by
Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
March 26,
2005
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- Terri
Schiavo's parents have filed their last appeal of a court decision,
accoring to an attorney for Bob and Mary Schindler. The appeal, ironically,
has to do with a motion asking for her starvation death to be halted
because she tried to tell an attorney for the Schindlers that she wanted
to live.
The
appeal comes of a ruling handed down by Circuit Court Judge George Greer,
who decided Terri's comments were involuntary and simply groans and
muttering consistent with a patient in a persistent vegetative state.
The motion now heads to the Florida Supreme Court and Schindler attorneys say other courts have failed Terri by treating her as a "piece of property."
"This is our last appeal," family attorney Barbara Weller said. "We do have one more iron in the fire," she added, but did not specify what that strategy included.
George Felos, the euthanasia advocate who is Michael's lead attorney, told CNN, "Any fair observer would say that the legal struggle is over here."
Felos said he hd not seen the Supreme Court appeal but would respond once he has.
The motion said Terri clearly demonstrated her desire not to be starved to death when she tried to tell a family attorney she wanted to live. But, Greer said the family failed to bring up Terri's statement in two previous emergency hearings he held during the week.
"What you're seeing is a textbook example of judicial tyranny,'' Bob Schindler told reporters. "They either find way or make a way. They have a mindset to kill Terri.''
Schindler said Terri was "putting up a tremendous battle to live."
"She is fighting like hell to stay alive," he said, Reuters reported. "I want the powers that be to know that. It's not too late to save her."
Paul O'Donnell, a Franciscan monk who is helping the family, said the Schindler family is tormented over what's been happening this week and saddened at running out of legal options.
''The anguish is really with Mary [Schindler],'' O'Donnell said, according to Bloomberg News. "It is so hard for her. You see a brave front when they come out here, but it's heart wrenching. Each day, it gets harder and harder.''
O'Donnell said the family has resigned themselves ove the fact that further legal action will not save their daughter.
Confirming that, David Gibbs, the lead attorney for the Schindlers, said the family has given up at the federal court level.
"There is nothing that can be brought back to the court federally that will in any way help Terri," Gibbs told the Associated Press.
Terri's family could have filed another appeal with the full 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in another request to stop Terri's painful starvation death, but the court ruled 10-2 against them last time.
"Time
is moving quickly, and it would appear most likely ... that Terri Schiavo
will pass the point that she will be able to recover over this Easter
weekend," Gibbs said.
Just before representatives of her estranged husband Michael removed her feeding tube Friday afternoon, Terri Schiavo reportedly told an attorney for her parents that she wanted to live.
Barbara Weller, one of the attorneys for Terri's parents Bob and Mary Schindler, told reporters about her visit with Terri on Friday.
"Terri, if you would just say, 'I want to live,' all of this will be over," she told the disabled woman.
Weller said Terri desperately tried to repeat Weller's words.
"'I waaaaannt ...,' Schiavo allegedly said. Weller described it as a prolonged yell that was loud enough that police stationed nearby entered the hospice room.
"She just started yelling, 'I waaaannt, I waaaannt,'" Weller explained.
The Schindlers' motion says Terri tried to express her wishes not to be starved to death and that should supersede an alleged conversation she had with her estranged husband Michael before her 1990 collapse.
That conversation, where she supposedly indicated she didn't want any extraordinary measures taken to prolong her life, has been used as the basis for court decisions authorizing her death.
In previous legal battles, the Schindlers have pointed to a conversation Terri had with good friend Diane Meyer.
The two friends once watched a documentary about Karen Ann Quinlan, a woman whose parents wanted to remove her from a respirator in 1976 in a landmark euthanasia case that eventually reached the Supreme Court.
Meyer told the court that Terri, normally mild-mannered, lost her temper and said she disagreed with Quinlan's parents' decision to take their daughter's life.
"I remember one of the things she said is, 'How did they know she would want this? How did they know she wouldn't want to go on?'" Meyer told the Orlando Sentinel newspaper Friday about their conversation. "She was so strong about it."
Meyer
said Terri told her, "Where there's life, there's hope."
Related
news stories:
Terri
Schiavo's Parents' Last Motion on Terri Saying "I Want to Live"
Terri Schiavo Case Reveals How We Treated Disabled Americans
Neurologists:
Terri Schiavo Not in Persistent Vegetative State
Terri
Schiavo's Hospice Nurses Want Her to Die, Dissenter Fired
Media Slanting News
Against Terri Schiavo, Report Says
Related
web sites:
Terri Schiavo's parents - http://www.terrisfight.org
