Terri Schiavo Passes Away 3/31/05

MSNBC staff and news service reports Updated: 10:18 a.m. ET March 31, 2005 PINELLAS PARK, Fla. - Nearly two weeks after a court ordered her feeding tube removed, and after multiple attempts by her parents to get the order lifted, Terri Schiavo passed away on Thursday at the age of 41. Schiavo died at the Pinellas Park hospice where she lay for years while her husband and her parents fought over her fate in the nations longest, most bitter right-to-die dispute. The family battle over whether to keep her alive galvanized the nation over the last month, with even President Bush and Congress weighing in. The case had spent seven years winding its way through the courts, with Terri Schiavo`s parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, repeatedly on the losing end. They have been at odds with their son-in-law, Michael Schiavo, who consistently won legal battles by arguing that his wife would not have wanted to live in her condition. Denied access Brother Paul ODonnell, an adviser to Schiavos parents, said the parents and their two other children "were denied access at the moment of her death. Theyve been requesting, as you know, for the last hour to try to be in there and they were denied access by Michael Schiavo. They are in there now, praying at her bedside." The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday declined to intervene for the sixth time. Hours earlier in an 9-2 ruling, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta declined to grant a new hearing in the case - the fourth time since last week that it ruled against the Schindlers.