US court rejects plea in brain-damaged woman’s case
PINELLAS PARK, March 23: A US appeals court rejected an appeal for brain-damaged Florida woman Terri Schiavo’s feeding tube to be restored on Wednesday as the woman’s parents sought help from state lawmakers and weighed an appeal to the US Supreme Court. Five days after Schiavo’s feeding tube was removed under a state court order, a three-judge panel of the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta rejected the parents’ appeal of a refusal by a US district judge to order the feeding resumed.
Bob and Mary Schindler’s fight to keep their daughter alive — against the wishes of her husband and legal guardian — has become a cause celebre for evangelical Christians, anti-abortion activists and has won support from the Republican-led US Congress and President George W. Bush.
Schiavo’s parents could now ask for a rehearing before all 12 judges of the appeals court or appeal to the US Supreme Court.
“Nothing has been filed as yet,” the clerk said a few minutes after the 10 am (1500 GMT) deadline passed to request a rehearing at the Atlanta court. Soon after, court officials said there had been no extension of the deadline, but court officials were still expecting that request to be filed.
“She is being starved to death. She is dying. We beg the governor, the family begs the governor and the state to intervene,” said Brother Paul O’Donnell, a Franciscan monk who is a spiritual adviser to the Schindler family.
O’Donnell, speaking outside the hospice in Pinellas Park where Schiavo is being cared for, was referring to Gov. Jeb Bush, brother of the president, and the possibility of last-minute intervention by the Florida Legislature.
Florida lawmakers failed to pass a bill to keep Schiavo alive last week, but the Florida Senate was meeting later on Wednesday and could take up the effort anew.
In a bitter seven-year legal dispute, Schiavo’s husband, Michael, has won the support of state courts that have ruled the 41-year-old woman is in a persistent vegetative state and would not want to live in that condition. Doctors say she would likely live for one to two weeks without the feeding tube.
Congress raced over the weekend to pass a special bill to allow her parents to take the case to federal court. The president interrupted a spring vacation to sign the law.
But the extraordinary congressional intervention into a legal issue already decided by state courts — which has been assailed by Michael Schiavo as political meddling and which polls have shown is unpopular among many Americans — has so far effectively been thwarted in federal courts.
STATE LAWMAKERS: In its ruling, the panel in Atlanta acknowledged the “absolute tragedy that has befallen Mrs Schiavo.” But it supported the lower federal court in saying an emergency order to restore the feeding could not be issued as the parents had failed to show their overall case would succeed at trial.
Schiavo was left in a persistent vegetative state by cardiac arrest that starved her brain of oxygen in 1990. Five years ago, a state court ruled she could be allowed to die. Amid legal wrangling since then, her feeding has twice been halted and resumed.
The parents’ efforts on Wednesday rested in part on Florida lawmakers, who in 2003 passed a hastily drawn law allowing Jeb Bush to intervene and have Schiavo’s feeding tube reinserted after it had been removed under a court order. That law was eventually found to be unconstitutional.
The governor said on Wednesday he would “continue to call on the Florida Legislature to pass legislation to honor patients’ decisions about end-of-life care, protect all vulnerable Floridians, and spare Terri’s life.”
Schiavo’s brother, Bobby Schindler, was in the state capital, Tallahassee, to plead with lawmakers.
“I’m not going to give up hope. My family never has. And we’ll just keep doing what we have to do until we somehow can get my sister out of this mess.”
Last week, Florida Senate lawmakers on a 21-16 vote rejected an amendment backers hoped would improve the chances of a bill to intercede in Schiavo’s case. The vote left supporters of Schiavo’s parents in the Senate with a bill even the sponsor conceded was flawed.
Senate rules require any changes to that bill be approved by a two-thirds majority, a level of support backers concede they do not enjoy.—Reuters
