Feeding tube conflict in court

SIX days after Terri Schiavo’s feeding tube was removed at the request of her husband, a hospital began again pumping fluids into the brain-damaged woman on orders from Florida Governor Jeb Bush.

Both men have remained rivals in one of the longest and most bitter right-to-die battles, a struggle that has embroiled all branches of state government and is now in the Florida Supreme Court.

The question before the court is whether the law Mr Bush signed in October to keep the 40-year-old Schiavo alive violates her constitutional right to privacy and the separation of government powers.

While lawyers for Schiavo’s husband Michael and Mr Bush battle in court, Terri Schiavo herself will be some 200 miles away in a nursing home in Clearwater. The court’s decision could ultimately determine whether she lives or dies.

This is the first time Florida’s Supreme Court has agreed to take up any aspect of the 14-year-old case.

Terri Schiavo suffered brain damage in 1990 when her heart stopped, which was brought on by an eating disorder. She left no written instructions in the event she became incapacitated.

Ms Schiavo can breathe on her own but relies on a feeding tube to live. Some medical experts have declared she is in a persistent vegetative state with no hope of recovery.

Her husband has argued that she would not want to be kept alive in this way. But her parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, have disputed that and argued that she could someday regain some of her faculties.

A judge ruled that there was clear and convincing evidence that Ms Schiavo would not have wanted to be kept alive artificially, and last October her husband Michael withdrew the feeding tube.

But in a remarkable week of emotion and political activism by her parents’ supporters, Mr Bush pushed “Terri’s Law” through the state legislature and forced the reinsertion of the tube. The law was narrowly drafted to give the governor authority to issue such an order.