Activists see base being fired up
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PINELLAS PARK, Fla. -- Here in the waning days of Terri Schiavo's life, as her family's hopes for some extraordinary intervention dissolve, there is a new energy churning among anti-abortion and conservative Christian activists who have closely monitored her case since it began winding through the courts in 2000.
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Updates from The Associated Press
Schiavo backers headed to D.C.
 "The world is watching," the director of the Washington-based Christian Defense Coalition, the Rev. Patrick J. Mahoney, told protesters Saturday outside Schiavo's hospice. God, he thundered through a megaphone, is speaking to the world about the culture of life through Schiavo's case and the publicity surrounding it.
If Schiavo, the severely brain-damaged woman whose feeding and hydration tube was removed on March 18 at the request of her husband, dies this week, her name will fade from the front pages and most likely from the minds of most Americans.
But her story is likely to linger long after as a political issue -- and call to action -- for the conservative Christians and anti-abortion advocates who in large part drove the media's attention and pressured Congress to take the seemingly unprecedented step of passing a law to try and change her fate.
"This case, while it's not well understood today, will be talked about for months and years to come and it will galvanize the appreciation for life -- that's why the left is so afraid of it," said Larry Klayman, a Miami-based lawyer who founded the Washington-based group Judicial Watch and who ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate in 2004.
The conservative activists gathered here give little credence to the polls that say most Americans think the courts were right when they ordered doctors to remove Schiavo's feeding tube on March 18 at husband's request, or to the polls that say a majority of Americans believe Congress should have stayed out of the matter altogether.
First Published March 28, 2005 12:00 am
