Schiavo dies

Terri Schiavo, the brain-damaged Florida woman at the heart of a wrenching legal dispute that drew in the US Congress and President George W. Bush, died yesterday, 13 days after her feeding tube was removed by court order.

Amid the same glare of publicity and outpouring of bitterness that marked the last days of her life, the 41-year-old woman's body was driven away under heavy police guard to a county medical examiner's office for an autopsy.

Ms Schiavo died at 9:05 a.m. (1305 GMT), just hours after the US Supreme Court rebuffed yet another appeal by her parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, for the feeding to be restored.

Ms Schiavo had been in what courts ruled was a "persistent vegetative state" since a cardiac arrest in 1990 deprived her brain of oxygen.

Courts had long sided with her husband and legal guardian, Michael Schiavo, in ruling she would not have wanted to live in that condition and should be allowed to die. The feeding tube was removed on March 18.

The parents argued that she responded to them and could yet recover with treatment, and their seven-year legal battle against Mr Schiavo was taken up by the Christian right, the Republican-led Congress and President Bush.

The Schiavo case fired fierce passions among right-to-life activists. Mr Schiavo, his lawyer George Felos and the state judge who presided over the case for years, George Greer, have all received death threats.

Mr Schiavo was with his wife when she died at a hospice in Pinellas Park, Florida, where she had been cared for.

Protesters who had kept vigil outside the hospice calling for Ms Schiavo to be kept alive, sobbed and prayed when her death was announced, and then sang hymns in the morning sunshine.

James Dobson, of conservative group Focus on the Family, said judges who had failed to prolong Ms Schiavo's life were guilty of "the cold-blooded, cold-hearted extermination of an innocent human life".

At the Vatican, papal spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said Ms Schiavo's death was an unacceptable "violation of the sacred nature of life".

In Florida, the family feud continued into Ms Schiavo's final moments.

"This is not only a death with all the sadness that brings. This is a killing," said Fr Frank Pavone, a Roman Catholic priest who sided with the Schindlers and visited her shortly before she died.

Fr Pavone said Ms Schiavo's blood relatives were sent out of her room 10 minutes before she died partly because Mr Schiavo did not want them to be there when he visited.

"Bobby Schindler, her brother, said 'We want to be in the room when she dies.' Michael Schiavo said, 'No, you cannot.' So his heartless cruelty continues until this very last moment," Fr Pavone said.