Terri Schiavo has died

Terri Schiavo, the severely brain-damaged woman whose 15 years on a feeding tube sparked an epic legal battle that went all the way to the White House and Congress, died today, 13 days after the tube was removed,. She was 41.

Schiavo died at the Pinellas Park hospice where she lay for years while her husband and her parents fought over whether to keep her aliv.

Her death was confirmed to The Associated Press by George Felos, the attorney for her husband Michael Schiavo, and announced to reporters outside her hospice by a family adviser.

Brother Paul O'Donnell, an adviser to Schiavo's parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, said the parents and their two other children "were denied access at the moment of her death. They've been requesting, as you know, for the last hour to try to be in there and they were denied access by Michael Schiavo. They are in there now, praying at her bedside."