Time running out for Schiavo as her parents lose court fight

Published on Sunday 27 March 2005 02:39

TERRI Schiavo’s parents lost another round in court last night as the brain-damaged Florida woman passed her eighth day without nutrition and edged towards death.

Circuit Judge George Greer, the state judge who has presided over the seven-year legal dispute between Schiavo’s husband and guardian Michael, and her parents Bob and Mary Schindler, rejected a petition that alleged Terri had tried to say she wanted to live.

The Schindlers appealed to the Florida Supreme Court. But it was increasingly clear they had few avenues left in their fight to restart their 41-year-old daughter’s feeding - a cause which prompted intervention by Florida’s legislature, the US Congress and President George W Bush.

After visiting his daughter yesterday, Bob Schindler, who a day earlier had said she was "down to her last hours", told reporters that Terri was "putting up a tremendous battle to live".

"She is fighting like hell to stay alive," he said. "I want the powers that be to know that. It’s not too late to save her."

Michael Schiavo’s lawyer, George Felos, painted a wholly different picture of Terri at peace and still some days from dying. "She is calm; she’s peaceful; she’s resting comfortably; her lips are not chapped; they’re not bleeding; her skin is not peeling," Felos said, adding her death was not imminent.

The Schindlers have drawn support from conservative Christians, and right-to-life and anti-abortion activists in their struggle to prolong their daughter’s life. Lobbying from the Christian right prompted the US Congress to pass a special law to push the case into the federal courts.

Terri Schiavo suffered a cardiac arrest that deprived her brain of oxygen in 1990 and has been in what the courts accept is a persistent vegetative state since.

Michael Schiavo says his wife would not want to live like that - a position upheld by the courts. The Schindlers say their daughter responds to them and could improve with treatment.

Schiavo was expected to live for up to two weeks after her feeding tube was removed on March 18. In the past week, the Schindlers have filed a blizzard of petitions in state and federal courts and been rebuffed. The US Supreme Court has declined to get involved.

The parents renewed their appeal to Greer on Friday, presenting an affidavit from Barbara Weller, one of their attorneys, who said she told Schiavo the controversy over her life could stop if she would just say "I want to live".

Weller said Schiavo responded with the sounds "Ahhhhhhh" and "Waaaaaaaa".

In his ruling yesterday, Greer said the Schindlers could have presented Weller’s affidavit at an emergency hearing three days ago but did not, and therefore "waived their right to raise Terri Schiavo’s alleged verbalisation".

Bob Schindler has called on Florida governor Jeb Bush, the younger brother of President Bush, to continue to seek ways to order his daughter’s feeding restarted.

But Bush, who this week tried unsuccessfully to get the state welfare agency to take custody of Schiavo, said he could act only within his executive powers.

Outside the Pinellas Park hospice where Terri lay under police guard, supporters of the Schindlers began to lose hope. Police have arrested about two dozen people making symbolic attempts to enter the hospice with food and water.