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Apparently there is no restriction about posting from this paper. I tried it, by pretending to post the whole thing and hit preview. If there is a restriction, the next page would say either that we can't post from there, or that we need to excerpt it. Neither happened, so here is the article in its entirety:

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The only issue that David Gibbs can ever remember Jesse Jackson and Rush Limbaugh agreeing on was the fact that Terri Schiavo should remain alive.

It was one of the lighter moments Friday during a passionate talk by Gibbs, the attorney who represented Schiavo's parents in their fight to keep their brain-damaged daughter alive, and attorney George Felos, who represented Schiavo's husband in his successful effort to remove her feeding tube.

Felos said he hopes the resolution of the Schiavo case will reduce the taboo surrounding the fear of death that he feels fueled so much of the opposition. Schiavo spent 15 years in a "vegetative state" after suffering what is believed to have been a heart attack in 1990.

Gibbs and Felos appeared together for the first time since Schiavo died March 31, speaking to 130 members of the Palm Beach County Bar Association at the Marriott in West Palm Beach.

Schiavo was at the center of a prolonged legal battle between her husband and parents that drew national attention, involved the state and federal government and reached all the way to the Supreme Court. The lack of a living will pitted Schiavo's husband, Michael, and her parents, Mary and Bob Schindler, against one another in the courts.

Theodore Leopold, president of the Palm Beach County Bar Association, introduced the speakers, flipping a coin to see who would speak first. Gibbs lost the toss, and Felos elected to let Gibbs go first.

Schiavo was able to breathe on her own and to swallow but she was not able to feed herself, Gibbs said. "Because of her disability, do we allow this deprivation of what I believe should be ordinary care?"

Gibbs called removing Schiavo's feeding tube "barbaric and uncivilized." Florida law does not allow the starvation of animals and the constitution does not allow the starvation of convicted murderers, he said.

Gibbs said Schiavo's parents begged her husband to turn over her guardianship to them and they would care for her. Michael Schiavo had moved on with another woman with whom he has children.

"I don't know what Mr. Schiavo was motivated by. When you have a mother and a father begging for the life of their daughter, I don't understand where, at some point, basic human kindness doesn't kick in."

Gibbs was with Schiavo's mother the last time she saw her daughter alive.

"I watched her mother sobbing over her dying daughter," Gibbs said. "We walked out into the hallway and Mary said to me, 'David, I'm no lawyer and I'm no doctor. But I don't understand why they have to kill my little girl.' That's the troubling moral dilemma. Why, with family who wanted her, did Terri have to die this horrific death?"

"I hope and pray that Terri's legacy is while she had to die, in a sense she was a martyr to protect the rights of many people who otherwise would not have a voice," Gibbs said.

Felos said the Schiavo case reminded him of a sign he saw while bicycling through the suburbs of Boston outside a mansion belonging to a religious order. The sign said, "Trespassing absolutely will not be permitted. Violators will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law — Sisters of Perpetual Mercy."

Felos said, "There was something very disjointed to me. It seemed kind of close-hearted and brittle."

Felos said faith-based organizations, religious leaders, priests and rabbis distorted the facts in the Schiavo case.

"To me the truth is such an essential element in spiritual life," Felos said. "It's not only respected, it's sought for . . . Maybe I was feeling a little naïve, but I just expected more from priests and rabbis and religious-based organizations in their consideration of this case."

Felos said he wasn't going to spend his time trying to rebut Gibbs' comments and going over the facts of the case. The lawyers and judges in attendance already knew the facts, Felos said.

He compared the emotions on both sides of the Schiavo issue to the 2004 presidential election.

"I know very close friends, when they found out that each of them had voted for the other person, had to say to themselves, 'We better not talk about that because it might jeopardize our friendship,' " Felos said. "How deeply those divisions are in our country. I hope the considerations of the Schiavo case as it ensues will not just more deeply divide, but there's some healing to be found there."

Felos called the judges and the courts "heroes" who did their duty under great pressure and great threat. Circuit Judge George Greer, the trial judge, received numerous death threats and was forced to quit his church in the aftermath. But Felos also blamed the judicial system for dragging the case on for seven years.

"From a human point of view, no judge wants to be the last person whose name is on an order that results in a person's death," he said, "especially in a case of this scrutiny."