Pro-Life News in Brief

Schindler-Schiavo Death Deadline Extended to October

Terri Schindler-Schiavo's court-ordered starvation and dehydration death will not occur until 3 p.m. October 9, a Florida judge ruled, giving her parents another month to exhaust all appeals, the St. Petersburg Times reported.

Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Court Judge George Greer previously ruled August 7 that Schindler-Schiavo's husband, Michael Schiavo, could order her feeding tube removed at 3 p.m. August 28, the Times reported. When Schindler-Schiavo's parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, an-nounced they would file an appeal to the 2nd District Court of Appeal, Greer extended the deadline.

The Schindlers assert that their daughter, who has been disabled since a 1990 heart attack, is not in a persistent vegetative state and should be allowed to live, according to the Times. "You cannot execute a mentally disabled person just for being mentally disabled," Pat Anderson, the Schindlers' attorney, told the Times. "Her only crime is that she is mentally disabled."

Michael Schiavo insists that her condition will never im-prove and that his wife would have wanted to die, the Times reported. " It's my client's position that the impairment to his wife's rights is being caused by the frivolous misuse of the legal system by her parents," his attorney, George Felos, told the Times.

Divorced Father Cannot Use Frozen Embryos

In New Jersey's first embryo-custody case, the state Supreme Court ruled in favor of a woman and against her ex-husband who had asked that their frozen embryos be kept in storage so he could use them with another woman or donate them to an infertile couple, according to the Associated Press (AP).

The court ruled August 14 that the embryos could not be im- planted into another woman without the ex-wife's consent, the AP reported. But in its 7-0 decision, the court also held that the ex-husband be allowed to decide whether they should be kept in storage or destroyed.

The man's lawyer, Eric Spevak, told the AP that the embryos will be kept in storage. "At least it gives us a chance to file an appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court," he said.

The couple are identified only by initials - - the mother is referred to as "J.B." and the father as "M.B." They created the embryos after they were married in 1992, and unsuccessfully attempted in vitro fertilization four times, the Bergen Record reported. Their daughter was conceived naturally and born in March 1996, but the couple separated later that year.

After their divorce, J.B. filed a legal petition to have the embryos destroyed, according to Reuters. Both a trial court in 1998 and an appellate court upheld her right to destroy the embryos.

The high court agreed that J.B. can decide not to allow the embryos to be born. "Because M.B. is a father and is capable of having other children, his right to procreate is not lost if he is denied the opportunity to use or donate the pre-embryos," the court ruled, according to Reuters, "whereas if the pre-embryos are successfully im-planted, J.B. will be forced to become a biological parent. On balance, the fundamental right of J.B. not to procreate outweighs M.B.'s right to procreate." However, as noted, the high court gave MB the right to decide if the embryos should be left in storage or destroyed.

Attorneys for M.B., a Roman Catholic who has remarried, assert that the embryos should not be condemned to death because their parents divorced. "Do we want to preserve the potential [sic] for human life or is it subject to veto power when somebody changes their mind?" asked attorney Spevak, according to ABCNews.com.

Fetal Surgery Patient Celebrates First Birthday

Tyler Todd, who underwent fetal surgery to repair a severe heart defect, celebrated his first birthday August 16 surrounded by friends, relatives, and nurses.

Tyler has remained at Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center in Chicago since he was born, the Chicago Sun-Times reported. He remains on a ventilator, but doctors are hopeful he can eventually go home to Hobart, Indiana.

His mother, Chandra, discovered her unborn baby had ectopia cordis - - his heart was outside his chest - - when she was four months pregnant, according to the Sun-Times.

Although she was advised to have an abortion, she refused.

"I figured that if God was going to take my baby, he would do it on his own," Chandra Todd told the Sun-Times. "I wasn't going to do it." Doctors at Rush performed the surgery in April 2000, moving Tyler's diaphragm and lung to make room for his heart, placing the heart in position, and covering it with Gore-Tex and then skin.

Since he has no breastbone, Tyler needs help breathing with a ventilator. Sometime after he turns six, the Sun-Times reported, he will have surgery to build a breastbone, and then another operation when he is an adolescent.

Tyler has had a difficult first year of life, experiencing complications such as infections and a minor stroke and undergoing operations to correct other birth defects. But his mother is confident that he will keep improving.

"I'm proud of him," she told the Sun-Times. "He's a tough guy. He has come through a lot."