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Protesters Stage Vigil to Save Schiavo
By MITCH STACY
The Associated Press
PINELLAS PARK -- Their legal options nearly exhausted, family and supporters of a severely brain-damaged woman began an around-the-clock vigil Monday outside her hospice protesting the upcoming removal of her feeding tube at her husband's request.
About 10 sign-toting demonstrators, organized by prominent conservative activist Randall Terry, began their vigil on the sidewalk at noon in front of Woodside Hospice, where Terri Schiavo lives in a vegetative state brought on by a 1990 heart attack.
"This is a long, slow burn," said Terry, who founded the antiabortion group Operation Rescue in the 1980s. "Our intention is to be here 24 hours a day. . . . Our intention is to be peaceful, to be prayerful."
The tube delivering water and nutrition to the 39-year-old woman is scheduled to be removed at 2 p.m. Wednesday. She is expected to die within two weeks.
Schiavo has been at the center of a long legal battle between Terri's parents, the Schindlers, and her husband, Michael Schiavo, whose legal right to remove the feeding tube has been repeatedly affirmed by Florida courts.
Michael Schiavo says he is carrying out his wife's wishes that she not be kept alive artificially. The Schindlers say she responds to them and could be rehabilitated with therapy, despite testimony from court-appointed doctors that she will never recover.
Also Monday, an attorney for the Schindlers filed an emergency motion with the 2nd District Court of Appeal in Lakeland to try to block removal of the feeding tube, arguing that Terri Schiavo deserves therapy to determine whether she can swallow on her own and perhaps learn to speak. Circuit Judge George W. Greer previously denied that motion.
Michael Schiavo has resisted attempts to see whether his wife can swallow food and water, citing medical experts who say she might choke or get pneumonia from inhaling the nourishment.
The Schindlers are running out of legal options. On Friday, a federal judge declined to get involved, saying he didn't have the jurisdiction. The Florida Supreme Court has twice rejected hearing the case, and the U.S. Supreme Court also has declined.
Bob Schindler said Monday he would fight until the end, and again urged Gov. Jeb Bush to intervene by ordering a Department of Children & Families investigation into the possibility that Michael Schiavo mistreated and withheld therapy from Terri, charges her husband has repeatedly denied.
A spokesman for Bush said Monday the governor does not have the authority to overrule the state courts and block removal of the feeding tube. Bush previously wrote a letter to Greer and filed a friend-of-the-court brief to accompany the Schindlers' federal lawsuit, but both failed to sway the courts.
"I think it's an atrocity what's happening," Schindler said against a backdrop of protesters carrying signs with slogans such as "Save Terri" and "Is this hospice or Auschwitz?"
Schindler also issued a public plea to Michael Schiavo to step aside and let the family try to rehabilitate Terri.
But Michael Schiavo's attorney, George Felos, said his client couldn't stop the removal of the feeding tube if he wanted to, because the courts have found that it was Terri Schiavo's wishes not to be kept alive.
"This is a case about her wishes, not what the Schindlers want and not what Mr. Schiavo wants," Felos said, adding that Michael Schiavo wouldn't step aside anyway.
Terry, one of America's most well-known and militant abortion opponents of the 1980s and early 1990s, said he contacted the Schindlers offering his help after learning of their plight to keep their daughter alive.
Terry has been mostly quiet in recent years, but he recently formed a conservative activist group called Society for Truth and Justice. In August, he organized a rallies in Jacksonville and Savannah, Ga., to speak out against gay marriage.
"We just want to see Terri survive, and we don't want to see a precedent where people who are handicapped or people who are unwanted can be thrown away as fodder," he said.