CLEARWATER, Fla. (AP) – It’s been 15 years since Terri Schiavo’s heart stopped beating for several minutes, causing severe brain damage that put her into what doctors call a persistent vegetative state. For almost seven of those years, her husband Michael has been fighting to stop her feedings, arguing that she didn’t want to be kept alive artificially.

Terri Schiavo is now 41 and still in a hospice after myriad twists and turns in a dramatic legal and ideological battle that has pitted her parents against their son-in-law.

Whether there’s an end in sight is anybody’s guess.

“It seems like the same news over and over,” acknowledged Pat Anderson, a former lawyer for Terri Schiavo’s parents. “It must be quite incomprehensible (to the public) that she is still alive.”

There have been countless lawsuits, court hearings, appeals, news conferences and tears shed by her parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, who promise to keep fighting. The case file at the Pinellas County Courthouse now fills 45 volumes.

“I don’t regret a second of what we’ve been through,” said Terri’s brother, Bobby Schindler, 40. “I’ll make up for it when we save my sister.”

Twice, Terri Schiavo’s feeding tube was removed by court order, and both times it was restored. The last time, in 2003, Gov. Jeb Bush pushed through a state law – later ruled unconstitutional – that authorized him to resume the feedings six days after they were stopped.

On Friday, state Circuit Judge George Greer set a new date for removal of the feeding tube for March 18, prompting the Schindlers’ attorney to promise yet another flurry of legal filings.

Greer’s ruling came on the 15th anniversary of Terri Schiavo’s collapse on Feb. 25, 1990, when a chemical imbalance believed to have been brought on by an eating disorder stopped her heart, cutting off oxygen to her brain for five minutes.

Michael Schiavo said his wife never wanted to be kept alive artificially, but she left no written directive. He has said he’s fulfilling a promise he made to her, and he has spent most of a $700,000 medical malpractice award given to his wife for her care to pay his attorney.

Her parents, with financial backing from the California-based Life Legal Defense Foundation, have vowed to keep litigating the case to keep Terri alive. They dismiss arguments that she is in vegetative state, believing she could get better with therapy, that she laughs, responds to them and tries to talk.

Michael Schiavo’s attorney, George Felos, is critical of the courts for allowing the Schindlers to keep delaying her death and of Bush and lawmakers for trying to get involved.

“If Terri Schiavo could for one hour get up and see what’s going on, I think she would be absolutely horrified that she has been maintained in this condition against her will for so long, and that she has become the political pawn that she has,” Felos said.

He said the Schindlers can keep delaying the case indefinitely unless the court puts an end to it.

“No judge wants to be the last judge whose name is on the order resulting in a patient’s death,” Felos said. “Sooner or later, some court is going to have to summon the courage and fortitude to say no more delays.”

However, Greer seems inclined to do that, saying in Friday’s ruling he “is no longer comfortable” ordering stays to entertain more new motions and allowing the Schindlers time to keep filing appeals.

Schindler attorney David Gibbs III said the legal system is operating as it should, ordering appropriate delays to consider each new issue. “I’m thrilled we’re not rushing like a barbaric culture to starve people to death,” Gibbs said.

Terri Schiavo already has lived in her brain-damaged state longer than two other young women whose high-profile cases brought right-to-die issues to the forefront of public attention.

Karen Quinlan lived for more than a decade in a vegetative state – brought on by alcohol and drugs in 1975 when she was 21 – until New Jersey courts finally let her parents take her off a respirator. Nancy Cruzan, who was 25 when a 1983 car crash placed her in a vegetative state, lived nearly eight years before the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that her parents could withdraw her feeding tube.

AP-ES-02-26-05 1513EST