US: The Rev Jesse Jackson pleaded yesterday for Terri Schiavo to be kept alive as the brain-damaged Florida woman at the centre of a bitter family and political dispute slipped towards death.
"She is being starved to death, she is being dehydrated to death. That's immoral and unnecessary," the civil rights leader told reporters after meeting Ms Schiavo's parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, near the hospice where she is being cared for.
Ms Schiavo's feeding tube was removed on March 18th after a protracted court battle between her husband, who is her legal guardian, and the Schindlers, that galvanized many US religious conservatives.
The case prompted the Republican-led US Congress to pass a special law pushing the case into the federal courts, and President George W. Bush cut short a vacation to sign it. Mr Bush's brother, Florida governor Jeb Bush, has also intervened in the case.
But recent polls have shown most Americans felt Congress should have stayed out of the Schiavo case, and that the government should stay out of families' life-and-death decisions. A CBS poll last week found that 82 per cent of Americans felt Congress should have stayed out of the case.
The Schindlers invited the Rev Jackson to visit in order to boost their effort to keep their daughter alive against court orders and her husband's wishes. Michael Schiavo believes his wife, severely brain-damaged for 15 years, would never have wanted to live in this state.
Ms Schiavo's artificial feeding was halted under order from a state court that has long sided with Michael Schiavo in ruling that a 1990 cardiac arrest left his wife (41) in a persistent vegetative state from which she would not recover, and that she would not want to live in this condition.
Rev Jackson was spending time with the Schindlers near the Pinellas Park hospice, but was not going to visit Schiavo. His urgings to the Florida legislature came after state lawmakers failed to pass a law to intervene despite being urged to do so by Governor Bush.
Governor Bush also failed in an effort to be allowed to have the state welfare agency take custody of Ms Schiavo and has stressed he believes there is nothing more in his powers he can do to prolong Ms Schiavo's life.
Mr Schindler has veered in recent days between saying his daughter is near death and battling for life.
"She's failing. She still looks pretty darn good under the circumstances," he said yesterday. "Her body functions are still working and she's alert. It's not too late to save her."
Mr Schiavo's lawyer, George Felos, said on Monday Ms Schiavo's pulse had become "thready" and she had not passed urine for a while - a possible sign of approaching death. Mr Felos also said his client had ordered an autopsy after Ms Schiavo's death to silence allegations that his plan to cremate her is aimed at hiding something.