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Terri Schiavo’s hometown divided on issue
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terri Schiavo’s relatives and acquaintances in her native Pennsylvania marked her passing Thursday, and continued to disagree about whether more should have been done to keep her alive.
Her brother in-law, Scott Schiavo, said in interviews with television reporters at his Levittown home that he felt relief that her ordeal is finally over. ”Terri’s at rest now, that’s the most important thing to all of us, my family, that Terri is at peace, that she’s in a better place,” he said.
”She’s got all of her dignity back,” he said. ”She’s now in heaven, she’s now with God and she’s walking with grace.”
Schiavo, brother of Terri’s husband, Michael, said he had received several threatening phone calls from around the country in the hours after the death.
At her alma mater, Archbishop Wood High School in Warminster, workers changed a sign that read ”Terri Schiavo, Class of 1981, We pray that you may live” to ”We pray that you rest in peace.”
”It’s sad. Why not let the lady live?” said John Rogers, one of the workers who changed the sign. ”Feed the lady, let her live. This is America.”
U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., issued a written statement expressing condolences to Schiavo’s family, and lashing out at the court system.
”Terri Schiavo was given a death sentence, and passed away without the right to due process,” Santorum said.
He called Terri an ”innocent person” who was ”penalized by a court system that grants convicted murderers fair treatment under the law, but not a woman whose only crime was not filing a living will.”
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