Terri Schiavo Celebrates 41st Birthday Amid Case Appeal
Terri Schiavo, who has been the center of a long right-to-live case, celebrated her 41st birthday on Friday.
After oxygen was deprived from her brain when she collapsed in her home in 1990, Schiavo suffered from brain damage and needed to receive nutrition from feeding tubes to survive.
However, her husband Michael had been fighting to remove her feeding tubes, claiming that she told him before her collapse that she would never want to live through artificial means.
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Terri’s parents Robert and Mary Schindler, in their fight to keep their daughter alive, recently won a favorable ruling in their appeal to a court decision ordering her tubes to be removed.
The ruling gives Terri more reason to celebrate on her birthday, according to Life Legal Defense Foundation, which provides funding for Terri’s parents in the case, along with Arizona-based Alliance Defense Fund.
“Although the stay was lifted, there was no direct effect on the continuation of Terri’s nutrition and hydration due to an earlier trial court decision protecting Terri from efforts to dehydrate and starve her into an early death,” says Dana Cody, attorney with Life Legal Defense Foundation.
The Schindler’s filed this week a separate case arguing that Terri would not want to die but uphold the values of her Roman Catholic faith by following the Pope’s recent statement on euthanasia.
Florida Gov. Jeb Bush filed an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday, asking the justices to uphold his authority to intervene and reinsert Terri’s feeding tubes when they were removed in October 2003.
Terri’s parents have posted a list of ways for people interested in helping Terri celebrate her birthday on her Web site, (www.terrisfight.org/birthday.html).
