Josh is one of six children - ages 10 to 14 - arrested
in the past week for crossing a police line at the Woodside Hospice to
take water to Terri Schiavo.
"God's with me," said Josh, who asked his father to bring him here from
Kannapolis, N.C., to join others supporting Bob and Mary Schindler's
fight to restore their daughter's feeding tube.
Demonstrators
have allowed their children - some too young to truly understand why
they are there - to pass out religious fliers and hold signs accusing
Michael Schiavo, Terri's husband, of murdering her. The children beat
five-gallon buckets like funerary drums and wear shirts declaring them
"Youth for Life."
On the grass outside the hospice, 7-year-old
Hannah Donahue sat coloring signs while wearing a piece of red tape
emblazoned with the word "LIFE" plastered across her mouth and an
orange sign on her chest bearing the word "JAIL."
She said the sign was for Michael Schiavo.
"I think they should put him in the jail," Hannah said in a tiny voice.
"Because I don't think he knows what Terri wants. He's being the boss."
Her mother, Tete Donahue, of Clearwater, won't allow Hannah to
go to jail for this cause. But she thinks it's appropriate to have her
on the picket line.
"I'm not bringing her here as a symbol,"
Donahue said. "She's with me because we believe in life. ... She's
learning we give value to life, to human beings."
Scott
Heldreth, a veteran of the Operation Rescue and Operation Save America
campaigns against abortion, didn't intend to join this fight, until his
son asked to be brought to Pinellas Park.
"My wife and I, we
felt like if God really put it on his heart, we should come down, to
allow him to live out what God had put on his heart," says Heldreth, a
carpenter.
His son walked up to sheriff's deputies, carrying a
plastic cup, and ignored two requests to turn around. Deputies cuffed
his hands behind his back and loaded him into a van with 14-year-old
twin girls. At the courthouse, the three youngsters were photographed,
fingerprinted and released.
Josh said police were nice, but seemed a bit annoyed.
"We were smiling for Jesus and they didn't like that much," he said.
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Schiavo's Parents' Legal Battle Nears End
Photos: Schiavo Case
