Fighting for Dear Life (15 page)
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⢠Early on Monday, March 21, 2005, House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL), center, gavels to a close the emergency session for debate on the Terri Schiavo case.
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⢠On March 21, 2005, three days after Terri's feeding tube was removed, supporters await a ruling from Federal Court Judge James D. Whittemore on whether Terri's case should undergo a full review.
Joni B. Hannigan/Florida Baptist Witness
⢠Broadcaster Sean Hannity, left, interviews Barbara Weller, center, and David Gibbs, right, on March 22, 2005.
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⢠On March 24, 2005, a supporter reads the news that the U.S. Supreme Court has refused to hear Terri's case.
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⢠Bob Schindler, foreground, and Bobby Schindler on March 25, 2005, the day the Eleventh Circuit Court refused to hear an appeal.
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⢠A young supporter embraces a cross on March 27, 2005.
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⢠Suzanne, Terri's sister, along with Mary and Bob Schindler during a news conference outside Woodside Hospice on March 30, 2005, the day the U.S. Supreme Court refused once again to hear a petition for appeal from the Schindlers.
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⢠Media surround David Gibbs as he announces that Terri Schiavo has died on Thursday morning, March 31, 2005.
Joni B. Hannigan/Florida Baptist Witness
⢠Bulletins from the public memorial service held for Terri on April 5, 2005.
Cherie Diaz/St. Petersburg Times/WPN/
⢠Terri's room at Woodside Hospice, April 1, 2005.
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Dr. Jon Thogmartin, right, medical examiner, giving his report on Terri's autopsy at a news conference on June 15, 2005, in Clearwater, Florida, with Dr. Stephen Nelson, who assisted with the report.
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⢠Terri's final resting place, where her remains were buried on June 20, 2005. The gravemarker Michael designed bears the date February 25, 1990, as the day Terri “departed this earth” and March 31, 2005, as the day Terri was “at peace.”
I can't say whether or not Michael Schiavo and his attorney would have agreed to meet with President Carter. We never got that far. But I'm sure his presence would have helped us jump-start the exchange. I don't fault President Carter. I never learned whether the president had made the decision or whether someone on the Center's staff had done it, perhaps without actually consulting him.
In the end, all we really knew was that another door had closed.
When it became clear that the aid of the Carter Center was no longer an option, I decided to propose our own confidential, face-to-face meeting at a neutral location. I invited Michael, his brother Brian, his lawyer, and anyone else he desired to be present for a private meeting with Mary Schindler and Bobby Jr., the two family members we believed had the best chance of reaching Michael's heart, with our representation. I had hopes that, through dialogue, a mutually agreeable outcome might be reached.
The details of the meeting could not be hammered out, so unfortunately, it never took place.
Even more, I was about to discover the hard way that Terri would have had more legal protection if she had been a terrorist, a mass murderer . . . or an animal.