THIRTEEN DAYS AFTER HER FEEDING TUBE WAS REMOVED, Terri Schiavo has died:

PINELLAS PARK, Fla. (AP) - Terri Schiavo, the severely brain-damaged woman whose final years tethered to a feeding tube sparked a bitter feud over her fate that divided a family and a nation, died Thursday, her husband's attorney said.

Schiavo, 41, died quietly in a Pinellas Park hospice 13 days after her feeding tube was removed despite extraordinary intervention by Florida lawmakers, Congress and President Bush - efforts that were rebuffed at every turn by the courts.

Her death was confirmed to The Associated Press by Michael Schiavo's attorney, George Felos, and announced to reporters outside her hospice by a family adviser.

A shy woman who avoided the spotlight, Schiavo spent her final months as the focus of a media frenzy and an epic legal battle between her husband and parents over whether she should live or die.

Protesters streamed into Pinellas Park to keep vigil outside her hospice, with many arrested as they tried to bring her food and water. The Vatican likened the removal of her feeding tube to capital punishment for an innocent woman.

Politicians repeatedly tried to intervene as her parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, pleaded for their daughter's life, calling the removal of the feeding tube "judicial homicide."

"Something has to be done and has to be done quick," Bob Schindler said, a week after the tube was removed March 18, as the family's legal options dwindled. "I think the people who are anxious to see her die are getting their wish."

Almost no one had any idea that Terri would have lasted thirteen days after her tube was removed, but her extraordinary will to live should not have surprised anyone who has watched her for years.

It's not a comforting thing to know that I live in a country that had armed guards preventing a woman's parents from giving her the nutrition and hydration that would have allowed her to continue living. Actually, it is quite a sickening feeling indeed.

Her husband had a massive conflict of interest, and should have been removed as her guardian long ago. Her parents -- who were the only people who could be trusted to have her long-term interests at heart -- were ignored...prevented from keeping her alive.

We should have "erred on the side of life," as I have heard so many times in recent days.

Instead, we have erred on the side of death, and as a result this is not one of the better days in the history of this country.

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Eternal rest, indeed.