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Schiavo: Outsiders Not Needed In Death Decisions

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Apr 30, 2006 11:47 pm US/Eastern

Schiavo: Outsiders Not Needed In Death Decisions

PHILADELPHIA (CBS4/AP) ― Still dogged by protesters, Michael Schiavo told a bioethics gathering Sunday that outsiders have no right to intervene in medical decisions that divide even ethicists, neurologists and Catholic church officials.

Schiavo's first wife, Terri, died last year after a bitter court fight played out on the national stage, between Schiavo and his in-laws over her feeding tube.

As Congress and the White House weighed in, a Florida judge ultimately allowed the removal of the tube, 15 years after Terri Schiavo collapsed and fell into what court-ordered doctors called a permanent vegetative state. She died 13 days after the tube was removed.

Schiavo says (quote) In retrospect, I guess I should have spoken out in the very beginning, but I had no idea it was going to get so big and that the other side was going to run away with it."

He was referring to conservative religious and political groups that supported his in-laws.

Schiavo was joined at a University of Pennsylvania bioethics symposium Sunday by the mother of Karen Ann Quinlan, the New Jersey woman whose case inspired the right-to-die movement in 1975.

(© 2006 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)

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