Terri Schiavo passes away
Death comes after courts repeatedly ruled against parentsBREAKING NEWS
MSNBC staff and news service reports
Updated: 10:49 a.m. ET March 31, 2005PINELLAS 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 focused national attention on living wills, since Schiavo left no written instructions in case she became disabled.
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.
Schiavo suffered severe brain damage in 1990 after her heart stopped because of a chemical imbalance that was believed to have been brought on an eating disorder. Court-appointed doctors ruled she was in a persistent vegetative state, with no real consciousness or chance of recovery.
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.
�You know what Terri would say right now?� her childhood best friend, Diane Meyer, told the Miami Herald. �She would say, �All this for me?��
�Terri never dreamed of saving the world, whether through her living or through her death. She just wanted to be your common, everyday, happy woman.�
Judge critical of Bush, Congress
At the Circuit Court, 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.�
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report
