The parents of brain-damaged Florida woman Terri Schiavo urged the US Supreme Court to prevent a «horrible death» and order tube feeding resumed as time ran out on their bitter seven-year legal battle to keep their daughter alive. Lawyers for Bob and Mary Schindler appealed to the country?s top court late on Wednesday evening, urging it to issue an emergency order to restore Schiavo?s feeding tube and saying that without it she ?will die a horrible death in a matter of days.?

Schiavo, a 41-year-old woman who suffered brain damage from a heart attack when she was 26, had her feeding tube removed last Friday under a state court order. She had been expected to live a week to two weeks after the tube?s removal and the battle over whether she should live or die, long played out as a wrenching legal dispute between her parents and her husband, has snowballed into an emotional and highly politicized drama.

The parents went to the Supreme Court after their request for a resumption of feeding was rebuffed on Tuesday and Wednesday by a Florida federal judge, a three-judge panel at the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta and that court?s full bench. ?If the tube is not reinserted by order of this court, Terri will die before this court is able to consider the merits? of the case, said the 40-page filing to the Supreme Court. This referred to the parents? case to federal courts that Schiavo?s rights, such as due process, have been violated.

The Supreme Court twice last week refused to get involved in the Schiavo case and the chances of the parents succeeding with their new appeal were seen as slim. The Schindlers made the request to Justice Anthony Kennedy. Michael Schiavo has been consistently supported by state courts in his stance that his wife is in a persistent vegetative state and would not want to live in this condition.

The parents maintain that Schiavo could improve with treatment and would not have wanted to die. Since the feeding tube was removed, they have raced to keep their daughter alive, winning the support of conservative Christian groups who used their political clout in the wake of President George W. Bush?s re-election last November to lobby the Republican-controlled US Congress. Congress rushed through a law at the weekend giving federal courts jurisdiction over a case long the domain of state courts, drawing criticism over its step into a legal dispute. But the effort was rebuffed by federal courts.

Meanwhile, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, brother of President Bush, expressed doubt over Schiavo?s physical condition and held out the possibility of taking custody of Schiavo through the state?s Department of Children and Families, a social welfare agency. Gov. Bush said a neurologist, Dr. William Cheshire of the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, believed Schiavo might be suffering from ?minimal consciousness? rather than being in a persistent vegetative state.

Circuit Court Judge George Greer, the same state judge who has handled the case for years, was considering a petition from the welfare agency. At the same time, Greer issued an order barring the social welfare agency from removing Schiavo from the hospice and from giving artificial feeding or hydration or interfering with his final judgment in the case. He told Florida sheriffs to ensure the order was enforced.