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Old 31-03-2005, 18:28   #1
jason
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Brain-damaged Terri Schiavo dies

Terri Schiavo, the brain-damaged Florida woman at the heart of a wrenching dispute over her fate that drew in the U.S. Congress and President George W. Bush, has died, 13 days after her feeding tube was removed by court order.

"Terri Schiavo has passed away just a little while ago," said Paul O'Donnell, a Franciscan monk and spiritual adviser to the parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, who fought a bitter seven-year legal battle to keep their daughter alive.



Schiavo, 41, died on Thursday just hours after the U.S. Supreme Court rebuffed yet another last-ditch appeal by her parents for the feeding to be restored.

Schiavo had been in what courts ruled was a "persistent vegetative state" since a cardiac arrest in 1990 deprived her brain of oxygen.

Courts had long sided with her husband and legal guardian, Michael Schiavo, in ruling she would not have wanted to live in that condition and should be allowed to die.

Michael Schiavo, estranged from his parents-in-law, was with his wife when she died soon after 9 a.m. at a hospice in Pinellas Park, Florida, where she had been cared for.

There was no word from him or his lawyer, who said earlier this week that she was dying peacefully and with dignity.

But supporters of the parents were bitter.

"This is not only a death with all the sadness that brings. This is a killing," said Frank Pavone, a Roman Catholic priest who visited Schiavo shortly before she died.

"And for that we not only grieve that Terri has passed, but we grieve that our nation has allowed such an atrocity as this, and we pray that it will never happen again,"

The Schindlers were backed by conservative religious activists, anti-abortion campaigners, advocates for the disabled, and by mainly Republican politicians.

A small group of protesters who had kept vigil outside the hospice calling for Schiavo to be kept alive, sobbed and prayed when her death was announced, and then sang hymns in the morning sunshine. Pavone said Schiavo's blood relatives were sent from her room just 10 or so minutes before she died because her condition was to be assessed and Michael Schiavo was going to visit.
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