As to previous abuse by the husband, I haven't seen anything definitive.
All in all, a tragic case.
Robert Schindler and the family attorney, Patricia Anderson, were both on the Barbara Simpson Program aired on KSFO Radio, San Francisco yesterday.
Ms. Anderson told of x-rays that were taken when Terri was initially taken to the hospital as a result of the mysterious trauma she suffered. The x-rays revealed healed but untreated bone fractures to her back, leg and ribs. As I recall, Anderson said it was medical opinion that the untreated leg fracture resulted in a ball-like growth on the bone.
The Schindler attorney attempted to use the x-rays as an issue relative to the fitness of her husband to be Terri's guardian. She said [dishonorable] judge Greer refused to except the x-rays as evidence of spousal violence.
Ms. Anderson said the Schindler family has long since exhausted their financial ability to afford her, and that she herself has little business to sustain her practice, given the tremendous attention she has given the matter over the years. There is a local printer whom she said is so outraged about the cruelty inflected on Terri Schindler Schiavo that he decided to do all of the legal brief printing and copying without charge.
Simply stated, the system has financially strapped their ability to protect Terri.
I know that legal research, brief writing, and filing costs can eat you out of all you own, and so far they've been stringing this out on their own.
I say this our fight. Terri's inability to get the kind of medical treatment is, in reality, a gauntlet thrown at the feet of every American.
If a court can be as capricious as the Greer court has been, and will abuse it's life and death authority (it shouldn't have) as to how, when and where a man, woman or child will or will not receive medical care, we have crossed an un-American threshold where government decides all things.