Schiavo parents fight on as feeding request is refused

Terri Schiavo's parents have taken their battle to a federal appeals court, after a Florida district judge refused to accept their request for an injunction ordering their severely brain-damaged daughter to be put back on life support.

Terri Schiavo's parents have taken their battle to a federal appeals court, after a Florida district judge refused to accept their request for an injunction ordering their severely brain-damaged daughter to be put back on life support.

As widely expected, James Whittemore, the lower court judge, ruled yesterday that, in his opinion, the issue had already been comprehensively dealt with in Florida's state courts, in the past several years.

In an implicit rebuff to Congress - which passed emergency legislation at the weekend allowing the family to bring their campaign into the federal court system - Mr Whittemore declared Terri's parents, Robert and Mary Schindler, had failed to demonstrate "substantial likelihood of success" if the case went back to court. Despite the "difficult and strained circumstances", he wrote, "this court must apply the law to the issues before it."

Within minutes of the judge's decision in Tampa, lawyers for the Schindlers lodged an appeal with the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, covering the southeastern US. But whatever the three-judge panel in Atlanta decides, the last word almost certainly will rest with the Supreme Court, which has twice declined to intervene.

With every hour that passes, the physical urgency of Ms Schiavo's situation increases. The feeding tube keeping her alive at the Las Pinellas hospice near Tampa was removed on Friday, in accordance with what appeared a definitive Florida state court ruling. The tube has not been reinserted. Without the tube, she is likely to die within a week or 10 days.

Among the family members, politicians and social pressure groups who have fastened on to the case, emotions are growing more intense.

Bobby Schindler, her brother, said his family was "crushed" by Judge Whittemore's ruling. "To have to see my parents go through this is absolutely barbaric," he said. "We were so encouraged when Congress and the President signed this bill into law." Both the White House and top Republicans in Congress expressed dismay at yesterday's developments. Bill Frist, the Republican majority leader and a prime mover behind the emergency legislation, said he was "deeply disappointed".

The White House, too, "would have preferred a different ruling," Scott McClellan, Mr Bush's spokesman, said. "We continue to stand on the side of defending life," he added.

But that stance was challenged by opponents of the President, not least in his home state of Texas, where, as governor between 1995 and 2000, he presided over more than 150 executions, granting a stay in only one case.

To make so much of a "culture of life" now is "hypocrisy at a thousand levels," David Dow, a University of Houston law professor, said.

Terri's husband, Michael, maintains his wife made clear to him she would not want to be kept alive artificially under such circumstances. He described Tom DeLay - Republican leader in the House and the most vocal advocate of Ms Schiavo's right to life - as a "little slithering snake" pandering for votes.

Ms Schiavo, 41, has been in a deep vegetative state since she had a heart attack in 1990, and medical opinion is virtually unanimous that she will never recover. "Terri died 15 years ago," her husband says. "It's time for her to be with the Lord like she wanted to be."

Ordinary Americans agree, a clear majority of whom told pollsters that the judgment of Florida's state courts should be respected. More than two-thirds say that Congress should never have involved itself.