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Michael Schiavo: Divorce Wasn't an Option

By Associated Press

3:00 PM EST, March 26, 2006

NEW YORK - Despite pleas from the Vatican, U.S. lawmakers and the president, Michael Schiavo says he could not have divorced his brain-damaged wife and given up the fight to let her die.

"I was doing something that Terri wanted. And I couldn't give it up on her," Schiavo said in an interview recorded for the Sunday edition of NBC's "Dateline."

Schiavo's book about the case, "Terri: The Truth," is scheduled for release Monday, the day before a competing book by Terri Schiavo's parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, is released. Friday will be the first anniversary of Terri Schiavo's death, 13 days after her feeding tube was removed.

Michael Schiavo fought the Schindlers in court for eight years over removal of his spouse's life support, arguing she would not have wanted to be kept alive in what doctors called a persistent vegetative state.

The Schindlers argued that she retained some level of consciousness. "Don't let anybody tell you that Terri did not know who was in that room," Mary Schindler told The St. Petersburg Times in an interview published Saturday.

An autopsy determined Terri Schiavo suffered irreversible brain-damage and even blindness after she collapsed in 1990 at the age of 26. No evidence was found that she might have been abused before her collapse.

Michael Schiavo recalled hearing a thud and calling 911 "within a minute" of her collapse.

The bitter end-of-life battle between Michael Schiavo and the Schindler family reached Gov. Jeb Bush, the U.S. Supreme Court, Congress, the White House and even the Vatican.

The acrimony also extended in the halls of the hospice where Terri Schiavo eventually died of dehydration. Michael Schiavo refused to allow Terri's brother, Bobby Schindler, into her room shortly before her death.

"I didn't want the animosity," Michael Schiavo said. "I'm sure Terri would want the families to get along and be happy. But it didn't happen."

In January, Michael Schiavo married Jodi Centonze, whom he had called his fiancee for more than five years. The couple met in a dentist's office and began a relationship after Terri Schiavo was already in a nursing home. They have two young children.

"I would think so much less of Michael had he walked away from her," Jodi Schiavo said in the NBC interview. "That is one of the qualities in him that I so admire."