The husband of brain-damaged Florida woman Terri Schiavo has ordered an autopsy after she dies to counter allegations his plans to cremate her body is aimed at hiding something, his lawyer said.
As supporters of Ms Schiavo's parents took their fight to prolong her life to Washington 10 days after her feeding was stopped, Mr Michael Schiavo's lawyer, said her pulse had become "thready" and she had not passed urine for a while - a possible sign of approaching death.
He said Mr Schiavo, who has been pitted against the parents in a seven-year legal conflict over whether to allow Mrs Schiavo to die, requested an official autopsy to show the "massive" extent of the brain damage she suffered in 1990.
"We didn't think it was appropriate to talk about an autopsy prior to Mrs Schiavo's death," he said.
"But because claims have been made by, I guess, opponents of carrying out her wishes that there was some motive behind the cremation of Mrs Schiavo we felt it was necessary to make that announcement today."
Disagreement over the planned cremation rather than the full burial demanded by Mrs Schiavo's Roman Catholic parents has been a subplot to the long legal battle.
The fate of the woman, who has been in a persistent vegetative state since suffering cardiac arrest, has become a cause for Christian conservatives and drawn in Congress, President George W. Bush and his brother, Florida Governor Jeb Bush.
State courts have accepted testimony from Mr Schiavo and others that she did not want to be kept alive artificially, but her parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, disagree, and maintain she tries to communicate with them.
Pressured by the Christian right, Congress passed a special law that allowed the Schindlers to take their case to federal court, and President Bush cut short a vacation to sign it.
The effort proved in vain as court after court - all the way to the US Supreme Court - rejected a flurry of petitions since the feeding tube was disconnected on March 18th.