Michael Schiavo

He's been vilified on Web sites and talk shows. He's been called a wife-abuser, an adulterer, a money-grubbing murderer. Death threats have been left in his mailbox. Throngs of protesters have waved signs and chanted outside his house in Clearwater, Fla., and they have gathered again. Sometimes, even Michael Schiavo's friends have wondered why, in the face of all that, he didn't just walk away. It would have been easier for him to relinquish guardianship of his severely incapacitated wife, Terri, to her parents.

As Terri Schiavo passed her 10th full day without her feeding tube in a Florida hospice yesterday, her husband's attorney said that an autopsy would be conducted to rebut claims made by her parents. George J. Felos, attorney for Michael Schiavo, said he would ask for a complete postmortem examination by Jon R. Thogmartin, chief medical examiner of Pinellas and Pasco Counties, because he "believes it is important for the public to know the full and massive extent" of Terri Schiavo's brain injuries.

The remains of Theresa "Terri" Maria Schiavo, who died March 31 in a Florida hospice after a protracted court battle and a nationwide debate over her fate, were interred yesterday in a shady, historic memorial park in Clearwater, Fla. Her husband, Michael Schiavo, "certain of his brothers," and a priest were present at the interment, according to a statement released late afternoon by his law firm, Felos and Felos. Just as they could not agree over her life, Michael Schiavo and her parents could not agree on the logistics of burial for Terri Schiavo, who was 41 when she died.

Both Michael Schiavo and his in-laws, Bob and Mary Schindler, say the fight over Terri Schiavo revolves around the control of money. In 1993, Michael Schiavo received approximately $1.1 million in a medical malpractice suit after doctors were found negligent for failing to diagnose a chemical imbalance in Terri Schiavo, his wife. The bulk of the award, $750,000, was set aside for Terri Schiavo's care, to be administrated by her husband as her guardian. On Monday, Michael Schiavo told television interviewer Larry King that only $50,000 of the fund remained and that the Schindlers waged their war against his guardianship after he refused to give them part of the settlement.

The lawyer for Terri Schiavo's parents has described the marker that her husband, Michael Schiavo, chose for her Florida gravesite as "exceptionally unkind. " The inscription at the bottom of the marker reads, "I kept my promise," alluding to Michael Schiavo's stance in the bitter seven-year battle fought with his wife's parents over the brain-damaged woman's fate. But Michael Schiavo's brother, Brian, said yesterday the words were simply a message "from Michael to Terri. " In ongoing court appearances that prompted nationwide debate over right-to-die issues, Michael Schiavo argued that he had promised his wife, who collapsed in 1990, that he would never keep her alive artificially.

MIKE LAWLER'S recent letter of support for Michael Schiavo includes no sympathy toward the mother, brother and sister of Terri Schiavo. The courts ruled that Terri had the right to die but that did not mean that Michael Schiavo had to stop every attempt a heartbroken mother made to save her child or be there in her final hours. A parent's worst horror is to see their child suffer and die regardless of the circumstances. The father of Jessica Lunsford, the murdered Florida girl, can help you understand the pain of a parent.

Court documents unsealed yesterday show that Florida's Department of Children and Families asked to intervene in the Terri Schiavo case because the agency wanted to investigate 30 allegations of abuse, neglect and exploitation. In a petition filed Feb. 23, the department had asked a judge to delay the removal of the brain-damaged woman's feeding tube, saying the agency needed no more than 60 days to investigate the allegations against Michael Schiavo, her husband. Pinellas Circuit Court Judge George Greer will hold a hearing on the petition at 1:30 p.m. Wednesday.

A court hearing this afternoon in Florida will determine whether the bitter fight over removing Terri Schiavo's feeding tube will continue a while longer or begin its final chapter. Yesterday, the judicial stay barring her husband, Michael Schiavo, from removing the tube expired briefly, before a new order put off any action, at least until this evening. With only a few hours left on the judicial clock, the parents and brother of the severely brain-damaged woman redoubled their efforts to find a way to stop Michael Schiavo.

The Florida Supreme Court refused yesterday to reconsider its recent decision striking down a hastily passed law that blocked the removal of Terri Schiavo's feeding tube. A spokeswoman for Gov. Jeb Bush, who had pushed the legislation, said that the governor's lawyers were studying options for appeal, "potentially to the U.S. Supreme Court. " But the seven-year legal battle between Terri's husband, Michael Schiavo, and her parents, former Montgomery County residents Bob and Mary Schindler, seemed to come closer to an end. A lawyer for Michael Schiavo, who seeks to remove his brain-damaged wife from life support, said that as a result of the Florida high court's ruling, "Mr. Schiavo believes he's authorized to immediately remove Terri's feeding tubes.

I'M SORRY for those like letter-writer John King who continually defame Michael Schiavo. They can't get over the fact that he had a girlfriend and two children while still caring about his wife, Terri. He never abandoned her. He didn't move away. He was constantly at her side demanding care from the hospice personnel. Even when he had to go to court to enforce her wishes. Not his, not the Schindlers'. Terri's. Mike Lawler Pottstown

Michael Schiavo criticized Bob Casey Jr. and Pennsylvania Democrats yesterday for using the death of his wife, Terri, as a weapon against U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum (R., Pa.) in the Senate race this fall. Schiavo, visiting Philadelphia to lend his support to two Democratic congressional candidates, noted that Santorum and Casey had supported legislation Congress passed in March 2005 to let the federal courts review Terri's case after state courts in Florida had allowed removal of her feeding tube.

KENNETH Carchidi's Aug. 28 letter criticizing Michael Schiavo's campaign against lawmakers who interfered in his and his late wife Terri's affairs made me laugh. He is quick to belittle Mr. Shiavo's and the Democratic Party's beliefs, yet can sincerely state that "Republicans weren't looking for a fight" and Terri "was executed"? Not everyone who followed this story believes as you do, Kenneth. We the public will never truly know the full facts about Terri's case, and, therefore, judgment of both sides on the family battlefield should be withheld by us mere mortals.

THANK YOU very much for your article "Think it's funny?" (Aug. 21), in which you bring a major problem in our communities to the forefront. Too many people don't understand how entrenched the "crime = cool" culture is in our communities in Philadelphia. To quote Will Smith: "Just because you can do it doesn't mean that you should do it. Did you take time to think about all the seeds you ruin?" I think that we must stand up and speak out against stores and shops that are preying on our children.

THE EYES of the political world will be on us come fall. Pennsylvania is home to the hottest Senate race and three of the most contested House races in the nation. The outcome of the Santorum-Casey, Fitzpatrick-Murphy, Gerlach-Murphy and Weldon-Sestak races could determine control of Congress. The vulnerability of many GOPers is war-related. But there are also important social issues, notably the attempted intervention in the case of Terri Schiavo. Some clues on that might be found in Connecticut, which just had a bruising Democratic primary between Joseph Lieberman and Ned Lamont.

MICHAEL Smerconish recently devoted a column to our reaction to his participation in a seminar at Penn concerning Terri Schiavo. We wrote that the seminar "celebrated the death of Terri Schiavo. " He objected. In March 2005, at the request of her husband, a Florida judge ordered that Terri Schiavo be denied liquids and food until death. Many Americans protested this incredible cruelty, but 13 days later, she died. This was not a case of foolishly keeping a dead person alive through the use of a machine.

Two seminal figures in the right-to-die movement - the husband of Terri Schiavo and the mother of Karen Ann Quinlan - yesterday described strikingly different experiences with the news media at a conference at the University of Pennsylvania. Julia Quinlan, who fought to have her daughter's respirator removed 31 years ago, said, "The media can be very helpful, and were in our case. " Television and print reporters were in her Morristown, N.J., home night and day, and she felt they understood and even supported her fight, she said.

Why is it so hard to die in America? That is the question posed by a symposium that begins today at the University of Pennsylvania titled: "The Legacy of the Terri Schiavo Case: Why Is It So Hard to Die in America?" Theresa Schiavo was finally put to rest a little more than a year ago after a long struggle between her husband, Michael Schiavo, and her parents, Robert and Mary Schindler, over whether to disconnect her feeding tube. Since then, she has become a symbol not only of how we die in America, but also of the "culture wars," the continuing moral struggle in this country that seems to have pigeonholed us all into red and blue states, conservatives and liberals, pro-life and pro-choice.

The drama of the Terri Schiavo case brought unprecedented attention to end-of-life issues from activists and lawmakers, but there has been relatively little legislative reaction in the 16 weeks since she died. A handful of state laws, mostly dealing with peripheral matters, have resulted from the globally watched case and the passions it evoked. No federal legislation has resulted. Any impact in the voting booth is still unknown. The Schiavo effect "may be a very transitory one. It's hard to tell right now," said Charles Sabatino, director of the American Bar Association's committee on law and aging.

Bravo, skateboarders It was wonderful to see our city filled with skateboarders on Tuesday. They seemed to be enjoying their urban skate, and it was fun for those of us who live here to watch them. Mayor Street should be doing all he can to encourage these young people to come to Philadelphia. He talks about improving the image of our city, making it a hipper place. He bent over backward to bring MTV's reality show to Old City. But the city continues to ban skateboarders from Love Park and banishes them to the hinterlands of the city - under I-95, in FDR Park.

Florida Gov. Jeb Bush's decision to sic a state prosecutor on Michael Schiavo, ex-husband of Terri Schiavo, smacks of a politician trying to save face. Bush has been wrongly injecting himself into this family tragedy for a long time, ignoring reams of evidence about her grim medical state and the assertions of her husband and legal guardian that she didn't want to live that way. An autopsy revealed last week that Terri Schiavo, 41, had indeed suffered profound and irreversible brain damage when she collapsed 15 years ago. It showed that she was blind and that her brain had deteriorated to about half the size of the brain of a healthy adult, leaving her no chance for recovery.