Schiavo Feeding Tube Stays for Now

A Florida judge Wednesday afternoon ordered the tube delivering food and water to Terri Schiavo kept in place another 48 hours, as Gov. Jeb Bush pledged to do all he could to keep the incapacitated and brain-damaged woman alive.

In explaining his ruling extending the one-day stay he had issued Tuesday, Pinellas County Circuit Judge George W. Greer said he needed two more days to consider fresh legal challenges raised by the woman’s parents, including the possibility that she was misdiagnosed and that her husband, Michael Schiavo, was unfit to act as her guardian.

Terri Schiavo’s parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, are seeking to have Michael Schiavo removed as his wife’s guardian. Michael Schiavo wants to have his wife’s feeding tube removed.

If Greer decides the parents’ claims have merit, he could extend the stay past 5 p.m. EST Friday.

Fifteen years ago, Schiavo suffered brain damage when a chemical imbalance stopped her heart and cut off the oxygen to her brain. Now 41, she can breathe on her own but cannot eat or drink. According to expert medical testimony, she is in a “persistent vegetative state” with little chance of improvement.

She left no living will, but her husband, a Clearwater nurse, has said that she told him she never wished to be kept alive through artificial means. In 2000, a Florida court agreed and authorized the disconnection of the feeding tube. Her parents, however, have fought to keep the tube hooked up, contending their daughter’s condition could improve with therapy.

For many conservative Christian groups and activists for the disabled, depriving Schiavo of nourishment and water would be tantamount to murder.

On Wednesday, Florida’s Republican governor said he had received thousands of e-mails and telephone calls encouraging him to keep Schiavo alive and that his legal staff and attorneys for Florida’s Legislature were working to see what could be done.

“I can assure you, I will do whatever I can within the means, within the laws, of our state to protect this woman’s life,” Bush, the president’s younger brother, said in Tallahassee. “I won’t go beyond that.”

In 2003, Bush pushed through an emergency law that authorized him to order Schiavo’s feeding tube reinserted six days after it had been taken out. But “Terri’s Law” was ultimately held unconstitutional by Florida’s Supreme Court.

“People with deep faith and big hearts are concerned, as I am, about the circumstance that Ms. Schiavo is in,” Bush said.

“I want them to know I will do what I can, but there are limits to what any particular person -- irrespective of the title they currently hold -- can do.”

The state Department of Children and Families on Wednesday filed a petition seeking to intervene in the Schiavo case. Kelly McKibben, chief counsel for the agency’s Orlando district, attended the hearing in Greer’s Clearwater courtroom but was not allowed to speak.

She said the department’s confidentiality rules barred her from discussing the case with reporters. However, the Schindlers have in the past accused their son-in-law of mistreating their daughter and have said Michael Schiavo cannot be trusted to act in his wife’s best interest.

George J. Felos, the attorney for Michael Schiavo, said abuse complaints against his client were previously investigated and found to be without merit.

Felos said the state agency’s attempt to become involved “reeks of political arm-twisting.”

Felos told Greer that the Schindlers should no longer be allowed to raise “ever more frivolous” issues to delay the judge’s 2000 ruling that authorized Michael Schiavo to halt his wife’s feeding.

David C. Gibbs III, attorney for the Schindlers, asked Greer for the time to administer medical tests that could prove that Terri Schiavo suffers from a less serious condition, known as “minimally conscious state,” and that her state could be improved.