Florida woman's feeding tube removed

FLORIDA - Doctors removed the feeding tube that has kept a brain-damaged Florida woman alive for 15 years on Friday after US lawmakers tried to prolong her life by subpoenaing her to appear before Congress.

The feeding tube was removed from Terri Schiavo, the woman at the heart of a long and furious right-to-die battle, at 1:45pm (7.45am NZT) and she was expected to die in seven to 14 days.

Her husband's lawyer called the last-minute attempt by the US Congress to keep the tube in place "nothing short of thuggery. "

Schiavo has been kept alive since a heart attack starved her brain of oxygen in 1990, leaving her in what the courts declared was a permanent vegetative state.

Her husband and legal guardian, Michael Schiavo, said she would not have wanted to be kept alive in that condition and won permission to remove the feeding tube after 1pm (7.00am NZT) on Friday.

Her husband was not present in his wife's room at the Woodside Hospice when the feeding tube was removed in what his lawyer, George Felos, described as a "very calm" and prayerful procedure. But her husband was at her bedside later, Felos said.

Republican congressional leaders made the last-minute bid to keep the feeding tube in place by subpoenaing Terri Schiavo to appear before hearings and committees later in the month, a move that would have granted her protection as a witness in a congressional inquiry.

"The Senate and the House remain dedicated to saving Terri Schiavo's life," said Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, a Tennessee Republican.

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay called removing the feedingtube "an act of barbarism." He added: "Terri Schiavo is alive. She is not 'barely alive.' She is not 'being kept alive.' She is as alive as you or I, and as such we have a moral obligation to protect and defend her from the fate premeditated by the Florida courts. "

Felos called the congressional action "odious, it was shocking, it was disgusting and I think all Americans should be very alarmed about that," Felos said. "They cannot walk over the dying body of Terri Schiavo for political gain. "

Her parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, are fighting to keep her alive, saying she responds to them and could improve with rehabilitation and have lobbied lawmakers to intervene.

Congressional leaders issued the subpoenas after failing to enact legislation allowing federal courts to review the case. Through five years of hearings and appeals, the Florida courts have ruled in Michael Schiavo's favor and the US Supreme Court has refused three times to intervene.

The order to remove the feeding tube was briefly stayed while the Florida judge presiding over the case, Circuit Judge George Greer, held a telephone hearing to consider the congressional effort to intervene.

Greer rejected the bid and reinstated the order allowing removal of the feeding tube. Congressional lawyers immediately appealed the decision before the Florida Supreme Court, which rejected it.

The US courts and legislative bodies have set a broad legal framework for such end-of-life decisions but have generally considered them a private matter for families to settle according to their own beliefs.

The long and public dispute between Terri Schiavo's husband and parents has galvanized activists on all sides of right-to-die issue and ignited new debate about state and federal powers.

President George W. Bush, who was in Florida on Friday to talk about Social Security, backed efforts to prolong Schiavo's life.

"The president will continue to stand on the side of defending life," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said aboard Air Force One on the way to Florida.

As the legal drama played out, police were stationed near the Woodside Hospice caring for Terri Schiavo in Pinellas Park, Florida, keeping the entry clear and checking the identities of those trying to enter.

A couple of dozen demonstrators stood outside. Some carried signs reading "Thou Shalt Not Kill." Others carried signs urging "Let Terri Rest in Peace. "

Schiavo was 26 when she became ill and had no "living will " or written directive about what end-of-life care she might want.

After hearing testimony from doctors and neurologists, the Florida courts ruled that the cardiac arrest robbed her brain of "all but the most instinctive of neurological functions" and that there was no hope of her regaining consciousness.

It ruled that she would not have wanted continued life support based in part on a relative's testimony that when her husband's grandmother was being kept alive by a respirator, Terri Schiavo had said, "If I ever go like that, just let me go ... I don't want to be kept alive on a machine."

- REUTERS