News Articles by Joni B. Hannigan & Michael Foust

Senator stops by Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., prayed with and gave encouragement to Mary and Bob Schidnler and their family Tuesday night, March 29, outside the hospice where 41-year-old Terri Schiavo, the Schindlers’ daughter, is being starved to death by court order. Photo by Joni B. Hannigan/Florida Baptist Witness

PINELLAS PARK, Fla. (BP)--A federal appeals court March 30 again refused to order the re-insertion of Terri Schiavo's feeding tube, dashing hopes of pro-lifers who had thought an 11th-hour miracle could be on the horizon.
      The court, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta, had temporarily provided Schiavo supporters a reason for optimism.
      Schiavo's parents received a legal victory just after midnight March 30, when the court announced it would allow another emergency appeal to be filed that could save the 41-year-old woman's life. But upon reviewing the petition, the court announced during the afternoon that it would not intervene in the case.

Mother’s plea continues Photo Mary Schindler, Terri Schiavo's mother, pleads with Terri's husband, Michael Schiavo, and his girlfriend, Jody Centonze, to let her have her daughter back. Terri, 41, is severely brain damaged and is in the 13th day of a court-ordered starvation. Photo by Joni B. Hannigan/Florida Baptist Witness

      Schiavo has been without nutrition and hydration since March 18 and could die at any time, doctors say.
      The petition before the appeals court, submitted by attorney David Gibbs, had said federal judges who previously rejected requests to have Schiavo's feeding tube reinserted violated a Supreme Court precedent requiring them to consider the full record of the case, not just the procedural history from the state court, according to CNN.com.
      In the petition, Gibbs said he could prove to the federal court that "the 'evidence' supporting Terri's alleged wishes is not credible, and that a reasonable fact finder would hold -- under any standard of proof -- that her wishes were to the contrary."