Terry Schiavo Is Dead

R.I.P.

The report just came on Fox News.
This is very sad no matter which side of the divide you fell on. Life is precious, family is important and I'm sure the family is in considerable agony right now.

I pray that God is with them and Terry in their hour of need.

Here's part of the story from the 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.

Bobby Schindler, left, brother of brain-damaged Florida woman Terri Schiavo and his sister Suzanne, right, leave the Woodside Hospice where Schiavo is being cared for, in Pinellas Park, Fla. (Rick Fowler - Reuters)

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."