Right To Die

Lawmakers in Washington and Florida failed Thursday to agree on legislation to block the court-ordered removal today of the feeding tube that has kept a severely brain-damaged woman alive for 15 years. Lobbied hard by social conservatives, both chambers of Congress passed bills that would have shifted the case of Terri Schiavo, 41, to the federal courts for review. But despite a day of intense negotiations, neither was willing to accept the other's legislation.

At any one time, as many as 35,000 Americans -- up to 10,000 of them children -- are in a persistent vegetative state similar to that of Terri Schiavo, medical experts said Friday. Every week, tens or hundreds of families across the country must make the same wrenching decision that Schiavo's husband and parents have been fighting over for more than 10 years, but the decisions are typically made in a much less public forum.

With the simple act of removing a plastic feeding tube, doctors Friday began the slow process of ending Terri Schiavo's life, a court-ordered move that trumped a day of legal maneuvers by congressional Republicans to prevent the death of the severely brain-damaged woman. The procedure took place Friday afternoon inside a quiet hospice room north of St. Petersburg, while the world outside roiled.

When the Vatican made the unusual move of taking sides in the case of Terri Schiavo, the parallels to the gradual incapacitation of Pope John Paul II were unmistakable. Senior Vatican officials said the removal of the feeding tube from the severely brain-damaged Florida woman amounted to euthanasia. "It is a ruthless way to kill a person," Monsignor Elio Sgreccia, the Vatican's top bioethicist, said this month.

Frenetic negotiations among congressional leaders, a special weekend session and a hastily arranged trip back to Washington by the president in the Terri Schiavo right-to-die case elevated a tragic personal issue into an extraordinary political drama. But at bottom, the flurry of activity reflected an everyday fact of political life: When a powerful constituency cares passionately about something, all politicians -- whether Republicans or Democrats -- yearn to respond.

On a patch of beaten down grass ringed by orange plastic fencing, a small, tired-looking woman talked into the television cameras Saturday afternoon, begging for her child's life. "My daughter is in the building behind me, starving to death," said Mary Schindler, mother of Terri Schiavo, standing outside Woodside Hospice. "We laughed together, we smiled together, we talked together. She is my life," Schindler said. "I am begging Gov.

With the clock running down on how much longer Terri Schiavo can remain alive, congressional leaders Saturday announced an unprecedented agreement that would allow Schiavo's parents to petition the federal courts to have a feeding tube replaced for their brain-damaged daughter. The agreement, which involves emergency weekend sessions of the House and Senate, is the first time Congress has intervened directly in an individual right-to-die case.

Supporters of efforts to keep Terri Schiavo alive vowed Sunday to train their sights next on Florida's Legislature and governor to enact a law to return the woman to her parents' care.

Capping a day and night of political, legal and emotional drama, Congress passed and President Bush signed legislation early this morning permitting the parents of a brain-damaged Florida woman to ask a federal judge to order her feeding tube reconnected. The president, who traveled Sunday from his Texas ranch to the White House for the sole purpose of signing the bill, did so less than an hour after the House voted at 12:45 a.m. EST to pass the legislation, 203 to 58.

A Texas law signed by then-Gov. George W. Bush in 1999 allowing an end to life-sustaining treatment for certain patients became a point of contention Monday in the Terri Schiavo case, sharpening the focus on the president's eleventh-hour intervention in the question of the woman's fate.