Schiavo's relatives continue feud

PINELLAS PARK, Florida - Terri Schiavo's husband and her parents have made plans for separate memorial services, as the family's bitter division over her fate endured beyond the brain-damaged Florida woman's death.

Schiavo, at the centre of a wrenching legal dispute that drew in the U.S. Congress and President George W. Bush, died on Thursday, 13 days after her feeding tube was removed under order from a state court.

Forensic experts were conducting an autopsy on the 41-year-old woman's body on Friday at the district medical examiner's office in Largo, Florida, and the body could be released later in the day.

The long legal wrangle over Schiavo's fate wound its way through countless appeals in state and federal courts -- and it took a court order to rule that as her legal guardian, husband Michael Schiavo could proceed with plans for a cremation, followed by burial of the ashes in his home state, Pennsylvania.

The parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, fought the courts and their son-in-law to keep their daughter alive and wanted to bury her in Florida without cremation. They planned a memorial service in the St. Petersburg, Florida, area next week.

Schiavo died five years after a state court first ruled on the side of Michael Schiavo that she fell into a persistent vegetative state after a cardiac arrest in 1990, with no consciousness of her surroundings, and would not have wanted to live.

The Schindlers, believing that their daughter responded to them and had a chance of improving with treatment, fought to prolong her life in a struggle taken up by conservative Christians, anti-abortion and disabled rights activists.

The Republican-controlled Congress passed a hurried law this month, which Bush interrupted a vacation to sign, to try to circumvent state courts and push the case into federal courts. But the effort failed in courts and polls showed it was unpopular among most Americans.

HUSBAND CAN DECIDE ON REMAINS

Circuit Judge George Greer, the judge who long presided over the case in state court, ruled on Tuesday against an appeal from the parents to be allowed to bury their daughter in Florida when she died.

"Michael Schiavo, as the ward's spouse and as guardian ... is entitled to make decisions regarding disposition of the ward's remains after her death," Greer said in his order.

Schiavo died because she was no longer receiving artificial feeding, but the autopsy will likely reveal more on the extent of the brain damage she suffered.

Michael Schiavo had requested the autopsy. His lawyer, George Felos, said on Monday this was partly to dispel criticism that in seeking a cremation he was trying to hide something.

The medical examiner's office said it was its decision, not that of any relative, to conduct the autopsy and cautioned the results might not be available for several weeks.

Schiavo's parents and brother and sister implicitly rebuked Michael Schiavo in a statement on Thursday, saying she was at rest "after these recent years of neglect at the hands of those who were supposed to protect and care for her."

Michael Schiavo's brothers defended him.

"These people have done nothing but twist and turn and spin this thing. ... They've made my brother out to be a demon, vilified as a murderer," Michael Schiavo's brother, Brian Schiavo, told CNN's "Larry King Live" on Thursday evening.

Another Schiavo brother, Scott, was asked whether there could be eventual peace between the families. He replied, "I think if the Schindlers apologise to him there could be.

- REUTERS