Bush did more than just sign pro-life bills into law. He also personally intervened in several controversial cases in which human lives were at stake.
In one, Bush’s administration sought to appoint a guardian to represent the unborn child in a case in which a developmentally disabled woman living in state-supervised housing sought an abortion. In another, Bush intervened in an attempt to prevent a 13-year-old girl who was a ward of the state from having an abortion.
Most memorably, in 2005 he tenaciously fought to save the life of Terri Schiavo, a brain-damaged woman whose husband wanted to remove her feeding tube over the objections of her parents. Bush acted even though polls showed most Americans supported removing Schiavo’s feeding tube. “I don’t think he ever took more political heat on a single issue,” Ken Connor, who represented Bush in the case, recently told the Wall Street Journal about Bush’s intervention in the Schiavo affair.
Bush later said that he didn’t have any regrets about how he handled the case.
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