Schiavo parents again appeal to US Supreme Court

PINELLAS PARK, Florida - The parents of brain-damaged Florida woman Terri Schiavo again took her case to the United States Supreme Court asking for an emergency order allowing her feeding tube to be reinserted while they further appealed the case.

The appeal was lodged with the court in Washington just hours after a US Appeals court in Atlanta refused to hear the case and as Schiavo weakened 12 days after her feeding tube was removed amid a national debate over the right to die.

"In the light of the magnitude of what is at stake and the urgency of the action required, the injunctive relief should be immediately granted and Terri Shiavo's nourishment restored so that this court can properly review this case," the Schindler's lawyers said in the 19-page request to Supreme Court.

The earlier refusal by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta to conduct a full-court review of an earlier rebuff by a three-judge panel was a further blow to the Schindler's hopes of keeping their dying daughter alive.

The tube was disconnected under a state court order on March 18, sparking a highly politicised debate over the right to die. Doctors said then the 41-year-old woman would likely live up to two weeks without it.

The Supreme Court has repeatedly refused to become involved in the Schindlers' seven-year feud with Schiavo's husband, Michael, over whether to let their daughter die -- a dispute that drew in President George W. Bush and Congress.

One of the Atlanta judges, Justice Stanley Birch, assailed as unconstitutional a law passed by Congress and signed by Bush that sought to get the Schiavo case reviewed by pushing into the federal courts a matter that had long been decided by state courts.

"In resolving the Schiavo controversy it is my judgment that, despite sincerity and altruistic motivation, the legislative and executive branches of our government have acted in a manner demonstrably at odds with our Founding Fathers' blueprint for the governance of a free people -- our Constitution," Birch wrote in an opinion.

State courts have consistently sided with Michael Schiavo in ruling that a cardiac arrest, which deprived his wife's brain of oxygen in 1990, left her in a persistent vegetative state and that she would not want to live on like that.

The Schindlers, who believe their daughter is responsive and could improve, have been backed by the Christian right, anti-abortion campaigners and disabled rights activists, and by mainly Republican politicians who saw their cause as a rallying point for advocates of "the culture of life. "

But the intervention by Congress, which polls showed was deeply unpopular among Americans, failed to make a difference even after the Schindlers took their case all the way up to the US Supreme Court last week.

"We must conscientiously guard the independence of our judiciary and safeguard the Constitution, even in the face of the unfathomable human tragedy that has befallen Mrs. Schiavo and her family," Birch wrote in his scathing assault on the law as an intrusion into the judicial branch of power.

- REUTERS