Judge Grants Delay in Us Right-to-die Case

A court decision over whether a Florida man can order doctors to allow his comatose wife to die has been delayed for a day, as the US supreme court prepared to rule on assisted suicide laws in Oregon in a seperate case.

The granting of the delay prevented Terri Schiavo's husband, Michael, from authorising doctors to remove her feeding tube until the court was able to sit and hear a further challenge from Ms Schiavo's parents, Robert and Mary Schindler, tomorrow.

The Schindlers are running out of legal means by which to prevent their son-in-law from bringing an end to the vegetative state Ms Schiavo, who is being cared for in a Miami hospice, has been in since suffering a cardiac arrest 15 years ago.

"The family is profoundly grateful," David Gibbs a lawyer for the Schindlers, said after the stay was granted. "They believe God answered their prayers. Their daughter is alive another day."

George Felos, Mr Schiavo's lawyer, said that 41-year-old Ms Schiavo's life support would be discontinued as soon as her husband was legally authorised to do so. It is thought likely that it would then take several days for her to die.

Doctors say she is in a persistent vegetative state and has no hope of recovery, but her parents believe she may improve with rehabilitation. They allege Mr Schiavo is unfit to be her guardian.

The case has brought to increasing public attention the question of whether people whose suffering is extreme and unabated should be assisted to die.

Oregon, which is the only state in the US to have legalised assisted suicide, has been informed that a White House challenge to its suicide law is to be heard in the supreme court.

In January, the supreme court refused to hear an appeal from the governor of Florida, Jeb Bush, who has demanded that Ms Schiavo be kept alive.

In 1994, voters in Oregon approved the Death with Dignity Act by 51% to 49% in a state-wide referendum. Although the Act was challenged by the state legislature and never took effect, it was approved again and implemented in 1997, with 60% of voters in favour.

The law allowed patients a right to die only if they were capable adults diagnosed as suffering from a terminal disease likely to result in death within six months. Since then, 171 people have used the law.

However, in November 2001, the US attorney general, John Ashcroft, said he would revoke the right to prescribe medicine to any doctor found assisting suicide. Despite being found to have exceeded his judicial powers, Mr Ashcroft's request that the supreme court looks at reversing Oregon's suicide law has been accepted.

The question of assisted suicide has also created controversy in Britain. Last December, the high court lifted a travel ban on a terminally ill woman that preventing her from flying to a euthanasia clinic in Switzerland.

Months earlier, a survey of 1,000 British doctors found that almost half believed colleagues helped patients to commit suicide. A bill to legalise assisted suicide, put forward by Lord Joffe, is under discussion by a Lords select committee.

Mark Slattery, of the Voluntary Euthanasia Society, said: "In Oregon, competent but terminally ill patients are allowed indirect medical assistance to die. The doctor writes a prescription which the patient themself must take. This is the closest example to the law we think the UK should adopt and to Lord Joffe's current bill before parliament.

"The Schiavo case highlights a more difficult area of law for doctors which is how to take decisions in a patient's best interests when they are not competent."