Family of Terri Schiavo Joins Struggle Over Jahi McMath

The family at the center of one of the country's most sensational right-to-life fights is taking a stand in the saga over 13-year-old Jahi McMath.

And Terri Schiavo's kin are on the McMath family's side.

Jahi has been declared brain dead by her doctors following complications from tonsil surgery last month.

Children's Hospital in Oakland, which performed the procedure, say she is dead and not coming back; her family wants to keep her on life support, saying she responds to her mother's touch.

According to the New York Daily News, the Terri Schiavo Life & Hope Network has been "working behind the scenes" to keep Jahi alive.

Terri Schiavo was on life support for 15 years until her husband won a court fight -- against his wife's family -- to have her disconnected from the life-sustaining machines at a Florida hospital.

Christopher Dolan, the San Francisco-based attorney representing Jahi's family, says that brain injury centers have agreed to accept the child as a patient if the Oakland hospital would agree to a tracheostomy -- but so far, the hospital has "stonewalled" him, the newspaper reported.

Meanwhile, a spokesman for the hospital accused Dolan of "perpetuating a sad hoax" that Jahi could return to life.