Terri Schiavo, 41
Posted: Thursday, March 31st, 2005 11:35 amTerri Schiavo, the brain-damaged Florida woman whose condition ignited a protracted legal struggle and a national debate over end-of-life issues, died today at a Florida hospice, 13 days after her feeding tube was removed under a court order.
Representatives of both sides in a dispute over her fate confirmed the death shortly before 10 a.m. EST.
The death of Schiavo, 41, ended the court battle that had pitted her husband, who wanted to take her off artificial life support, against her parents and siblings, who sought to keep her alive at all costs. But the death appeared unlikely to quell the broader controversy fueled by the Schiavo case, one that set right-to-life, antiabortion and conservative religious groups — with backing from President Bush and Republican leaders in Congress — against advocates of a “right to die” when the brain no longer functions. …
Her husband and guardian, Michael Schiavo, was with her at her bedside when she died. …
The feud between Terri Schiavo’s husband and her parents, Robert and Mary Schindler, persisted until the end. …
Schiavo’s death, at the Woodside Hospice in Pinellas Park, Fla., came 15 years after she suffered cardiac arrest, experienced a loss of oxygen to the brain and slipped into a coma as a result of an eating disorder. She later emerged from the coma, but she never regained consciousness and remained in what doctors said was a “persistent vegetative state.” … Read full story
