PINELLAS PARK, Fla. — Weak and emaciated, Theresa Schiavo clung to life yesterday as police stepped up security outside her hospice room and protesters praying for last-minute intervention by the government kept vigil.

As supporters of the severely brain-damaged woman carried their protest to the White House and Congress, her father repeated his plea that his daughter be kept alive.

“Don’t give up on her,” Bob Schindler told reporters after a morning visit with his daughter, saying that she showed facial expressions when he hugged and kissed her. “We haven’t given up on her, and she hasn’t given up on us.”

Mrs. Schiavo, 41, was in her 11th day without the feeding tube that sustained her for 15 years. Her parents pressed again for President Bush, Congress, and the president’s brother Governor Bush to intervene to have the tube reinserted, and a small group of supporters protested outside the White House gates.

Mr. Schindler said he recognized that his daughter was dying but insisted that it was not too late to save her and that she was “fighting like hell to live and she’s begging for help. … She has just incredible strength to live.”

As Mrs. Schiavo drew closer to death, extra police officers blocked the road in front of the hospice, and an elementary school next door was closed so students could avoid the crowd.

After overnight wind and rain thinned their ranks, about 100 protesters returned yesterday with signs and renewed prayers. But the day also saw some of the harshest rhetoric, with some in the crowd mocking the police by goose-stepping like Nazis.

The president’s aides have said they have run out of legal options. The governor said yesterday that while it “made sense”to have federal courts review the case, he had to respect their decisions not to order the tube reinserted.

“I have not seen any means by which the executive branch can get involved. My legal counsel has talked to the Schindler family and their lawyer over the weekend,” the governor said. “My heart is broken about this.”

Mrs. Schiavo’s parents dispute that their daughter is in a persistent vegetative state as court-ordered doctors have determined. Michael Schiavo contends his wife told him she would not want to be kept alive artificially.

At least two more state-filed appeals seeking the feeding tube’s reconnection were pending, but those challenges were before a Florida appeals court that had rejected the governor’s previous efforts in the case.

Doctors said Mrs. Schiavo would probably die within a week or two when the feeding tube was pulled out on March 18. She suffered catastrophic brain damage in 1990 when her heart stopped because of a chemical imbalance that was believed to have been brought on by an eating disorder.

Mr. Schindler said he feared the consequences of the morphine drip given to his daughter to relieve any pain. “I have a great concern that they will expedite the process to kill her with an overdose of morphine because that’s the procedure that happens,” he said.

Hospice spokesman Mike Bell said federal rules kept him from discussing Mrs. Schiavo specifically, but “a fundamental part of hospice is that we would do nothing to either hasten or postpone natural death.”

Comfort measures, including morphine drips, are taken in consultation with a patient’s guardian, physician and hospice care team, Mr. Bell said.