PINELLAS PARK, Fla. - Nearly two weeks after a court ordered her feeding tube removed, and after multiple attempts by her parents to get the order lifted, Terri Schiavo passed away on Thursday at the age of 41.
Schiavo died at the Pinellas Park hospice where she lay for years while her husband and her parents fought over her fate in the nation’s longest, most bitter right-to-die dispute.
The family battle over whether to keep her alive galvanized the nation over the last month, with even President Bush and Congress weighing in.
The case had spent seven years winding its way through the courts, with Terri Schiavo's parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, repeatedly on the losing end.
They have been at odds with their son-in-law, Michael Schiavo, who consistently won legal battles by arguing that his wife would not have wanted to live in her condition.
Denied access
Brother Paul O’Donnell, an adviser to Schiavo’s parents, said the parents and their two other children “were denied access at the moment of her death. They’ve been requesting, as you know, for the last hour to try to be in there and they were denied access by Michael Schiavo. They are in there now, praying at her bedside.”
The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday declined to intervene for the sixth time. Hours earlier in an 9-2 ruling, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta declined to grant a new hearing in the case — the fourth time since last week that it ruled against the Schindlers.
Judge critical of Bush, Congress
One of the appeals court judges rebuked the White House and lawmakers Wednesday for acting “in a manner demonstrably at odds with our Founding Fathers’ blueprint for the governance of a free people — our Constitution.”
“Any further action by our court or the district court would be improper,” wrote Judge Stanley Birch Jr., appointed by President Bush’s father.
Federal courts were given jurisdiction to review Schiavo’s case after Republicans in Congress pushed through unprecedented emergency legislation aimed at prolonging her life. But federal courts at three levels have rebuffed her parents.
The Schindlers had asked the 11th Circuit and the Supreme Court to order the reinsertion of their daughter’s feeding tube immediately so a federal district court can review the case from its beginning, including whether there was enough “clear and convincing” evidence that she would have chosen to die in her current condition.
The Schindlers’ motion included arguments that the 11th Circuit in its earlier rulings did not consider whether there was enough evidence that Terri Schiavo would have chosen to die.
But appeals court judges Gerald Tjoflat and Charles Wilson, the same two judges who also issued dissenting opinions last week when the full court considered the case for the first time, said the harried pace of appeals made it impossible to determine if state courts properly considered the evidence.
The two dissenters said Wednesday “it is fully within Congress’s power to dictate standards of review” for federal courts. “Indeed, if Congress cannot do so, the fate of hundreds of federal statutes would be called into question.”
Schiavo died at the Pinellas Park hospice where she lay for years while her husband and her parents fought over her fate in the nation’s longest, most bitter right-to-die dispute.
The family battle over whether to keep her alive galvanized the nation over the last month, with even President Bush and Congress weighing in.
The case had spent seven years winding its way through the courts, with Terri Schiavo's parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, repeatedly on the losing end.
They have been at odds with their son-in-law, Michael Schiavo, who consistently won legal battles by arguing that his wife would not have wanted to live in her condition.
Denied access
Brother Paul O’Donnell, an adviser to Schiavo’s parents, said the parents and their two other children “were denied access at the moment of her death. They’ve been requesting, as you know, for the last hour to try to be in there and they were denied access by Michael Schiavo. They are in there now, praying at her bedside.”
The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday declined to intervene for the sixth time. Hours earlier in an 9-2 ruling, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta declined to grant a new hearing in the case — the fourth time since last week that it ruled against the Schindlers.
Judge critical of Bush, Congress
One of the appeals court judges rebuked the White House and lawmakers Wednesday for acting “in a manner demonstrably at odds with our Founding Fathers’ blueprint for the governance of a free people — our Constitution.”
“Any further action by our court or the district court would be improper,” wrote Judge Stanley Birch Jr., appointed by President Bush’s father.
Federal courts were given jurisdiction to review Schiavo’s case after Republicans in Congress pushed through unprecedented emergency legislation aimed at prolonging her life. But federal courts at three levels have rebuffed her parents.
The Schindlers had asked the 11th Circuit and the Supreme Court to order the reinsertion of their daughter’s feeding tube immediately so a federal district court can review the case from its beginning, including whether there was enough “clear and convincing” evidence that she would have chosen to die in her current condition.
The Schindlers’ motion included arguments that the 11th Circuit in its earlier rulings did not consider whether there was enough evidence that Terri Schiavo would have chosen to die.
But appeals court judges Gerald Tjoflat and Charles Wilson, the same two judges who also issued dissenting opinions last week when the full court considered the case for the first time, said the harried pace of appeals made it impossible to determine if state courts properly considered the evidence.
The two dissenters said Wednesday “it is fully within Congress’s power to dictate standards of review” for federal courts. “Indeed, if Congress cannot do so, the fate of hundreds of federal statutes would be called into question.”
