Thursday, March 31, 2005
This file photo shows Terri Schiavo with her mother Mary Schindler in a photograph taken late in 2001. Schiavo, the brain-damaged woman at the center of a wrenching family feud and national right-to-die debate before her death on March 31, 2005, was shy and self-conscious as a child and hated attention, friends and relatives say. (Reuters - Handout)
Schiavo Dies Nearly Two Weeks After Removal of Feeding Tube
By WILLIAM YARDLEY and MARIA NEWMAN
PINELLAS PARK, Fla., March 31 - Terri Schiavo, the severely brain damaged Florida woman who became the subject of an intense legal and political battle that drew responses from the White House to the Halls of Congress to the Vatican, died today, 13 days after her feeding tube was removed on the order of a state court judge.
Ms. Schiavo, 41, died just before 10 a.m. today in the Pinellas Park hospice where she had lived, off and on, for several years, her husband's attorney said. But even as she slipped away, the searing emotions that surrounded her final days remained, following a national debate over whether she should have been reconnected to a tube that provided her with nourishment and hydration.
"Her husband was present by her bed, cradling her," said George Felos, Michael Schiavo's lawyer. "Mrs. Schiavo died a calm death, a peaceful death and a gentle death."
Mr. Felos went on to talk about the acrimony that continued to define the relationship between Mr. Schiavo, who has insisted that his wife would not want to live with the help of artificial means, and her parents and siblings, who fought his efforts to remove her feeding tube at every turn. The bitterness was so intense, that the two warring families could not even be in the same room with Ms. Schiavo at the same time.
"Mr. Schiavo's overriding concern here was to provide for Terri a peaceful death with dignity," Mr. Felos said about his client, who is Ms. Schiavo's legal guardian. "This death was not for the siblings, and not for the spouse and not for the parents. This was for Terri. She has a right to die peaceably, in a loving setting, and that was his overriding concern."
Mr. Schiavo, he said, had been living at the hospice here since her feeding tube was removed March 18.
David Gibbs, a lawyer for Ms. Schiavo's parents, said her brother and sister were with Ms. Schiavo until just before she died, but were told to leave just before she died.
"While they are heartsick, this is indeed a sad day for the nation, this is a sad day for the family," Mr. Gibbs said. "Their faith in God remains consistent and strong. They are absolutely convinced that God loves Terri more than they do. They believe that Terri is now ultimately at peace with God himself.
"They intend to comfort themselves with their faith and with their family at this time."
Ms. Schiavo's parents, Robert and Mary Schindler, came to the hospice shortly after they learned of her death and prayed at her bedside, said Brother Paul O'Donnell, a Franciscan Friar who has served as a spokesman for the parents. They left after a brief visit.
As word of her death spread through the crowd outside the hospice, some people sang hymns, others began praying.
Shortly after Ms. Schiavo died, her body was transported to the medical examiner's office, where an autopsy will be performed, at her husband's request.
Just before noon, President Bush said he was saddened to hear of Ms. Schiavo's death.
"I urge all those who honor Terri Schiavo to continue to work to build a culture of life, where all Americans are welcomed and valued and protected," the president said, "especially those who live at the mercy of others.
"The essence of civilization is that the strong have a duty to protect the weak. In cases where there are serious doubts and questions, the presumption should be in the favor of life."
Florida's governor, Jeb Bush, who had tried to intervene in the matter several times to keep Ms. Schiavo connected to her feeding tube, said after learning of her death that "this issue transcends politics and policies." He also called this "the toughest issue" in his tenure.
"Her experience will heighten awareness of the importance of families dealing with end-of-life issues, and that is an incredible legacy," he said. "The politics takes care of itself.
"As a society, as we live longer, it's important for us to deal with these issues. I wish I could have done more. That's the sadness in my heart."
The fight between Ms. Schiavo's husband to have his wife's feeding tube removed, and her parents, who said she could still recover if she was given proper treatment, lasted seven years and made its way from the state courts to the Supreme Court, and back again, several times. On Wednesday night, the Supreme Court refused, for the sixth time, to intervene in the matter.
The family's dispute also resulted in a new state law in Florida and an emergency session of the House of Representatives that produced a new federal law signed by President Bush in the early hours of the morning of March 21.
A range of judges consistently sided with Mr. Schiavo, but her parents would not give up, going from court to court and appealing to politicians and to people who believed that removing the tube was tantamount to taking a life.
"Not only has Mrs. Schiavo's case been given due process, but few, if any similar cases have ever been afforded this heightened level of process," Chief Judge Chris Altenbernd, of the Second Court of Appeal in Florida, wrote earlier this month.
The legal fight provoked a great national discussion, with polls showing most people did not believe politicians should be involved in personal issues of one family trying to decide whether a family member should be kept alive. But it also provoked a great outcry among an ad hoc coalition of Catholic and evangelical lobbyists, street organizers and legal advisers, some of whom demonstrated outside the hospice in recent days, and picketed outside the homes of Mr. Schiavo and Judge George W. Greer of Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Court, who originally ordered the tube removed.
Snippets of a video tape the Schindlers made of their daughter three years ago in which she appears to be smiling, grunting and moaning in response to her mother's voice, and to follow a balloon with her eyes, has become ingrained in the national consciousness after being replayed on news channels over and over again.
Theresa Marie Schiavo was born Dec. 3, 1963, and grew up in Huntingdon Valley, Pa. She was the oldest child of Robert and Mary Schindler, a shy, sensitive girl who loved animals, John Denver and "Starsky and Hutch." She struggled with her weight but lost more than 50 pounds in her senior year of high school.
The newly thin Terri Schindler met Michael Schiavo in her second semester at Bucks County Community College. He was her first and only boyfriend. They became engaged after five months of dating and married in 1984 in a large, formal Roman Catholic wedding ceremony.
Within two years the couple moved to St. Petersburg, Fla., where he worked as a restaurant manager and she as an insurance company clerk. The Schindlers shortly followed with their younger children, Bobby and Suzanne, and Ms. Schiavo continued her close relationship with her family while her husband worked nights. She also grew even thinner and had no luck becoming pregnant even after she consulted a fertility specialist. She weighed no more than 110 pounds on Feb. 26, 1990, the day her ordinary life changed irrevocably.
Mr. Schiavo said he heard a thud about 4 a.m. and rose from bed to find his wife collapsed on the floor. By the time paramedics arrived and resuscitated her, oxygen depletion had caused grievous brain damage. Doctors said her heart had stopped because of an undiagnosed potassium deficiency, possibly a result of bulimia. They said she had lapsed into a persistent vegetative state, meaning she could breathe on her own and had periods of wakefulness, but was incapable of thought, memory or emotion. Mr. Schiavo tried for several years to rehabilitate his wife, even taking her to California for an experimental brain treatment, but nothing worked.
He filed a malpractice suit against the obstetrician who had overseen Ms. Schiavo's fertility therapy, contending that the potassium deficiency should have been detected. In January 1993, the couple was awarded $750,000 in economic damages for her and $300,000 for loss of companionship for him.
A month later, on Valentine's Day, both the Schindlers and Mr. Schiavo say, a fight over the award signaled the beginning of their estrangement. The way Mr. Schiavo has described it, he was visiting his wife when the Schindlers walked in and Mr. Schindler asked how much money he would receive from Mr. Schiavo's part of the malpractice settlement.
The Schindlers say the fight was about what treatment their daughter's money would go toward, with the Schindlers advocating rigorous therapy and Mr. Schiavo wanting basic care. As the rift deepened, Mr. Schiavo's hopes for his wife's recovery apparently evaporated.
In 1998, Mr. Schiavo petitioned the local probate court for permission to remove his wife's feeding tube, a move the Schindlers immediately challenged.
In 2000, Judge George W. Greer of Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Court gave Mr. Schiavo permission to remove his wife's feeding tube after a monthlong trial in which Mr. Schiavo and two of his relatives testified that on several occasions, Ms. Schiavo had told them she would not want to be kept alive artificially.
The tube was removed twice before, but reinserted as a result of legal challenges by the Schindlers.
Last month, Judge Greer ordered that Ms. Schiavo's feeding tube be removed for the third and final time on March 18. But with her parents stepping up their fight, even President Bush and Congress tried to avert her death with an unprecedented law that let the Schindlers take their case to a federal court.
In a breathless series of events, Congress passed the measure on March 21 just after midnight, less than three days after doctors removed the tube as protesters gathered outside Ms. Schiavo's hospice. Mr. Bush, who had rushed back to Washington from his Texas ranch to sign it, did so in the middle of the night.
Its backers hoped that the law would lead a federal court to quickly order Ms. Schiavo's feeding tube reinserted, at least giving her parents more time to press their case. But one court after another turned down the parents, with the latest defeat coming Wednesday night, when the Supreme Court again refused to take up the matter.
Her parents, devout Catholics, even attracted the attention of the Vatican. Last year, they filed a motion to set aside the judge's authorization to remove the feeding tube, pointing to Pope John Paul II's statement in the spring that it was wrong to withhold food and water from people in vegetative states.
The Vatican, which typically stays out of local affairs, has recently been pointed about Ms. Schiavo. On March 21, the Vatican's official newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, said: "Who can judge the dignity and sacredness of the life of a human being, made in the image and likeness of God? Who can decide to pull the plug as if we were talking about a broken or out-of-order household appliance?"
Today, a Vatican spokesman said Ms. Schiavo's death had been caused by a "violation of the sacred nature of life."
"The circumstances of the death of Mrs. Terri Schiavo have rightly shocked consciences. A life has been interrupted," chief spokesman Joaquín Navarro-Valls said in a statement, according to Reuters.
"One hopes that this dramatic experience will lead to public opinion maturing to a greater understanding of human dignity, and lead to greater protection of life, including at the legal level," he said.
Abby Goodnough contributed reporting from Pinellas Park for this article.
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