WASHINGTON (ABP) — Terri Schiavo is “failing,” according to her father, as the administration of Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) made its last legal pitch to keep her alive.
Robert Schindler appeared to reporters on the afternoon of March 29 outside the Pinellas Park, Fla., hospice where the severely brain-damaged Florida woman resides and said his daughter is suffering the effects of the March 18 removal of the feeding tube that has been keeping her alive for 15 years.
“You can see the impact of 12 days without food or water is having on her,” Schindler said, according to the Washington Post. “She's alert. We still have her. It's not too late to save her.”
The same day, attorneys for Gov. Bush's Department of Children and Families appealed a March 24 decision by a state judge who declined to transfer Schiavo to the department's custody. The move would have enabled the tube to be surgically reinserted — at least temporarily.
Doctors say she will die of dehydration or starvation within about two weeks of the tube's removal.
But the judge and other Florida jurists have repeatedly sided with Schiavo's husband, Michael, who says she would not have wanted to live in such a state. However, Terri Schiavo left no “living will” or other written orders indicating how such end-of-life decisions should be made for her. Federal courts — including the Supreme Court — have declined to get involved in the case.
Schiavo has been in what court-appointed physicians have diagnosed as a “persistent vegetative state” for the past 15 years, since a heart attack brought on by an eating disorder caused her to suffer significant brain damage. They have also said much of her cerebral cortex is essentially gone — replaced by spinal fluid — and that Schiavo's brain stem is reflexively maintaining the essentials of life, such as her heartbeat, breathing and digestive processes.
But the Schindlers are convinced their daughter is in some state of consciousness — even responding to some stimuli — and can be rehabilitated. Nonetheless, several state courts and state-appointed guardians have repeatedly rejected those claims.
Adding another note of drama to the proceedings, prominent civil-rights activist Jesse Jackson met with the Schindlers March 29 and implored Bush and Florida legislators to intervene in order to keep Schiavo alive. “This is one of the profound moral and ethical breaches of our time,” Jackson said, according to the Washington Post. “Today, we pray for a miracle.”
By supporting the Schindlers so prominently, Jackson, a Baptist minister and former presidential candidate, broke with the opinions of many of his fellow Democrats. They have accused Republicans of using the Schiavo case to pander to the Religious Right.