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With the start of Easter weekend, the scene outside the central Florida hospice was charged with religious overtones. A priest held Good Friday services, and the crowd sang hymns. A nearly life-size sculpture of Jesus on a crucifix arrived on a flatbed trailer, while protesters gripping Bibles likened the 41-year-old severely brain-damaged woman to Christ, calling both of them martyrs.
But beyond the hospice, the legal rulings continued to come down squarely against Schiavo’s parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, who are fighting to take legal custody from Schiavo’s husband and try to rehabilitate her. In the narrow confines of the hospice and on a national stage, the Schindlers are warring with Michael Schiavo, who says his wife would not want to live in what doctors have called a persistent vegetative state.
A federal judge yesterday morning rejected for a second time an emergency request to resume Schiavo’s nourishment. And hours later, the Schindlers took the case to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta, arguing their daughter’s due process and religious rights were being violated. That court also had rejected the case this week, and last night a three-judge panel of the court rejected it again.
Late in the afternoon, the couple returned to the state courts with a new petition, again requesting that the feeding tube be reinserted. In new papers, the Schindlers claimed that Schiavo tried to say “I want to live” when the tube was removed. Doctors who have examined her for the court said her previous utterances weren’t speech but were involuntary moans.
George Felos, the attorney for her husband, said the belief that Terri Schiavo can speak was “crossing the line” into an abuse of the legal system. Pinellas Circuit Judge George Greer, who had ordered the tube removed, is expected to rule by noon today.
Florida Gov. Jeb Bush’s attorneys are searching for new legal avenues to transfer care of Schiavo to the state, but the governor has said he won’t ignore the courts to intervene on his own. Many activists have pressured him to get involved in a case that has drawn action not only by Bush but also by Congress and President Bush.
“Terri is weakening,” Bob Schindler, Schiavo’s father, said after a brief visit with his daughter, as reporters from around the country surrounded him in the Florida heat. “She’s down to her last hours, so something has to be done and has to be done quick.”
Now, barring dramatic legal developments, the rest of the Schiavo case is left to play out on a narrow strip of grass outside a suburban hospice. Protesters remained encamped there in a gathering that is part religious rally, part political protest, part public relations operation.
As Schiavo entered her second week without food or water, Bobby Schindler, Schiavo’s brother, was shepherded through the crowd by anti-abortion activists who have latched onto Schiavo’s case in their fight against the right-to-die movement. As he mingled with activists and they told Schindler how far they had traveled – one from Virginia, one from Texas, one from Chicago – the brother replied, “Gosh, anybody here from Florida?”
But the case long ago stopped being a local affair, or, for that matter, a family one.
Randall Terry, founder of the national anti-abortion group Operation Rescue, strolled the marshy grounds in faux ostrich-skin shoes, handing press releases to reporters. Insisting the legal fight wasn’t over, he said: “People close to the governor are saying, ‘Yes, you can act.'”
While supporters of the Schindlers appeared before the cameras, Michael Schiavo remained largely out of sight yesterday. Friends of the Schindlers say he has been camped at the hospice, entering the facility through a back door and staying in Schiavo’s room for several hours at a time – another source of anger for the Schindlers, because both sides of this divided family are never in the room at the same time.
Michael Schiavo has said he is distraught by the critics who have vilified him for doing what he has said was his wife’s wish. Schiavo, who was married for five years before suffering brain damage after a 1990 collapse, had not administered a living will.
For the past 15 years, Schiavo has been in what court-appointed doctors determined is an irrevocable brain-damaged state in which she is incapable of thought or emotion. But Schiavo’s parents say they have seen evidence of her reacting to them.
Supporters of Michael Schiavo have largely stopped appearing at the emotional protests outside the hospice. Last night, a penned-off area that some had used and that bears a sign reading “HOSPICE ZONE – HUSH – Some people want to die in peace,” stood empty, though a few activists showed up earlier in the day.
“What’s happening today is between a husband and a wife,” Raymond Simmons, 35, a Michael Schiavo supporter, said over chants of “Have mercy on Terri.”
“The governor, the president, these people, me, no one has the right to interfere,” said Simmons.
Yesterday, about 150 of the Schindlers’ supporters held the stage. With legal options running out, the day-and-night hospice vigil was all about symbolism.
“The world now knows Terri Schiavo,” said Paul O’Donnell, the Schindlers’ spiritual guide, who has appeared on TV next to the parents in a hooded gray monk’s robe. He recalled the landmark decision legalizing abortion, saying: “Terri Schiavo’s case is really like the Roe vs. Wade decision for euthanasia.”
Though O’Donnell has not been allowed into Schiavo’s room since the feeding tube was removed March 18, he described what the Schindlers have told him of the scene inside the hospice. Armed guards, who stand by the door and inside her room, search visitors for metal objects and examine IDs at several checkpoints.
As of yesterday, the Florida woman had gone without nourishment longer than in 2003, when the tube was removed for just over six days. Patients who are taken off feeding tubes are said to die between one and two weeks, suffering severe dehydration.
O’Donnell recounted a description provided by the family, which this week likened Schiavo’s looks to that of a prisoner at Auschwitz.
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“Her face is beginning to cave in,” O’Donnell said. “Her complexion is gone. She used to have a rosy color, now she’s pale white.”
After a visit at the hospice last night, Bob Schindler blinked back tears as he spoke to reporters outside.
“The effects of her starvation and dehydration are showing more so,” he said. “I told her that we’re still fighting for her and she shouldn’t give up, because we’re not. But the people who were anxious to see her die are getting their wish. It’s happening.”
Earlier in the day, a severely brain-damaged woman lay on a stretcher while her sister tried to prove to passers-by that the woman understood what was happening to Schiavo. Also, parents of a brain-damaged child, who slept in a wheelchair, said they came from their home in Louisiana to raise awareness of the importance of protecting the disabled. Then they showed the child’s feeding tube to reporters.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
<!– ART CREDITAGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
ART CREDIT–> <!– CUTLINE TEXTTerri Schiavo protester Mary Porta urges Florida Gov. Jeb Bush to take action to reinsert the brain-damaged woman's feeding tube.
CUTLINE TEXT–> <!– ART CREDITJOHN VANBEEKUM : MIAMI HERALD
ART CREDIT–> <!– CUTLINE TEXTProtesters hold a Good Friday service outside the Pinellas Park, Fla., hospice where Terri Schiavo resides.
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