Doctors 'will hasten death'
2005-03-28 22:12
Pinellas Park, Florida - The father of Terri Schiavo made an emotional appeal on Monday for authorities to reconnect a feeding tube to his severely brain-damaged daughter, and said he feared doctors might try to hasten her death.
"I have a grave concern that they'll expedite the process to kill her with an overdose of morphine," Bob Schindlier told the press Monday outside the hospice where his 41-year old daughter is a patient.
"She's alive and she's fighting like hell to live," he added, remarking on his daughter's "amazing, amazing endurance".
Still, after 11 days without food or water, "She's very very, very weak," Schindler said, likening her condition to that of an emaciated concentration camp survivor.
"I don't want to overestimate her condition, because she's failing, but she's still with us," he told reporters.
"She has to be saved," Schindler said.
Schiavo, who is in a permanent vegetative state, has been kept alive for 15 years since suffering brain damage following a cardiac arrest.
The feeding tube that has kept her alive was removed by court order on March 18, after years of legal wrangling between her parents and her husband Michael Schiavo, who insists his wife would not want to live in her current impaired condition.