CLEARWATER, Fla. — The event that Terri Schindler-Schiavo’s family has been fighting against for years — the slow death of the brain-damaged woman by starvation and dehydration — seems to be getting nearer.

One of the last hopes for the reinstatement of Terri’s Law, the emergency bill passed by the Florida Legislature that saved the 41-year-old woman’s life, disappeared Jan. 24 when the U.S. Supreme Court rejected an appeal by Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. The justices offered no comment in deciding not to take the case.

“I’m disappointed, but not surprised,” Bush told reporters in Tallahassee.

 “It’s judicial homicide,” Terri’s father, Robert Schindler, said during the March for Life in Washington, D.C., after hearing the news. “They want to murder her.”

Terri Schiavo — whose estranged husband, Michael Schiavo, maintains that she once told him she would not want to be kept alive “artificially” — has been at the center of a bitter seven-year legal battle over whether to remove her feeding tube, as her husband wishes.

George Felos, Michael Schiavo’s attorney, said his client was “very pleased” with the news from the U.S. Supreme Court.

“My client has said many times that, No. 1, the only reason that he filed suit and is engaged in this process is to carry out Terri’s wishes,” Felos said. “He made a promise to Terri when she turned to him and said, ‘Honey, when something catastrophic like that’ — they were watching a television show — ‘if that ever happened to me, I don’t want to be kept alive on tubes. Promise me you won’t let me live that way.’ He’s determined to carry out that promise to her.”

Terri suffered heart failure and severe brain damage in 1990. The courts have found her to be in a “persistent vegetative state.” Her parents, Robert and Mary Schindler, believe she might recover if given proper therapy. She is not in a coma and can breathe on her own. Terri’s family also disputes her husband’s contention that she told him, when she was around 20 years old, that she did not want to be kept alive by artificial means.

Bobby Schindler, Terri’s brother, said it is “ludicrous” that someone as young as Terri, when she allegedly told Michael about her wishes, would think about death in that way.

“It’s completely uncharacteristic of her,” Bobby Schindler said, adding that Michael’s brother and sister-in-law were the only witnesses to the alleged statement by Terri. And, for 10 years, he said, those witnesses never said anything, until several weeks before one of the trials, he said.

“We’re killing human beings now based on hearsay evidence,” Bobby Schindler said.

Still Trying to Save Her

The Schindler family wants Michael, who has two children with his fiancée, to divorce their daughter and hand over guardianship to them so they can care for Terri, Bobby Schindler said.

A series of court decisions gave Michael Schiavo the right to remove the feeding tube during the fall of 2003. But the Florida Legislature stepped in and passed the law that gave the governor the power to restore the feeding tube. 

However, last fall, the Florida Supreme Court struck down Terri’s Law, declaring it unconstitutional and paving the way for a possible appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Calls to several Florida lawmakers who voted against Terri’s Law were not returned. Calls to the Florida Catholic Conference were also not returned.

One of the lawyers who represented the Schindler family in front of Florida’s highest court was not surprised when the U.S. Supreme Court decided not to hear the appeal.

“When the Supreme Court doesn’t take a case, it doesn’t mean that you didn’t have a good case,” said Robert Destro, a law professor at The Catholic University of America. “They just decided that, given all the demands on their time, it wasn’t one of those cases they felt like they needed to hear, because there are other places where we can raise those rights. We had to do it just to protect her.”

But the Schindler family is still trying to save Terri’s life. Here are several legal options their lawyers are pursuing, Bobby Schindler said:

— A petition in a state appeals court regarding Terri’s right to the free exercise of her Catholic faith. The Schindler family hopes for a new trial based on comments made last year by Pope John Paul II; the Pope said giving a patient food and water, even artificially, should be considered “morally obligatory.” Because she was a faithful Catholic, Terri would want to follow what the Pope said, Bobby Schindler said.

— A motion to set aside the 2000 order authorizing Terri’s death by starvation and dehydration because the Schindler family believes her due-process rights were not protected during that trial. Florida Circuit Court Judge George Greer, who ordered the tube removed in 2002, heard this case Jan. 28.

— A petition to remove Michael Schiavo as Terri’s guardian because of his numerous conflicts of interest and neglect, replacing him with Schindler family members.

Felos views the Schindlers’ legal strategy as simply “delaying tactics” that are postponing the inevitable.

 “The motions they are filing in court are frivolous,” Felos said. “I would hope the courts would recognize now that, my gosh, it’s been five years since the judgment was entered adjudicating Terri’s constitutional rights not to be force-fed against her will. Implementing that final judgment is long overdue.”

One of Many

Dorothy Timbs, an attorney for the National Right to Life Committee’s Robert Powell Center for Medical Ethics, said Terri is one of many vulnerable people around the country caught up in a judicial and medical system that often supports the culture of death.

“Terri Schiavo is not alone,” Timbs said. “She finds herself in this situation, and it’s tragic. So many others have also been in this situation, and they have not received the public attention and have not had the resources that Terri has been blessed to have. And so she represents a whole class of individuals who are vulnerable. I believe even the young and the healthy should be aware and should be concerned, because we will one day all find ourselves in a very vulnerable position.”

Timbs suggested that people prepare a medical directive, a legal document recognized in all 50 states, that allows a person to write down his specific wishes for health-care treatment.

Otherwise, she cautioned, those who make decisions for sick patients may opt for death, based on so-called “quality of life” and “not based on their inherent value and dignity that the person has as a human being.”

Carlos Briceño writes

from Seminole, Florida.