Apr 14, 2005 / 22:00 pm
David Gibbs, lead counsel for the parents of the late Terri Schiavo, has called on a Georgia Probate Court Judge to protect the innocent life of Mae Magouirk, an 81-year-old widow whose feeding tube was removed with court permission.
Mae Magouirk was placed in a LaGrange, Georgia, medical facility March 13 with a dissected aorta, a congenital medical condition shared by other members of her family. But her granddaughter, Elizabeth Gaddy, had her placed in a hospice March 22, despite objections by Magouirk's sister and brother, who are her closest next of kin.
Magouirk's siblings discovered March 31 that Gaddy had decided her grandmother would be denied life-sustaining nourishment and fluids, even though she was not terminal, comatose, or in a vegetative state, and even though the provisions of her living will request feeding and hydration.
Magouirk’s siblings brought this matter before the courts and the media in an attempt to save her life.