Schiavo's parents' legal options end

PINELLAS PARK, Fla. -- With their hopes of a miracle fading and other options exhausted, Terri Schiavo's parents and siblings appeared quietly resigned Sunday and asked protesters to spend Easter with their families as the severely brain-damaged woman spent a ninth day without food and water.\nThose outside the hospice where Terri Schiavo is being cared for were not as calm, with the first of what would be four morning arrests coming as ministers attempted to bring Schiavo Easter communion. About a half-dozen people in wheelchairs later got out of them and lay in the driveway, shouting "We're not dead yet!"\nPolice protecting the hospice were loudly heckled, prompting Schiavo's brother, Bobby Schindler, to come out and ask the protesters to tone down their behavior.\n"We are not going to solve the problem today by getting arrested," he told the restless crowd of about three dozen people. "We can change laws, but we are not going to change them today. ... You are not speaking for our family."\nA spokesman for the Schindlers denied a report from David Gibbs III, their lead lawyer, who told CBS' "Face the Nation" Sunday that Schiavo has "passed where physically she would be able to recover."\nThat statement "was not made with the family's knowledge. In the family's opinion, that is absolutely not true," family spokesman Randall Terry told reporters. \nGeorge Felos, an attorney for her husband Michael, did not return a call for comment.\nThe two sides, who have battled for years over whether the 41-year-old wanted to live or die, have given differing opinions of her status. Her parents have said she is declining rapidly and in her last hours; Felos argued Saturday that her condition is not yet that grave.\nDoctors have said Terri Schiavo would probably die within a week or two of the tube being removed March 18. She relied on the tube for 15 years after suffering catastrophic brain damage when her heart stopped beating and oxygen was cut off to her brain.\nSchiavo's parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, have maintained their daughter is not in a persistent vegetative state as court-ordered doctors have determined. Michael Schiavo has said his wife told him that she would not want to be kept alive artificially.\nThe Schindlers said they would stop asking courts to intervene after the Florida Supreme Court rejected their most recent appeal Saturday. The parents were rebuffed repeatedly by federal courts after Congress passed an extraordinary law last weekend allowing the case to be heard by federal judges.\nAbout three dozen protesters stayed at the hospice Sunday after the Schindlers asked them to spend Easter Sunday with their families. Bob Schindler told reporters the protesters were welcome back on Monday.\nBut many protesters ignored the call to stay away for the holiday.\n"People are getting emotional," said the Rev. Patrick Mahoney of the Washington-based Christian Defense Coalition. "A woman is starving to death, but we want to focus on Terri, not on us."\nAt St. Michael the Archangel Catholic Church in Clearwater, Father Ted Costello scrupulously avoided mentioning the Schiavo case in Easter mass. Parishioner Bill Youmans said that was a good thing.\n"I don't think that's got anything to do with Easter," the 76-year-old retiree from Michigan said. "I thought the church's teaching is not to take extraordinary measures to perpetuate life. ... I think all those people bleating in Schiavo's front yard give Jesus a bad name."\nBut down the road at Faith Lutheran Church in Dunedin, the Rev. Peter Kolb thought Schiavo's story was appropriate for an Easter sermon.\n"Imagine the young woman that's been trapped in a hospice for 15 years," he told his flock, without actually mentioning Schiavo's name. "One day we're all going to go through the valley. ... Some day, somehow, each of us are going to face that last enemy."\nBefore the service, he handed a reporter a publication outlining "things that each of us can do to help save Terri Schindler-Schiavo." It was a publication of the Lutheran Church -- the church of Michael Schiavo's youth.\nSupporters of the Schindlers continued their demands Sunday for Gov. Jeb Bush to intervene.\n"Terri is in effect on death row. ... We're asking the governor for a stay of execution on Easter Sunday," said Larry Klayman, founder of the conservative legal group Judicial Watch.\nBush told CNN on Sunday that he has done all he can in the case, as he has said for several days.\n"I cannot violate a court order," he said. "I don't have powers from the United States Constitution or, for that matter, from the Florida constitution, that would allow me to intervene after a decision has been made."\nAt least two more appeals were pending by the state and Bush, but those challenges were before the state 2nd District Court of Appeal, which has rebuffed the governor's previous efforts in the case.