Time Running Out For Schiavo
Appealing Latest Ruling That Keeps Terri Schiavo Off Feeding Tube
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Play CBS Video Video Good Friday Deathwatch Demonstrators continued their efforts in Florida to prolong Terri Schiavo's life. Her relatives are soldiering on with their court battles, Mark Strassmann reports.
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Video Judicial Murder? What if the courts would have ruled in favor of Schiavo's parents? Bob Schieffer talks with CBS News Legal Analyst Andrew Cohen, who says the legal world would have been turned upside down.
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Video Focus On Living Wills As many as two-thirds of healthy adult Americans do not have living wills. Sharyn Alfonsi reports on how you can keep what happened to Terri Schiavo from happening to you.
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Demonstrator Robert Wood III of Atlanta stands silently outside the hospice where Terri Schiavo resides Friday. (AP)
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Supporters of reinserting Terri Schiavo's feeding tube gather outside the Florida Governor's Mansion in Tallahassee. (AP)
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Bob Schindler, right, and his wife Mary Schindler, left, leave after doing an interview about their daughter Terri Schiavo in Pinellas Park, Fla. (AP)
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Interactive Life And Death Battle Terri Schiavo's husband and parents clash over keeping the brain-damaged woman alive.
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Interactive Dying Wishes Learn about living wills and other steps to protect your end-of-life decisions.
Cranford says this is a perfect example of religious beliefs muddying medical waters.
"Terri's not there. She's been like this for 15 years," he says. "There's no doubt about the diagnosis and all the pro-lifers and Christian bio-ethicists in the world aren't going to change that."
Cranford and other neurologists say brain scans show massive damage to her cerebral hemisphere.
In the federal court hearing, Schindler lawyer David Gibbs III argued that Terri Schiavo's rights to life and privacy were being violated. Whittemore interrupted as Gibbs attempted to liken Schiavo's death to a murder.
"That is the emotional rhetoric of this case. It does not influence this court, and cannot influence this court. I want you to know it and I want the public to know it," Whittemore said.
A perimeter around the federal courthouse was evacuated during the hearing after a suspicious backpack was found outside. The hearing was not interrupted, and the package was safely detonated using a remote device.
On Thursday evening, a man was arrested after he went to a gun store in Seminole and threatened its owner with a box cutter while demanding a weapon to "rescue" Terri Schiavo, the Pinellas County sheriff's office said.
Terri Schiavo suffered brain damage in 1990 when her heart stopped briefly from a chemical imbalance believed to have been brought on by an eating disorder. She left no living will, but her husband argued that she told him she would not want to be kept alive artificially. Her parents dispute that, and contend she could get better.
The dispute has led to what may be the longest, most heavily litigated right-to-die case in U.S. history.
Earlier Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court, without explanation, refused to order the feeding tube reinserted. The case worked its way through the federal courts and reached the Supreme Court after Congress passed an extraordinary law over the weekend to let the Schindlers take their case to federal court.
©MMV, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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