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Brain-damaged US woman closer to death
(Agencies)
Updated: 2005-03-26 10:41

After a week without food, Terri Schiavo was "down to her last hours" on Friday, her father said, as he and his wife faced dwindling options of prolonging the brain-damaged woman's life.

But parents Bob and Mary Schindler vowed to press on with their seven-year battle to keep their daughter alive.

"I told her that we're still fighting for her and she shouldn't give up because we're not," her father, Bob Schindler, told reporters outside the Florida hospice where Schiavo lay dying. "But I think people who were anxious to see her die are getting their wish."

(L-R) Bob Schindler, father of the brain-damaged Florida woman Terri Schiavo, talks with police officers accompanied by his son Bobby, his wife Mary Schindler and his daughter Suzanne in front of the Woodside Hospice where Schiavo is being cared for, in Pinellas Park, Florida, the USA, March 25, 2005. Schiavo completed a week without food or water, sliding closer to death despite a frenetic legal offensive by her parents and efforts by the U.S. Congress and Florida Gov. Jeb Bush to intervene. [Reuters]

Schindler said his daughter, 41, who has been brain-damaged for 15 years, was fading and is "down to her last hours."

Schiavo's parents still had two legal avenues remaining in their long struggle, which has prompted the intervention of the U.S. Congress and Florida Gov. Jeb Bush in the highly-politicized moral confrontation gripping America.

They seemed unlikely to succeed with their appeal in the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta against a Florida federal judge's rebuff earlier in the day, and a new motion before a state judge citing what they said was fresh evidence Schiavo wanted to live.

The state judge, Circuit Court Judge George Greer, has long sided with Schiavo's husband and legal guardian, Michael Schiavo, ruling that she has been in a "persistent vegetative state" since a cardiac arrest deprived her brain of oxygen in 1990, and would not have wanted to live in this condition.

An attorney for the Schindlers, David Gibbs, urged Greer to order the resumption of feeding, halted a week ago by court order. Gibbs cited what he said was evidence that Schiavo has communicated she does want to die.

"We believe Terri has communicated that she wants to live ... we believe she is at the point where there is not much time left," Gibbs told a hearing by teleconference on Friday evening. Doctors said Schiavo could survive one to two weeks without the feeding tube.

'ABUSE OF LEGAL SYSTEM'

But an attorney for Michael Schiavo, George Felos, said the Schindler motion was "simply an outrageous abuse of the legal system," adding that such claims had been made in the past.

Greer said he would rule by noon on Saturday.

The Schindlers, who have been vocally supported by conservative Christians and anti-abortion activists, as well as advocates for the disabled, maintain that their daughter is responsive and could improve with treatment.

But doctors say that patients in a persistent vegetative state have lost much of their brain function and are not aware of their surroundings.

Outside the Pinellas Park hospice where Schiavo lay, dozens of protesters, dismayed by the Schindlers' waning legal hopes, sang "Amazing Grace" as police arrested at least nine people who tried to enter the building with symbolic offerings of food and water.

The crowd of protesters swelled from a few dozen early on Friday to about 150 in the afternoon. Some said Terri Schiavo's fate was in the hands of God.

Lobbied by the Christian right, which has felt emboldened since helping US President Bush win re-election last November, the Republican-led Congress rushed through a law last weekend giving federal courts jurisdiction in the case.

The move was unpopular with Americans -- polls this week showed a majority of people disapproved of Congress' intervention in a family dispute -- and the Schindlers' reinvigorated legal efforts have so far failed.

SUPREME COURT REFUSAL

The U.S. Supreme Court refused on Thursday to hear the case and Greer rejected an attempt by the Florida governor, who is President Bush's brother, to take Schiavo into protective custody. The Florida Supreme Court turned away his appeal.

U.S. District Court Judge James Whittemore, the Tampa federal judge who took up the case after Congress gave his court jurisdiction, on Friday denied for a second time this week a request to order feeding restored.

It was not known when the Atlanta court would rule on the parents' appeal against that.

Some supporters of the Schindlers still hoped the governor could intervene, but Jeb Bush told reporters on Thursday "I can't go beyond what my powers are."

In an indication of the passions the case had aroused, Pinellas County sheriff's officials said they had jailed a man who drove from Illinois to Florida and tried to steal a gun to "rescue Terri Schiavo."

Michael Mitchell, 50, of Rockford, Illinois, tried to rob a gun shop in Seminole, Florida, after turning up at the hospice, where "he reportedly told deputies he decided to take some action ... and rescue Terri Schiavo," sheriff's spokeswoman Marianne Pasha said.

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