PINELLAS PARK, Fla. (ABP) — On March 31, Terri Schiavo's tragic 15-year saga came to a close as acrimoniously as it began.
The 41-year-old Florida woman died shortly after 9 a.m. in her husband's arms, according to his attorney. But, Tom Felos said, his client had decided just moments before to remove his brother- and sister-in-law from the room.
Schiavo died on the 14th day after the court-ordered removal of the feeding tube that had kept her alive for 15 years. She was in the Pinellas Park, Fla., hospice where she had been for much of her illness.
“She had a right to have her last and final moments on this earth be experienced in a spirit of love and not of acrimony,” Felos told reporters, in explaining why Michael Schiavo had asked for his wife's siblings to be removed from the room so he could be with her while she died. The families have been locked in a bitter dispute over Schiavo's fate for more than 10 years.
The evening before, the Supreme Court rejected a last-ditch appeal from Schiavo's parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, in an attempt to have the feeding tube that had kept her alive reinserted.
After Schiavo's death was announced, the Schindlers' attorney told reporters outside the hospice that it was “a sad day for the nation and a sad day for the family.” Nonetheless, David Gibbs said, the Schindlers' “faith in God remains consistent and strong. They are absolutely convinced that God loves Terri more than they do, and they believe that Terri is now at peace with God.”
But Frank Pavone, a priest who is the national director of a Catholic pro-life group and who has served as a representative of the Schindlers, had harsher words.
Michael Schiavo's “heartless cruelty continues until this very last moment,” Pavone said, referring to the decision not to let Bobby Schindler Jr., stay in the room where his sister lay dying.
“This is not only a death with all the sadness that brings; this is a killing,” he continued. “We not only grieve that Terri has passed. We also grieve that our nation has allowed such an atrocity as this. And we pray that it will never happen again.”
Terri Schiavo's death marked the end of a saga that began with a 1990 medical tragedy and ended in the bitter dissolution of a family. Schiavo had been in what court-appointed physicians diagnosed as a “persistent vegetative state” since a heart attack brought on by an eating disorder caused her to suffer significant brain damage.
The doctors also said much of her cerebral cortex was essentially gone — replaced by spinal fluid — and that Schiavo's brain stem was reflexively maintaining the essentials of life, such as her heartbeat, breathing and digestive processes. According to medical assessments in court documents, she was unable to eat, drink, speak or comprehend. She could breathe on her own.
But the Schindlers were convinced their daughter was in some state of consciousness — even responding to some stimuli — and could have been be rehabilitated. Nonetheless, several state courts and state-appointed guardians repeatedly rejected those claims.
Florida courts consistently sided with Michael Schiavo, who contended his wife 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.
The federal courts also consistently turned away the Schindlers' arguments. The latest rejection came late on March 30. The Supreme Court refused to hear their appeal of an earlier decision by the Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
The Schindlers had asked for their daughter's feeding tube to be reinserted while the courts considered their claim that a federal judge had violated the spirit of a law designed to keep Schiavo alive. Shortly after the tube was removed March 18, Congress passed, and President Bush hurriedly signed, a law giving jurisdiction of the case to federal courts and instructing them to review any new evidence presented.
The federal district judge who reviewed it agreed with the state courts' decisions. A large majority of the appeals court affirmed him.
Writing for the majority, Judge Stanley Birch said that, in approving a law designed to affect the outcome of one legal case in a state court, Bush and Congress acted “in a manner demonstrably at odds with our founding fathers' blueprint for the governance of a free people — our Constitution.”
Whatever the legal disposition of the case, Felos said he regretted that interested forces took a family dispute and turned it into a battle of the culture wars, essentially making reconciliation between Michael Schiavo and his in-laws improbable. Citing Pavone's rhetoric especially, he said it was unbecoming a man of God.
“With Father Pavone, instead of words of reconciliation, instead of words of healing, instead of words of love and respect…we had a platform for an ideological agenda,” Felos said.