Terri Schiavo Has Died

Terri Schiavo died shortly before 10 A.M., according to news reports.

Terri Schiavo, 41, Dies in Fla. Hospice (Washington Post)

Terri Schiavo, the brain-damaged Florida woman whose condition ignited a protracted legal struggle, died today at a Florida hospice, 13 days after her feeding tube was removed under a court order. Representatives of both sides in a dispute over her fate confirmed the death shortly before 10 a.m. EST.

The death of Schiavo, 41, ended the court battle that had pitted her husband, who wanted to take her off artificial life support, against her parents and siblings, who sought to keep her alive at all costs. But the death appeared unlikely to quell the broader controversy fueled by the Schiavo case, one that set right-to-life, antiabortion and conservative religious groups — with backing from President Bush and Republican leaders in Congress — against advocates of a “right to die” when the brain no longer functions.

Schiavo’s death, at the Woodside Hospice in Pinellas Park, Fla., came 15 years after she suffered cardiac arrest, experienced a loss of oxygen to the brain and slipped into a coma as a result of an eating disorder. She later emerged from the coma, but she never regained consciousness and remained in what doctors said was a “persistent vegetative state.”

May she rest in peace.

See my Terri Schiavo Case archives for previous posts on this subject.

NYT, CNN, and AP have obits as well.

Others blogging:

See also the trackbacks below.

Minor errors corrected.

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James Joyner
About James Joyner
James Joyner is Professor and Department Head of Security Studies at Marine Corps University's Command and Staff College. He's a former Army officer and Desert Storm veteran. Views expressed here are his own. Follow James on Twitter @DrJJoyner.

Comments

  1. McGehee says:

    Um, what I wrote was “in the last few weeks,” not the last fifteen years.

    [sigh]

  2. Anomalocaris says:

    This unfortunate case of Terri Schiavo has brought forth a great deal of compassion and caring from millions of people concerned about the well-being of one individual.

    Death is a natural part of life; every person and every living creature will die some day. Some die after a long, productive, and satisfying life, and others are cut short before their time.

    Every day on planet earth, 29,000 children die before reaching their fifth birthday. Most of these deaths are of preventable. Pneumonia kills millions every year, yet it can be cured with a dollar’s worth of antibiotics. Diarrheal dehydration kills over a million children every year, and most of these lives could be saved if the parents had access to a ten-cent packet of oral rehydration salts and knew the procedure for administering oral rehydration therapy. Tuberculosis kills over two million a year, and is curable with a course of drugs costing just $10.

    I hope that the outpouring of compassion for Terri Schiavo will be channeled, or broadcast, to the millions of children in the world living and dying in poverty, whose lives are needlessly snuffed out for want of ten cents’ worth of oral rehydration salts, a dollar’s worth of antibiotics, or a two dollar mosquito net that prevents the spread of malaria during sleep.

  3. Did you notice how insensitive President Bush’s remarks were this morning about Terri Schiavo? He used her death as a segway to talk about homeland security…

  4. Copper says:

    May she rest in peace now; since she certainly didn’t have it while the politicians and media made a circus over her life and now in her death. Shame on them.