to make decisions on behalf of his wife, Terri, and that the United States Congress overstepped its bounds with its intervention in the case. However, other polls seemed to favor the Schindler family's position, and questions were raised about the wording of all the polls.
Read more about this topic: Terri Schiavo Case
Famous quotes containing the words public opinion, public and/or opinion:
“Public opinion contains all kinds of falsity and truth, but it takes a great man to find the truth in it. The great man of the age is the one who can put into words the will of his age, tell his age what its will is, and accomplish it. What he does is the heart and the essence of his age, he actualizes his age. The man who lacks sense enough to despise public opinion expressed in gossip will never do anything great.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“All significant truths are private truths. As they become public they cease to become truths; they become facts, or at best, part of the public character; or at worst, catchwords.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“I am gradually drifting to the opinion that this Rebellion can only be crushed finally by either the execution of all the traitors or the abolition of slavery. Crushed, I mean, so as to remove all danger of its breaking out again in the future.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)