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Efforts to stop removal of woman's feeding tube fail
FLORIDA: After federal and state attempts to delay a judge's order, Terri Shiavo's life support is expected to be withdrawn today.
NEW YORK TIMES
MIAMI - Despite last-ditch efforts by Republicans in Washington and Tallahassee, Congress and the Florida Legislature failed to pass measures Thursday to halt the removal of a feeding tube from Terri Schiavo, a critically brain-damaged woman, this afternoon.
Judge George Greer of Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Court has ordered the tube removed at 1 p.m., potentially ending the seven-year legal fight between Schiavo's husband, who wants to let her die, and her parents, who believe she responds to them and want her to live. Greer has accepted the testimony of doctors who said Schiavo, 41, is in a "persistent vegetative state," meaning damage to her cerebral cortex has made her incapable of emotion, memory or thought.
Schiavo has been attached to the feeding tube for 15 years.
Late Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court issued without comment a one-sentence decision denying a motion by Schiavo's parents, Robert and Mary Schindler, to stay Greer's order.
In Congress, a day of rapid-fire events ended without a bill agreeable to the House and Senate.
The Senate voted to give Schiavo's parents 30 days to convince a federal court that removing the feeding tube would violate a federal law or the U.S. Constitution.
But the Senate's action could be moot because the House passed a different bill late Wednesday night. Unless both houses agree to the same bill, it cannot become law.
Conservative lawmakers held out hope Thursday night that a deal could still be reached, but House officials said they were recessing for the Easter break and would not take up legislation that the Senate approved Thursday afternoon.
Senators, meanwhile, said the House-passed bill could not clear the Senate.
If Schiavo's feeding tube is removed today, doctors expect her to live two weeks, so she will probably be dead before lawmakers return to Washington.
"I just can't conceive that this is going to be the end of the story," said Sen. Mel Martinez, R-Fla. "It is too important. A life hangs in the balance."
The White House indicated Thursday that President Bush would sign a measure if it reached his desk.
Conservatives have been preparing to intercede in the case for several weeks, and the issue was finally forced by the approaching recess and the pending deadline in Florida. On Wednesday night, the House by a voice vote agreed to a broad bill that could be applied to a number of cases. It would give federal courts the power to review cases in which life support might be withdrawn if patients left no written instructions.
The Senate measure was confined strictly to the Schiavo case.
Senate Democrats initially objected to bringing up the bill for a vote but later cleared the way for its approval by voice vote.
"A woman's life is at stake, and it is absolutely imperative that we take action today," said Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D.
Yet some Democrats had reservations. "I am particularly troubled at the prospect of setting a precedent that is going to have the Congress, in effect, playing medical czar in case after case because, colleagues, there will be thousands of cases just like this," said Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon.
The president's brother, Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida, has tried to stop doctors from removing Schiavo's feeding tube, but a series of courts have turned back his efforts. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal by the governor last month.
In Tallahassee, Fla., on Thursday, the chance of intervention by the Legislature faded after the state Senate rejected a move to advance a narrowly drafted amendment to a bill that could have blocked the removal of Schiavo's feeding tube.
Earlier in the day, the state House of Representatives passed a bill to block the tube's removal, though legal scholars and some lawmakers who voted for the bill questioned its constitutionality. The bill, which passed 78-37, would outlaw the withdrawal of food and water from people in a persistent vegetative state who did not leave specific instructions refusing artificial sustenance.
The Senate bill was similar but would apply only when there was a family dispute about the patient's wishes.
But nine Republican senators joined their Democratic counterparts in rejecting that measure.
Florida's law does not require such detailed instructions. In Schiavo's case, the courts have ruled that she would not have wanted to be kept alive artificially based on testimony from her husband and his relatives.
For example, her husband, Michael, testified in a 2000 trial that his wife discussed the issue a few times when they were watching television programs depicting people on ventilators or getting tube feedings.
"She made the comment to me that she would never want to be like that," Michael Schiavo, who is his wife's guardian, testified at the time.
In Washington, the impasse over the legislation had House and Senate leaders trading accusations about who was at fault. House Republicans said Democrats had waited until the House had finished its work before agreeing to pass a bill, knowing it could not become law.
In response, Democratic leader Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada fired back: "If the House Republicans refuse to pass our bipartisan bill, they bear responsibility for the consequences."
The chief lawyer for Michael Schiavo called congressional efforts to intervene in the case "an abhorrent spectacle" and said lawmakers were being swayed by a vocal minority of religious conservatives.
"Everyone realizes that George Bush is in the White House today primarily due to efforts of anti-abortion, right-to-life groups and the Christian Coalition," lawyer George Felos said. "They are flexing their political muscle."