PINELLAS PARK, Fla. (Reuters) - A federal judge on Tuesday rejected a request from the parents of brain-damaged Florida woman Terri Schiavo to order her feeding tube reinserted, dealing a blow to attempts by the U.S. Congress and the White House to prolong her life.
Schiavo's parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, appealed to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta as their daughter went for a fourth day without nutrition or hydration.
They urged the court to order the feeding tube reconnected because their daughter was "fading quickly." Doctors say Schiavo, 41, would likely remain alive for one to two weeks without it.
U.S. District Judge James Whittemore said the law was clear that he could issue the order only if the Schindlers could show their overall case, which cited violations of rights such as due process, was likely to succeed in federal court. They had not, he said.
"This court concludes that Theresa Schiavo's life and liberty interests were adequately protected by the extensive process provided in the state courts," he said in a ruling issued at dawn.
The feeding tube was removed on Friday under a state court order. But the Schiavo case was pushed into federal court by extraordinary intervention from Congress, which interrupted its Easter recess to pass a special bill. President Bush cut short a Texas vacation to sign the law early on Monday.
Another poll on Tuesday showed that a strong majority of Americans opposed the federal intervention in the bitter dispute that has divided Schiavo's husband, Michael, and her parents in a seven-year legal battle, and which has become a cause for the Christian right, anti-abortion activists and now politicians.
Schiavo has been in what state courts have accepted is a "persistent vegetative state" since suffering a cardiac arrest that starved her brain of oxygen in 1990.
Florida courts have consistently sided with Michael Schiavo, who is her legal guardian, in ruling that Schiavo would not want to live in her condition.
Schiavo's parents say that she responds to them and could recover. They argued in their appeal to the Atlanta court that they had not been able to develop their case properly before Whittemore made "what will be a final adjudication of the merit in light of Terri's imminent death."
"Terri is fading quickly and her parents reasonably fear that her death is imminent," their brief said.
Michael Schiavo filed a motion to reject the appeal, saying that even if the court did not, it should delay for eight hours any order to reinsert Schiavo's feeding tube to allow him time to go to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Schiavo's parents and their supporters reacted with anger and disappointment to Whittemore's ruling.
House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, a Texas Republican who pushed the law, said the judge's decision was "at odds with both the clear intent of Congress and the constitutional rights of a helpless young woman."
White House spokesman Scott McClellan, traveling with Bush in Albuquerque, New Mexico, said, "We continue to stand on the side of defending life."
Michael Schiavo and some Democrats have assailed the congressional move as politically motivated meddling. Civil rights activists have also deplored lawmakers inserting themselves in a legal dispute and the poll released on Tuesday found 64 percent of voters in Florida disapproved of the federal government action.
The poll conducted March 18-20 by Atlanta-based Strategic Vision also found 61 percent supported the decision to remove the feeding tube. An ABC poll on Monday found two-thirds of Americans opposed the intervention.
"Judge Whittemore found that even with the special law passed by Congress there is no basis to set aside the legal procedures in Florida for how these difficult, but intensely personal decisions are to be made," the Florida branch of the American Civil Liberties Union said.
"Both Congress and the president needlessly prolonged this tragic saga."
Schiavo's feeding has been halted and restarted twice before amid legal wrangling. Before the Schiavo law passed over the weekend, federal courts had declined to hear the case and returned it to state courts.
Schiavo is at a hospice in Pinellas Park, Florida, where small groups of mainly Christian protesters have gathered outside the building.
A middle-aged woman was arrested on Tuesday when she tried to cross the police line to go in with a plastic bottle of water she wanted to take to Schiavo as a symbolic gesture.
She was the seventh person to be peacefully arrested on trespassing charges since the feeding tube was removed Friday.
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"Human beings have still not been able to form a human society, and have still not learned to move with the spirit of a pilgrim. Although many small groups, motivated by self-interest, work together in particular situations, not even a small fraction of their work is done with a broader social motive. By strict definition, shall we have to declare that each small family unit is a society in itself? If going ahead in mutual adjustment only out of narrow self-interest or momentary self-seeking is called society, then in such a society, no provision can be made for the disabled, the diseased or the helpless, because in most cases nobody can benefit from them in any way... in that case there always remains the possibility of some people getting isolated from the collective. All human beings must attach themselves to others by the common bond of love and march forward hand in hand; then only will I proclaim it a society." |