Terri Schiavo’s remains cremated

MIAMI - The remains of Terri Schiavo, the Florida woman who had been at the centre of a highly politicised right-to-die dispute, have been cremated, her husband's lawyer said.

Schiavo, 41, died on Thursday at a Florida hospice, 13 days after her feeding tube was removed under order from a state court. She had been severely brain-damaged since a 1990 cardiac arrest.

Courts had long sided with her husband, Michael Schiavo, in ruling that she was in a persistent vegetative state and would not have wanted to live in that condition. But her parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, fought to keep their daughter alive in a case that galvanised the Christian right and drew in the US Congress and President George W Bush.

"The remains ... were cremated this morning at approximately 9 am at the National Cremation Society, in accordance with an order of the Pinellas County Probate Court, " the office of Michael Schiavo's lawyer, George Felos, said in a statement. "No further plans have as yet been determined."

Forensic experts performed an autopsy on Schiavo's body and it was made ready for release on Friday. The district medical examiner's office in Largo, Florida, said that the final results of the autopsy might not be available for weeks.

Michael Schiavo's lawyer George Felos said that his client hoped an autopsy would dispel doubts that he was trying to hide something by seeking to cremate his wife's body.

The battle between Schiavo's parents and husband over whether she would have wanted to die had wound its way through countless appeals in state and federal courts, and the relatives were also divided about funeral plans.

It took a court order to rule that, as her legal guardian, Michael Schiavo could cremate the body, and bury the ashes in his home state, Pennsylvania.

The parents had wanted to bury her in Florida without cremation. A spokesman said the Schindlers planned a funeral Mass in Florida next Tuesday.

- REUTERS