Appeals court: Terri Schiavo parents cannot intervene

[janelle]

Terri Bleeding From Eyes and Mouth

Contrary to predictions that Terri Schiavo's starvation death would be painless and dignified, an eyewitness who visited her hospice room early Saturday morning reports that she is now bleeding from the eyes and mouth.

Fox News Channel's "Fox & Friends" reports:


"Barbara Weller, who is one of the attorneys for the Schindlers, says that the last time she checked in, not very many hours ago, Terri's eyes and tongue were bleeding now.
"Her eyes are sunken and her skin continues to flake off," Weller added.

On Thursday Terri's parents reported that their daughter now resembles "an Auschwitz victim."

At the request of Michael Schiavo's attorney, Judge George Greer has banned cameras and video equipment from her room, precluding the possibility that a photographic record of her deteriorating condition might be kept.

The eyewitness accounts stand in stark contrast to predictions from medical experts cited in numerous media reports who insisted that Terri's starvation death would not be gruesome.

On Wednesday, for instance, the Los Angles Times reported:

"Doctors say that going without food and water in the last weeks of life is not traumatic, and that the body is equipped to adjust to such conditions."

The paper quoted Dr. Perry G. Fine, vice president of medical affairs at the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization in Arlington, Va.

"What my patients have told me over the last 25 years is that when they stop eating and drinking, there's nothing unpleasant about it – in fact, it can be quite blissful and euphoric."

"It's a very smooth, graceful and elegant way to go," Dr. Fine added.

[Jolie Rouge]

The paper quoted Dr. Perry G. Fine, vice president of medical affairs at the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization in Arlington, Va.

"What my patients have told me over the last 25 years is that when they stop eating and drinking, there's nothing unpleasant about it – in fact, it can be quite blissful and euphoric."

"It's a very smooth, graceful and elegant way to go," Dr. Fine added.


How do they "tell him" - with a Ouji Board ??

[Jolie Rouge]

Federal Appeals Court OKs Schiavo Review
21 minutes ago

ATLANTA - A federal appeals court early Wednesday agreed to consider a petition for a new hearing on whether to reconnect Terri Schiavo's feeding tube.

The ruling by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals came as the severely brain-damaged woman entered her 13th day without nourishment.

Schiavo's parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, have maintained that Schiavo would want to be kept alive and have asked the courts to intervene. Schiavo's husband, Michael, insists he is carrying out her wishes by having the feeding tube pulled.

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050330/ap_on_re_us/brain_damaged_woman

[janelle]

How do they "tell him" - with a Ouji Board ??

LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL He can talk to the dead. He is a voodoo doc.

[janelle]

Jackson: More Senators Back Bid to Save Terri

NewsMax.com Wires
Wednesday, March 30, 2005

Rev. Jesse Jackson said Tuesday afternoon that he has persuaded two Florida state senators to change their votes on a bill to save Terri Schiavo, leaving the measure just one vote shy of the majority necessary for passage.
"Two of them have committed to meeting with Gov. Jeb Bush. They say that they're flexible if they can find acceptable emergency language," Jackson told ABC Radio host Sean Hannity.

Targeting members of the state senate's black caucus in a bid to save Schiavo, Jackson explained: "While we didn't have the specific language today, if I could just get them to shift their will to do whatever [we can] within the law to help her live, that would be a victory."

"They've made that commitment," the civil rights leader added. "I hope it turns into something concrete, signed by morningtime."

Asked if he thought he'd convert the additional vote that would guarantee passage, Jackson said: "If we get two - with the help of Gov. Jeb Bush, we can get three. . . If I was able to persuade two - if he could persuade one, we can change that vote."

The top Democrat said he had contacted the governor's office and was awaiting a return call, saying, "I hope that he will call me and I hope to share with him my position."

Jackson said he would return to Florida tomorrow if he determines it is "the best, most effective way" to save Schiavo.

"I will fly to Tallahassee or Washington or anyplace," he said.

[janelle]

Laura Bush Defends Gov't Role for Schiavo

NewsMax.com Wires
Wednesday, March 30, 2005

MILDENHALL, England -- First lady Laura Bush said Tuesday the government was right to have intervened in the case of Terri Schiavo, a severely brain-damaged Florida woman whose case has stirred national debate about life and death issues.

"I just feel like the federal government has to be involved," Mrs. Bush said. "It is a life issue that really does require government to be involved."



Mrs. Bush commented on the Schiavo case aboard a plane bound for Afghanistan, where she was to promote education and women's rights.
Schiavo's husband, Michael, has waged a long court battle with his parents-in-law, contending his 41-year-old wife, who has been in a persistent vegetative state since 1990, would not want to live that way. Schiavo's parents, on the other hand, have been pleading with the U.S. Congress, Florida lawmakers, federal judges and in courts in Florida to have their daughter's feeding tube reinserted.

"I am not surprised over the debate," Mrs. Bush said. "I think it's an issue that, you know, everyone is concerned about and interested in.

"I'm sorry for the family that it has to be so public. This is such a very, very difficult time for them and for everyone who watches Terri."

Mrs. Bush said she has been encouraged to hear that the case has prompted more people to inquire about living wills.

"I think that is really good," she said. "The president and I have living wills and, of course, our parents do. They wanted us always to be aware of it. I think that it is important for families to have opportunities to talk about these issues."

[janelle]

Press Misrepresents Catholic Teaching on End of Life Issues

NewsMax.com Wires
Wednesday, March 30, 2005

The prominence of the Terri Schiavo case has brought unprecedented media attention to the Catholic Church's teaching on end-of-life issues. But media portrayals of Church teaching are often inaccurate and misleading, according to two prominent Catholic ethicists.

Father Thomas Williams, dean of the theology department of Regina Apostolorum Pontifical University, and Richard Doerflinger, Deputy Director of the Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities at the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, both said the Church makes a distinction between ordinary and extraordinary care. The first is always required while the second is not.


"The Church teaches that we have a moral obligation to support life," Doerflinger said. "That obligation has limits. People talk about ordinary and extraordinary means. That just means that when the efforts to sustain life start doing more harm than good to the patient the moral obligation ceases to apply. Even then you should never abandon a patient and never deny them the basic care owed to everyone because of their human dignity."
Father Williams quotes from Pope John Paul II's 1995 encyclical, The Gospel of Life, when trying to define extraordinary means.

"The Pope uses two sets of terms. For treatment to be considered extraordinary death must be 'imminent and inevitable' and the treatment would result in 'precarious and burdensome prolongation of life,'" he said. An example might be a cancer victim who, after several rounds of treatment, has found chemotherapy to be ineffective and foregoes the treatment in order to avoid its side effects.

Father Williams and Doerflinger said that in some instances it can be extremely difficult to determine the difference between extraordinary and ordinary care and that in such instances people must follow their conscience. But both men said the Schiavo case is clear cut.

"From a Catholic perspective, this is an open and shut case," Father Williams said. According to Doerflinger, "food and water should always be seen as basic care," a teaching made abundantly clear in an address by Pope John Paul II in March, 2004, he said.

A recent article in the Washington Post, "Catholic Stance on Tube-Feeding Is Evolving," tried to paint the papal pronouncement, that food and water are basic care, as contrary to the Catholic tradition. The article placed great stock in the teachings of two Spanish theologians of the 16th century, Francisco de Vitoria and Domingo Banez, as proof that the Pope has formulated a novel teaching.

Banez "wrote that a sick man could refuse food without risk of committing a mortal sin if he had no hope of survival," the Post reported, and Vitora established "the guideline that 'ordinary' means of medical treatment were obligatory, but 'extraordinary' means - methods that would cause great pain or burdens - were not required."

Father Williams says the two Spaniards are actually consistent with the teaching the Pope John Paul: "What they said does not mean that one can refuse to consume food for any length of time or refuse food that would save one's life. What they mean is that if you are dying and the food would make you sick to your stomach or you would die anyway, you can refuse the food."

But even if Vitoria or Banez were at odds with the Pope, it would not mean that the Pope has made up a new teaching.

"The fact is that you can find theologians on any point - even the most settled of moral doctrines like abortion, euthanasia, contraception - who disagree. That does not mean there is doubt or division or that there is not a Catholic position. The Church doesn't work that way. That's why we have a magisterium," said Doerflinger, who was interviewed for the Post story.

He also said the article failed to bring up the many statements calling food and water basic care that preceded the Pope's address. "Up until then it had not just been 'conservative' theologians versus 'liberal' theologians. There had been a number of Vatican documents. And there had been statements by the Pro-Life Committee of the US Bishops Conference that is chaired and run by cardinals and archbishops. "

[janelle]

The Secular Media and Death

Vincent Fiore
Tuesday, March 29, 2005

Terri Schiavo's life-and-death struggle is nearly over. For 15 years, she has lived in a world that only she was privy to, while her consciousness, reality and reason were debated around her and across the United States.



After 15 years, dozens of judges, scores of doctors and specialists, a flurry of legislative bills, the president and Congress convening on a Sunday night – everything but God Himself intervening – those with the power of life and death over Terri Schiavo chose death.

Terms like "permanent vegetative state," "minimal consciousness" and "liquefied cortex" became familiar among the public, as did real-life heroes and villains in a real-time Shakespearean play.


But hey, so what? There are thousands of people who go through this every day, right? We have been "mercifully ending people's lives" for years. That's what a hospice is for.


I do not want to go down the road of blame in regard to Terri Schiavo and her still-legal husband, Michael Schiavo. Nor do I care to condemn the ruling judge in this continual heartbreak, George Greer. Neither will I blame the Florida Legislature, Jeb Bush, the U.S. Congress, nor God.


Here's what I do know: There is not a single person who stands on the face of the earth today that can tell you what Terri Schiavo's wishes were regarding the situation she tragically found herself in. There is no proof. There is no paper that tells us what it is. We will never know.


We have the words and demands of Terri's estranged husband, Michael, who called for her death, as compared to the words and pleas of Terri's parents, Robert and Mary Schindler, who begged for her life.


When legitimate questions were asked as to the actual awareness of Terri and her quality of life, the laws that govern a compassionate society deemed it "merciful" to starve her to death, something you could not legally do to a dog.


The mainstream media have trumpeted Terri Schiavo's death like some clarion call to ideological arms. Editorials and stories abound within the pages of the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and USA Today. These stories essentially look to pacify a concerned yet media-manipulated public regarding the questions that surround Terri's tragic life and excruciating death, and excoriate the Republican Party for trying to give her a final chance at life.


These colossi of secular liberalism view the fight to save Terri Schiavo as a battle between good and evil, the evil here being the "Christian right." They further view this as a blow, in particular, to George W. Bush and his "moral values" base.


But as with everything today, the struggle over Terri Schiavo's life was poisoned with politics. Witness the forged "talking points" memo that was supposedly written by Senate Republicans regarding Terri Schiavo, but in reality was penned by someone on the left side of the Senate aisle and distributed to an eager media.

(www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=7935)


The Los Angeles Times editorialized on the "Stalinist" politics of the Bush White House and immediately linked this fight for Schiavo's life to the "new front in the abortion war." The Times makes plain its disgust for people who would champion life above all or, as stated, those who would turn supposed "religious dogma into law under the right-to-life banner."

(www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-ed-schiavo21mar21,0,3594216.story)


The New York Times displays this business-like affair with Terri's death quite easily. Consider the story published March 20, 2005. The headline reads "Experts Say Ending Feeding Can Lead to a Gentle Death." In this story, the Times quotes doctors as saying that Terri Schiavo is "probably not experiencing anything at all subjectively," in regard to being starved to death, and further makes the surrealistic observation that "declining food and water is a common way that terminally ill patients end their lives, because it is less painful than violent suicide and requires no help from doctors."

(www.nytimes.com/2005/03/20/national/20death.html?)


If most people tended to end their lives by stabbing themselves repeatedly, the above statement would mean something. In Terri Schiavo's case, she is the one being denied, and not the one denying.


Dr. Sean Morrison, a professor of geriatrics and palliative care at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, said this about starvation: "They generally slip into a peaceful coma. It's very quiet, it's very dignified – it's very gentle."


So I guess the pictures of millions starving in Africa year after year were really nothing to get anxious about. Heck, we can starve the 3,500 prisoners on death row and save the taxpayers the expense of food, water and the "humane" lethal injection that ends their lives.


The pro-death media have even gone so far as to think of the Supreme Court's refusal to review the Schiavo case as a legacy-enhancer for Chief Justice William Rehnquist, even tying it to his eventual death:

"Five years ago, Rehnquist allowed politics to trump principle in the disgraceful decision of Bush vs. Gore. Fate has given him a chance for (frankly) a different lead on his eventual obituary. We hope he seizes it."

(www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-ed-schiavo24mar24,0,4970478.story)


The left will never admit that they lost the 2000 presidential election, anymore than they will ever admit that as an institution, they are far and away so morally bankrupt as to try to hide their rush to embrace the death of Terri Schiavo as a product of "federalism" and "justice."


Soon Terri's long fight will be over, but the fight against the media, and the activist courts they love so much, begins in earnest. Terri Schiavo's media-blessed and court-assisted killing has opened the window into the autocratic and activist underpinnings that drive these two debased institutions.


After witnessing this rush to death enacted by a power-hungry judiciary and enabled by a morally depraved liberal media, the real deciders of America's future – namely, the people – must wade into battle and reassert their will. The judicial branch was never intended to make law, but only interpret it. The media are supposed to report news, and not shape it to fit their ideal of society.


It is "We the people" who decide, and not "We the judges decree."

Vincent Fiore is a freelance political writer who lives in New York City. He receives e-mail at: [email protected]

[Kyla Kym]

Terri Bleeding From Eyes and Mouth

Contrary to predictions that Terri Schiavo's starvation death would be painless and dignified, an eyewitness who visited her hospice room early Saturday morning reports that she is now bleeding from the eyes and mouth.

Fox News Channel's "Fox & Friends" reports:


"Barbara Weller, who is one of the attorneys for the Schindlers, says that the last time she checked in, not very many hours ago, Terri's eyes and tongue were bleeding now.
"Her eyes are sunken and her skin continues to flake off," Weller added.

On Thursday Terri's parents reported that their daughter now resembles "an Auschwitz victim."


OMG!!! I can't believe they are doing this to her!!! That has got to be painful! How cruel!!! Her family is having to watch this and they will have these horrifying memories in their minds for the rest of their life's! I'm just horrified by this. How could they rule such a thing! It would have been more humane to have held a pillow over her face and gotten it over with quick if they just felt like they couldn't tollerate having Terri on the face of this earth anymore.
:mad:

[janelle]

Injury Report Prompted Schiavo Cremation Plans

Michael Schiavo decided to have his wife's body cremated after her parents' lawyers obtained medical records showing she had sustained broken bones, a nurse who cared for Terri Schiavo is now claiming.

"He wanted her cremated after the bone fractures and dislocations were found," nurse Carla Sauer Iyer, who cared for Terri in the mid-1990s while she was at the Palm Gardens Convalescent Center, told ABC Radio host Sean Hannity on Friday.


"He immediately went to court and [said he] wanted her body cremated at that time," she said, "after we got hold of the records that proved there were dislocations and fractures."
A 1991 report on a bone scan performed on Terri Schiavo states:

"There are an extensive number of focal abnormal areas. ... These include: multiple bilateral ribs ... both sacroiliac joints ... both knees and both ankles."

Radiographs reveal "compression fractures" of the spine and right femur. ... "Compression fracture presumably traumatic," the report says.

Nurse Iyer said she recently contacted Palm Gardens to encourage co-workers who also cared for Terri to speak out - but said they have been muzzled.

"The administrator had gotten them together and they talked about what happened with Michael," Iyer told Hannity. "The people who have worked with Terri who are still there, they cannot talk to reporters - they would be terminated."

[janelle]

Rabbis Plead for Bush to Intervene

Rabbi Yehuda Levin has issued the following statement on behalf of the Union of Orthodox Rabbis of the United States and Canada:

"We urge President George Bush and Florida Governor Jeb Bush to take immediate, decisive action to save the life of Terri Schindler-Schiavo. We appreciate the pro-life statements of President Bush and Governor Bush. Yet, their efforts have thus far not been successful. We therefore urge the President and Governor Bush to take immediate and decisive action - either jointly or separately - to save the life of Terri Schindler-Schiavo before it is too late.



"When evil becomes 'legally' sanctioned by government, it rises to a higher order of evil - that of Sodom. Legality does not dictate morality. The Almighty dictates morality.
"America is being tested. Will we pass or will we fail?

"Perhaps some feel that everything that could be done has been done. But our holy Torah, the Word of G-d, says otherwise: 'Am I my brother's keeper?' We all know the answer."

[YankeeMary]

You sure like to argue don't you? !! LOL :p
But anyway, it seems your main problem with this is she lost her dignity (I've seen you post about that over and over again). But the thing that bothers me is I can't see the evil in losing's ones dignity, if it meant that someone was trying to save my life because they strongly and truly believe that I was worth saving. If someone was trying to save my life and fight so hard for me, I wouldn't care if they showed me peeing on national TV. Life is really short, even if it is being left in her condition. She has all of eternity once she leaves this earth so what's the difference if she was to finish out her life on earth with a feeding tube and in her condition. It would just be a drop in the bucket when you consider afterwards you will have all of eternity. I don't think her family would do anything in the world to hurt her, so that's why I believe what they say and the reason I believe they are fighting so hard. They don't look like idiots, I think they have as much common seance as you do, and if they really thought their daughter was truly totally brain dead then they wouldn't want to keep her body here like that. Here parents raised her, had her for 20 something years before she married that man. She was with him a mere 5 years before this happened to her and I can't help but think her parents have her best interest at heart and he doesn't. Now YankeeMary that's what I believe, and if you don't then that's your problem. But I'm through arguing with you now because nothing you or anyone else will say is going to change my opinion on the matter.
To start with it isn't called arguing, well it is if you get angry so apparently you are getting angry because my opinion differs from yours. No I do not think her parents have her best intrest at heart, if they did they would refuse to allow her body to be abused as it has nor would they go against her wishes. And I can assure you that if you do not change your opinion to match mine, it is no problem. I find it funny that because you and others don't agree with Micheal and what he is doing it is considered wrong, but you agree with her parents and what they are doing that makes you all right. I see this entire situation as simple as Medical evidence vs. Feelings/emotions.

[YankeeMary]

http://www.miami.edu/ethics2/schiavo/timeline.htm
September 1990

Terri Schiavo’s family brings her home, but three weeks later they return her to the College Park facility because the family is “overwhelmed by Terri’s care needs.”

May 1992

Terri Schiavo’s parents, Robert and Mary Schindler, and Michael Schiavo stop living together

The Schindlers and Michael Schiavo shared a home after Terri's collapse

Also...it seems strange to me that the Schindlers testified for Michael during the malpractice trial. Testified about what a wonderful husband and son in law he was. Now they claim they always suspected he abused their daughter/sister. Now, if I thought a man abused my daughter, I sure wouldn't be testifying on his behalf.

As for having someone to speak for terri, she has had two guardian ad Litems.(same source)
March 1, 1994

First guardian ad litem, John H. Pecarek, submits his report. He states that Michael Schiavo has acted appropriately and attentively toward Terri Schiavo.



December 1, 2003

Jay Wolfson, guardian ad litem, concludes in his report that Terri Schiavo is in a persistent vegetative state with no chance of improvement.
Thanks for finding a link...I knew I had read it somewhere.

[YankeeMary]

How do they "tell him" - with a Ouji Board ??
I imagine what he meant was in the week prior to actually dying those were the things they were experiencing.

[YNKYH8R]

My niece can not swallow anything beyond Stage 2 Baby Food - anything else and she gags, she can't feed herself ... is this enough to sentence to death ??
That is her parents choice.

[janelle]

That is her parents choice.

And what if her parents want her to live. Would they then be seen as abusing her?

[YNKYH8R]

The first eight days she was off the feeding tube this was all pretty interesting. Now, this has turned into such a three ring circus that if I hear Terri Shiavos name one more time on tv I'm going to get phyiscally ill. I wish this would all just end. It all goes around in one big circle. now we've got people comparing Terri to Alzheimer patients, Christopher Reeves, Dogs, Children with Tortes Syndrome, and who knows what else.
People are being Tazered, arrested, Jessie Jackson is involved. If this thing keeps going they're going to start asking questions of people on a red carpet somewhere.
They'll name the Hospice, a street, and if she's lucky a road after her; surely a foundation. Then laws will be written, and judgements passed, protests, sit in, marches, and demonstrations. Threre will be a Time Life movie, two (no) three books. T-shirts, bumper stickers, this will never end.
And then (ten years from now) Pope John Paul the THIRD will make her a saint. (Patron saint of the disabled)
And of course some day my children are going to turn to me and ask, "Whose Terri Shiavo?" AAAARRRRGGGGGG!!! :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad:

[janelle]

Why don't you just turn it off? This is a landmark case and I hope it is like you say. Of course there will be a movie. What hasn't been made into a movie recently but I bet it will be in favor of having her die with the liberal film makers.

I hope you don't get too sick, you may have a stroke and then who knows what will happen to you. My advice is to look the other way so that won't happen to you. So sad. I'm not trying to be mean just practical.

[YankeeMary]

Why don't you just turn it off? This is a landmark case and I hope it is like you say. Of course there will be a movie. What hasn't been made into a movie recently but I bet it will be in favor of having her die with the liberal film makers.

I hope you don't get too sick, you may have a stroke and then who knows what will happen to you. My advice is to look the other way so that won't happen to you. So sad. I'm not trying to be mean just practical.
Adam do not worry if you do have a stroke, your loving wife will make sure your wishes are up held and she will not turn you into a pawn for any reason.

Infringe on Adams rights so that your rights can be up held? Hmmm, not real constitutional. Its bad enough that the entire judicial system has gone bad, all doctors are lying and Micheal has beat this woman, now you are suggesting that he not watch tv that he paid for just so people can watch (hear) this poor womans last few days/hours. Will it never end? Even after 12 days, no food, no water, "eyes bleeding", miraclous speech (I want to live), at least 2 times through the appellete court, her parents are getting another shot at dragging this poor womans dying days out even further, will it ever end?

[janelle]

I ignored the OJ trial, I am ignoring the Michael Jackson trial, the Robert Blake trial, etc, etc, so I know it can be done. Made my BP go up so I turned it off. Seems like his BP is going up with this subject so why no turn it off and tune it out?

[YNKYH8R]

I am backing away from it. Not because of opinions here but because it's just too much. They've (and they can mean anyone) turned something simple into the biggest piece of crap I've ever seen. :mad:
Terri Shiavo the latest martyr. Soon enough her name will be followed by the title 'Christ', or something of that nature.

[Kyla Kym]

To start with it isn't called arguing, well it is if you get angry so apparently you are getting angry because my opinion differs from yours. No I do not think her parents have her best intrest at heart, if they did they would refuse to allow her body to be abused as it has nor would they go against her wishes. And I can assure you that if you do not change your opinion to match mine, it is no problem. I find it funny that because you and others don't agree with Micheal and what he is doing it is considered wrong, but you agree with her parents and what they are doing that makes you all right. I see this entire situation as simple as Medical evidence vs. Feelings/emotions.
Yes, it is called arguing when you keep directing questions at other people who are posting. I was just giving my opinion on the subject, and your the one that called me out by asking me questions. So yes, you were trying to pick an argument with me. And yes I still agree with her parents, and you will have to deal with your God someday as I will with mine about why I feel so strongly about saving her life. You can tell him why you feel so strongly about her dieing a slow death.

And like Janelle said, I'm tuning out on this subject all together because it is eating me up inside.

[adorkablex]

Why don't you just turn it off? This is a landmark case and I hope it is like you say. Of course there will be a movie. What hasn't been made into a movie recently but I bet it will be in favor of having her die with the liberal film makers.

I hope you don't get too sick, you may have a stroke and then who knows what will happen to you. My advice is to look the other way so that won't happen to you. So sad. I'm not trying to be mean just practical.


And with the conservative film makers it'll be about her saintly parents who just want their daughter to live.

And as far as YNKYH8R getting sick because of it all... I'm sure JKATHERINE will step in and turn the channel before it goes that far. ;)

[Jaidness]

her parents want her ...I wish they would take her so they would shut up about it and stop wasting our courts time and money. THEY make me sick, people are beginning to say maybe they have munchausens by proxy or whatever the name of it is when you hurt someone and then love the attention that you get from it. How selfish of them. I wish they would shut up about it so the media would leave the hospice people alone and maybe let them die in peace, where are their rights, who is fighting for them? Or is it only the ones that have the plug pulled or media attention have any rights? I wish they would take her and stop wasting taxpayers money, oh wait, they did take her but then they brought her back because they couldn't handle the level of care that she required, (people also say maybe they abused her and broke her bones)I'm sure that more than 10 years later they have more money and better resources in order to handle the arduous task of caring for their beloved daughter that they gave up on years ago. it isn't even about her dying, shes dead, she died already stop interferring and let nature take it's course. I mean seriously, how many appeals? If even the mighty Oz(Bush the evil incarnate) himself couldn't pull it off isn't it time to call it quits with the courts? How about the people that have to wait months and months to be heard in court? How about the cuts to medicare and medicaid? How about the soldiers getting foreclosed on because their combat pay cannot support their families while they're away? How about the gas prices ? How about 100 other things that have more at stake and are more important on a global scale compared to this? It has been decided quite a few times time to let it go, or else people might say you're being like a democrat after Bushes second election, and beating a dead horse.

[lassss]

yanno the one thing that is never mentioned on here is that Terri was starving herself to begin with ..that's why she is the way she is today.

sooo it's time for the parents to let go and get on with the grieving process and stop wasting the courts time and money.

[YNKYH8R]

her parents want her ...I wish they would take her so they would shut up about it and stop wasting our courts time and money. THEY make me sick, people are beginning to say maybe they have munchausens by proxy or whatever the name of it is when you hurt someone and then love the attention that you get from it. How selfish of them. I wish they would shut up about it so the media would leave the hospice people alone and maybe let them die in peace, where are their rights, who is fighting for them? Or is it only the ones that have the plug pulled or media attention have any rights? I wish they would take her and stop wasting taxpayers money, oh wait, they did take her but then they brought her back because they couldn't handle the level of care that she required, (people also say maybe they abused her and broke her bones)I'm sure that more than 10 years later they have more money and better resources in order to handle the arduous task of caring for their beloved daughter that they gave up on years ago. it isn't even about her dying, shes dead, she died already stop interferring and let nature take it's course. I mean seriously, how many appeals? If even the mighty Oz(Bush the evil incarnate) himself couldn't pull it off isn't it time to call it quits with the courts? How about the people that have to wait months and months to be heard in court? How about the cuts to medicare and medicaid? How about the soldiers getting foreclosed on because their combat pay cannot support their families while they're away? How about the gas prices ? How about 100 other things that have more at stake and are more important on a global scale compared to this? It has been decided quite a few times time to let it go, or else people might say you're being like a democrat after Bushes second election, and beating a dead horse.
THANK GOD THE VOICE OF REASON HAS SPOKEN!!! THANK YOU!!!!

[Jolie Rouge]

My niece can not swallow anything beyond Stage 2 Baby Food - anything else and she gags, she can't feed herself ... is this enough to sentence to death ??

That is her parents choice.


Oh, now we know... all this time that M. has tried to say it was "Terri's wishes"; it is really the guardian's choice.

[Jolie Rouge]

I see this entire situation as simple as Medical evidence vs. Feelings/emotions.


Should that read "inconsistent and inconclusive medical evidence vs. feelings/emotions" ??

[janelle]

Sunday, March 27, 2005 7:34 a.m. EST
Schiavo: 'We Didn't Know What Terri Wanted'

In a bizarre statement on the day Terri Schiavo's feeding tube was disconnected, Michael Schiavo seemed to inadvertently admit that he had no idea what his wife would have wanted if she became incapacitated.

During an appearance on CNN's "Larry King Live," Michael was asked if he could appreciate the distress of Terri's parents:



"Yes, I do," he replied, according to a CNN transcript. "But this is not about them, it's about Terri. And I've also said that in court. We didn't know what Terri wanted, but this is what we want."
Michael's apparent admission that he "didn't know what Terri wanted" - and that her starvation death is "what we want" - followed by moments previous comments to the contrary:

"Terri is my life," Schiavo told King. "I'm going to carry out her wishes to the very end. This is what she wanted. It's not about the Schindlers, it's not about me, not about Congress, it's about Terri."

The full exchange featuring Schiavo's contradiction went like this:

KING: Michael, what do you expect to happen? Congress is in recess now, they have to come back into special session. The Supreme Court could put a stay on it. What do you think is going to happen?

SCHIAVO: I don't think the Supreme Court is going to put a stay on it. And I hope and implore that everybody call their legislators. They have to stay out of people's personal lives. There's no place for government. Call them and tell them.

KING: Have you had any contact with the family today? This is a sad day all the way around, Michael. We know of your dispute.

SCHIAVO: I've had no contact with them.

KING: No contact at all?

SCHIAVO: No.

KING: Do you understand how they feel?

SCHIAVO: Yes, I do. But this is not about them, it's about Terri. And I've also said that in court. We didn't know what Terri wanted, but this is what we want.

KING: You're not – it didn't cost you anything. This is not something where you're looking to save money?

SCHIAVO: No. There's no money involved. We need to move on from that question. That question has been asked me 50 million times. There is no money! ("Larry King Live," March 18)

[Jolie Rouge]

Federal Appeals Court OKs Schiavo Review
21 minutes ago

ATLANTA - A federal appeals court early Wednesday agreed to consider a petition for a new hearing on whether to reconnect Terri Schiavo's feeding tube.

The ruling by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals came as the severely brain-damaged woman entered her 13th day without nourishment.

Schiavo's parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, have maintained that Schiavo would want to be kept alive and have asked the courts to intervene. Schiavo's husband, Michael, insists he is carrying out her wishes by having the feeding tube pulled.

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050330/ap_on_re_us/brain_damaged_woman


Appeals court declines new Schiavo review
Parents had gotten green light to ask for new hearing
The Associated Press
Updated: 4:49 p.m. ET March 30, 2005

ATLANTA - Less than a day after allowing Terri Schiavo's parents to file a request for a new hearing, a federal appeals court on Wednesday declined to rehear arguments for having a feeding tube reattached to the severely brain-damaged woman.

The Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had overnight agreed to let Bob and Mary Schindler file, raising a flicker of hope for the parents after a series of setbacks. But the court rejected the request 15 hours later.

To be granted, the parents’ request would have needed the support of seven of the court’s 12 judges. The court did not disclose the vote breakdown. “Any further action by our court or the district court would be improper,” Judge Stanley Birch Jr. wrote. “While the members of her family and the members of Congress have acted in a way that is both fervent and sincere, the time has come for dispassionate discharge of duty.”

Judge critical of Bush, Congress

Birch went on to scold President Bush and Congress for their attempts to intervene in the judicial process, by saying: “In resolving the Schiavo controversy, it is my judgment that, despite sincere and altruistic motivation, the legislative and executive branches of our government have acted in a manner demonstrably at odds with our Founding Fathers’ blueprint for the governance of a free people — our Constitution.”

Judges Gerald Tjoflat and Charles R. Wilson, the same two judges who issued a dissenting opinion last week when the full court considered the case for the first time, also issued a statement in Wednesday’s ruling. “The relevant question here is whether a rational factfinder could have found by clear and convincing evidence that Mrs. Schiavo would have wanted nutrition and hydration to be withdrawn under these circumstances. The plaintiffs carry a heavy burden, but I do not believe that this question can be determined in this expedited fashion without a hearing on the merits,” wrote Tjoflat, who was appointed to the bench by Gerald Ford. Wilson was nominated by former President Clinton.

The Schindlers visited their daughter Wednesday morning at her hospice in Florida and urged their supporters to keep trying. “I was pleasantly surprised by what I saw,” Bob Schindler said. “So she’s still fighting, and we’ll keep fighting.”

“We know that some of her organs are still functioning. ... It’s not too late,” he said of Terri Schindler, who began her 13th day without food or water.

In requesting a new hearing, the Schindlers argued that a federal judge in Tampa should have considered the entire state court record and not just the procedural history when he ruled against the parents.

Vigil continues

Doctors have said Schiavo, 41, would probably die within a week or two of the tube being removed.

The case has wound its way through six courts for seven years; the U.S. Supreme Court declined to intervene five times.

Protesters keeping a 24-hour vigil outside the hospice praised the latest order.

"There's a chance for a miracle," said Christine Marriott, 43, who rushed to the hospice after hearing the news on TV. "Anything positive is a breath of life."

Early Wednesday, a man was arrested when he tried to bring a plastic cup of water into the hospice. Police officers stopped him at the gate as he shouted: “You don’t know God from Godzilla!”

He became the 48th protester arrested since the feeding tube was removed.

Terri Schiavo's feeding tube was removed March 18 on a court order sought by her husband, Michael, who contends she wouldn't want to be kept alive artificially. She suffered catastrophic brain damage in 1990 when her heart stopped for several minutes because of a chemical imbalance apparently brought on by an eating disorder.

But the Schindlers have maintained that their daughter would want to be kept alive.

On Tuesday, they asked the appeals court to consider their request for a new hearing based on the seven-year history of evidence in the case, rather than whether previous Florida court rulings have met legal standards under state law.

The request contends that the federal court in Tampa had "committed plain error when it reviewed only the state court case and outcome history."

'Give me back my child'

Attorneys for the Schindlers have argued that Terri Schiavo's rights to life and privacy were being violated.

On Tuesday, Mary Schindler made a terse but emotional appeal to Michael Schiavo and his fiancee: "Michael and Jodi, you have your own children. Please, please give my child back to me." Michael Schiavo and Jodi Centonze have two children, born long after Terri Schiavo's collapse.

Federal courts were given jurisdiction to review Schiavo's case after Republicans in Congress pushed through unprecedented emergency legislation aimed at prolonging Schiavo's life. But federal courts at two levels have rebuffed the family.

Jesse Jackson, Laura Bush weigh in

The Rev. Jesse Jackson prayed with the Schindlers on Tuesday and joined conservatives in calling for state lawmakers to order her feeding tube reinserted.

The former Democratic presidential candidate was invited by Schiavo's parents to meet with activists outside Schiavo's hospice. His arrival was greeted by some applause and cries of "This is about civil rights!"

"I feel so passionate about this injustice being done, how unnecessary it is to deny her a feeding tube, water, not even ice to be used for her parched lips," he said. "This is a moral issue and it transcends politics and family disputes."

First lady Laura Bush also commented on the case Tuesday, saying the government was right to have intervened on behalf of Schiavo. "It is a life issue that really does require government to be involved," Bush said aboard a plane bound for Afghanistan, where she was to promote education and women's rights.

During Jackson's visit, a man was tackled to the ground by officers when he tried to storm into the hospice, police said. The man, who was arrested, had two bottles of water with him but did not reach the hospice door, police said.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7334555/page/2/

[Jolie Rouge]

Schiavo case raises questions about disabled
Activists challenge 'perception that death is better'
The Associated Press
Updated: 5:54 a.m. ET March 29, 2005

CHICAGO - Grabbing attention with a brief, dramatic demonstration, disabled activists have been raising their voices throughout the final stages of the Terri Schiavo drama to send a message: that Schiavo, too, is a disabled person who is worthy of living. “There is a perception that death is better than living with a disability,” says Mary Lou Breslin, a senior policy analyst with the Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund, based in Berkeley, Calif.

And that, she says, should not be the case.

Disabled activists went to great lengths over the weekend to make their point, a few of them laying on the ground outside Schiavo’s Florida hospice next to their wheelchairs. “They’re saying, ‘This is who I am. This device here allows me to get around — but this is who I am,”’ says Stephen Drake, a spokesman for Not Dead Yet, a group based in Forest Park, Ill., that focuses on end-of-life issues for disabled people.

Drake’s group is one of a number of disabled advocacy groups that — though even divided within their own ranks — have taken a public stand in the Schiavo case. The groups include the American Association of People with Disabilities and the National Council on Independent Living.

Federal court reviews?

Among other things, they’re asking Congress to consider requiring a federal court review in disputed cases where the wishes of a legally incapacitated person are not in writing and when family members disagree about whether to withhold food and water. They’re also using the issue to push Congress to drop proposed cuts in Medicaid, which many say would decrease the quality of life for disabled people who cannot afford their own care.

The federal review Congress allowed as a special circumstance in the Schiavo case caused a backlash from many Americans uncomfortable with the government intervening in a family matter. But activists say such reviews are necessary to safeguard the incapacitated person’s rights. “We obviously want people’s private life to be private. But to say there should be no review is not practical,” says Harriet McBryde Johnson, a disability-rights lawyer in Charleston, S.C., who’s been physically disabled since childhood.

McBryde Johnson says that, since Schiavo was not suffering from an illness or condition that threatened her life, removing her feeding tube was a decision to kill her. “This belief that withdrawing a feeding tube is different than other killing — why is that a reasonable distinction? I haven’t heard anybody say it would be OK to kill Terri Schiavo if she weren’t on a feeding tube,” McBryde Johnson says.

Uncomfortable juxtaposition of groups

Taking such a stance has placed disabled activists alongside religious conservatives, who have pegged the Schiavo case as a right-to-life issue. Many disabled activists say it is an uncomfortable juxtaposition, since many do not want to be tied to the abortion issue.

But Marvin Wasserman says the terminology he’s heard disabled activists using in the Schiavo debate — calling removing the feeding tube “murder” and referring to Michael Schiavo as Terri’s “so-called husband” — has angered him and others.

Wasserman, a New Yorker whose quadriplegic wife told him of her wish to die after she also got cancer, says it’s wrong for people to second-guess Michael Schiavo and his push to have her feeding tube removed. “I have a very strong feeling that he probably knew her better than anybody else and that he knew what her wishes were,” says Wasserman, whose wife was removed from life support after she was declared brain dead.

“We should be more concerned about fighting for retaining and improving the quality of life for people who are conscious of their physical state,” he adds, “so they know that at least there are some options for having a decent quality of life.”

'Latent prejudice'

Next week, the Senate health committee has scheduled a hearing to discuss the Schiavo case and to examine what committee chairman Sen. Michael Enzi, R-Wyo., called “current health care practices used in the care of non-ambulatory individuals.”

Some hope the hearings will provide an opportunity to discuss the broader issues facing disabled people — one of which is discrimination, says Lennard Davis, a professor English, disabilities studies and medical education at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

He recently wrote a piece in response to the movie popular “Million Dollar Baby,” which received top honors at this year’s Oscars. In the movie, the trainer of a quadriplegic boxer, played by actress Hilary Swank, removes her from life support in secret, at her request. “The issue that it’s better to be dead than to be a quadriplegic indicates that there’s discrimination in this country,” Davis says. “And the Terri Schiavo case is just bringing out that latent prejudice, too.”

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7324092/

[Jolie Rouge]

Hey, Jaidness, maybe we can save a few bucks for ya' over here ...

1.27 million tab for comatose inmates[i]
California wrestling with issues akin to Schiavo case
The Associated Press
Updated: 2:17 p.m. ET March 29, 2005

SACRAMENTO - The California Department of Corrections spent $1.27 million in just six months on medical care for six comatose inmates last year — and that’s not counting more than $1,000 per day for each guard it cost for security.

The debate raging in Florida over whether Terri Schiavo wished to die — and who should decide her fate if she is unable to — is the same debate going on in the California prison system, said Democratic Senate Majority Leader Gloria Romero.

One inmate who was at Delano Regional Medical Center from Nov. 7, 2003, until he died Jan. 12, cost the department $851,880 by year’s end.

The state may need to find a way for inmates to sign release forms to indicate their health care wishes and do a better job notifying family members, said Romero, who plans an April 14 hearing on the problem.

Although inmates are in state custody, private doctors make medical decisions once inmates go to outside hospitals, and there is often confusion over when family members should be brought in to help with care decisions. “It becomes very difficult because nobody knows who’s in charge,” Romero said.

That was the case with Daniel Provencio, 28, who was treated under guard for 29 days after he was shot in the head with a supposedly non-lethal foam bullet in a Jan. 16 prison altercation. His medical care cost more than $100,000, not including the $30,624 in security costs, according to the department.

Provencio’s case was unique because he was guarded and treated for 25 days after doctors declared him to be brain dead, four days after the shooting, department Director Jeanne Woodford wrote to Romero.

Woodford said a task force will be reviewing the department policy.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7327882/

[Jolie Rouge]

Sunday, March 27, 2005 7:34 a.m. EST
Schiavo: 'We Didn't Know What Terri Wanted'

In a bizarre statement on the day Terri Schiavo's feeding tube was disconnected, Michael Schiavo seemed to inadvertently admit that he had no idea what his wife would have wanted if she became incapacitated.

During an appearance on CNN's "Larry King Live," Michael was asked if he could appreciate the distress of Terri's parents:


"Yes, I do," he replied, according to a CNN transcript. "But this is not about them, it's about Terri. And I've also said that in court. We didn't know what Terri wanted, but this is what we want."

("Larry King Live," March 18)


Freudian slip ??

[Jaidness]

Former NIH director Healy misstated facts in Schiavo case

Dr. Bernadine Healy, a senior writer for U.S. News & World Report and former director of the National Institutes of Health, falsely claimed that "several" neurologists who "evaluated" Terri Schiavo determined that she had "a functional mind" and was "minimally conscious." In fact, discredited Dr. William Hammesfahr is the only neurologist who has examined Schiavo to argue that she is not in a persistent vegetative state (PVS).

In 2002, six doctors physically examined Schiavo and conveyed their assessment of her physical condition. Of those, only two expressed the belief that she was not in a PVS and could improve with additional treatment. One such doctor, Hammesfahr, was disciplined in 2003 by the Florida Board of Medicine and has falsely boasted of being a Nobel Prize nominee. The other, Dr. William Maxfield, is a radiologist, not a neurologist, as the Associated Press reported on March 24. The AP noted that two other neurologists, as well as Schiavo's attending physician, have also examined her and concluded that she is in a PVS. Dr. James Barnhill, a third neurologist who concluded Schiavo was in a PVS after he "reviewed the videotapes," according to the AP, actually physically examined her before reaching his diagnosis, as Hammesfahr's testimony noted.

From the March 29 edition of MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews (The context of her remarks indicates that Healy was equating the term "evaluation" with a physical examination.):

HEALY: [S]everal doctors who evaluated her, neurologists, believed that she did have a functional mind and she was evaluated at a time before we fully understood that function. And I think 2002 is too long ago to have evaluated her. ... I would agree that it is possible that if she were evaluated and if in fact she was minimally conscious, which several of the neurologists felt she was, which meant she could have feelings, she was aware, but that her husband, who is her legal guardian, said, well, she doesn't want to live with the mental age of a 12-month-old, that you might turn it [the feeding tube] off.

The affidavit of Dr. William Hammesfahr linked to in this item previously was hosted by terrisfight.org, a Web site run by a foundation that opposes the removal of Terri Schiavo's feeding tube. The affidavit, along with 27 others, has been removed from the site, as of the posting of this item.

— A.S.

http://mediamatters.org/items/200503300004

[Jolie Rouge]

Orwell and Terri Schiavo
March 29, 2005
By Rich Lowry

Denial is not just a river in Egypt, goes the saying. Indeed, it is something very important to supporters of ending Terri Schiavo's life, judging by their head-spinning evasions.


A woman who might (or might not) be in a persistent vegetative state, but who is otherwise not ill and can continue to live for years despite her profound disability, is dying because we are refusing to give her sustenance. We are affirmatively ending her life, perhaps against her will, because there is no way now to know her will. Supporters of this act feel compelled to try to pretty it up.


They say that Terri is being "allowed to die."

No. She is being made to die.

All across America, in hospitals, mental wards and institutions for the severely disabled, there are people who, if we withdrew our care for them, would die. We wouldn't call this "allowing" them to die. We would call it scandalous neglect.


George Felos, the lawyer for Terri's husband, Michael, explains his position in the case thusly: "I firmly believe in the right of individuals to make their own medical-treatment choices."

But Terri is not making her medical choices. Choices are being made for her, perhaps (if you believe Michael Schiavo) on the basis of things she said a decade ago, perhaps (if you don't) in the absence of any stated preference.


After visiting her bedside recently, Felos declared, "In all the years I've seen Mrs. Schiavo, I've never seen such a look of peace and beauty upon her." Maybe Felos has forgotten: If she is indeed in a persistent vegetative state, as he maintains, she can't feel anything, let alone a sense of peace that would make her radiant with beauty.


One expert told The New York Times that "no one is denying this woman food and water." Really? Then why is she dying? Is it merely a coincidence that she might experience kidney failure from dehydration at any time?


This expert's argument is that, since she is in a persistent vegetative state, she has "no knowledge of food." By this logic it would be morally acceptable to suffocate her with a pillow since she has "no knowledge of air." She could be dropped out of a 15-story window because she has "no knowledge of gravity." She could be shot because she has "no knowledge of ballistics."


Then there is the misuse of words that are thrown at Republicans to prove their alleged hypocrisy. For example: Why aren't conservatives respecting the "sanctity of marriage" here? But Michael Schiavo — perhaps understandably, given the wrenching circumstances — long ago moved in with another woman, with whom he has two children. This is no longer a case of simon-pure "sanctified" marriage.


Or how about "federalism," supposedly trampled by the GOP Congress? But federalism means a division of the branches of government, all with their designated powers. When state and federal courts willfully strike down or ignore laws passed by democratically elected legislatures, this is not "federalism," but a perversion of the country's constitutional scheme.


Felos says Terri would want us to "ask ourselves the questions: What's the purpose of my life? And how can I best fulfill that? And how can I be of service to others?"

Those are important questions, but ones liable to produce answers that might confound all our expectations. Terri Schiavo might have believed, before her tragic injury, that her purpose was to be a loving wife and mother. Now, in circumstances that would have horrified her, her purpose might be to give a kind of comfort to her family and to demonstrate to those around her the value of life, even when our capacities are heartbreakingly diminished.


Despite the spiritual-sounding mumbo jumbo, Felos and his allies want to foreclose the possibility of this purpose. They believe that some people's lives are meaningless and expendable. There is something chilling about that, which is why they so often resort to weasel words and gauzy euphemisms.

[Jaidness]

ok Jolie I'm all for pullin' their plugs too I mean seriously, people who work hard and try their best can't get decent affordable medical care yet these people can suck 1,000 a day off of taxpayers? Where is the justice in that?

[Jaidness]

Limbaugh falsely claimed attacks on Michael Schiavo have been "off limits" to the media

Nationally syndicated radio host Rush Limbaugh falsely claimed that the media have treated attacks on Michael Schiavo, husband of Terri Schiavo, as "off limits." In fact, the Los Angeles Times has noted that talk radio and The Wall Street Journal editorial page, among others, have "vilified" Schiavo.

On the March 29 broadcast of The Rush Limbaugh Show, Limbaugh said: "[W]e're [the media] not to ask any questions about Michael Schiavo. We can put out all the dirt we want about the Schindlers [Terri Schiavo's parents], and we can associate them with the liberal media's most hated people in America. Michael Schiavo? No, no, no, no, no! Off limits!"

The Times reported on March 24 that "Michael Schiavo has become the target of accusations that he caused her [Terri Schiavo's] heart attack and collapse with abusive, violent behavior; that he fabricated the story that she wouldn't want to live this way only after collecting more than $1 million in a malpractice claim; that he has sabotaged her therapy and barred her friends and family from comforting visits; and that he wants her to die so he can marry a woman with whom he has lived for the last few years and fathered two children."

Though Michael Schiavo has "vehemently denied the accusations of abuse, greed and heartlessness in interviews and to investigators, and an independent report to Gov. Jeb Bush and the judicial system two years ago said 'the evidence is incontrovertible that he gave his heart and soul to her treatment and care,'" the attacks have spread through the media, the Times reported, adding: "The attacks on his character have become talk-show fodder and high-profile commentary, from the Wall Street Journal's editorial pages to website chat rooms and morning drive-time call-ins."

http://mediamatters.org/items/printable/200503300001

[Jaidness]

Hume allowed McConnell to peddle false claim on Schiavo vote

Fox News Sunday guest host Brit Hume failed to challenge Senate Majority Whip Mitch McConnell (R-KY) when McConnell falsely claimed there was no dissent in the Republican caucus when the Senate considered and passed a bill on March 20 to move the Terri Schiavo case into the federal court system. "In the Senate, there were no divisions at all. Not only were there no divisions among Republicans, there were no divisions with the Democrats. It passed in the Senate on a unanimous voice vote. So any divisions would have come about more recently," McConnell said.

Hume neglected to mention senior Republican Sen. John Warner (R-VA), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, who was "the sole Republican to oppose the Schiavo bill in a voice vote in the Senate, according to a March 23 New York Times article." There were three people in the Senate chamber at the time of the vote. In a written statement in the Congressional Record, Warner said, "I believe it unwise for the Congress to take from the State of Florida its constitutional responsibility to resolve the issues in this case. The Florida State court system has adjudicated the issues to date. This bill, in effect, challenges the integrity and capabilities of the State courts in Florida."

Warner commented further to the Times: "It looks as if it's a wholly Republican exercise ... but in the ranks of the Republican Party, there is not a unanimous view that Congress should be taking this step."

In a graphic showing how Maryland and Virginia congressmen voted on the bill, The Washington Post reported that Warner and Sen. Paul S. Sarbanes (D-MD) "opposed the bill, but agreed to let it go forward out of respect for the majority."

From the March 26 broadcast of Fox Broadcasting Co.'s Fox News Sunday:

HUME: All right. Let me just ask one further final question. There's been some suggestion in some of the media that there is a division among Republicans about this, with conservatives and, particularly, evangelical Christians feeling one way about it, more libertarian Republicans or conservatives feeling another, and that this spells potential political trouble at the polls. What about that?

McCONNELL: In the Senate, there were no divisions at all. Not only were there no divisions among Republicans, there were no divisions with the Democrats. It passed in the Senate on a unanimous voice vote. So any divisions would have come about more recently.

HUME: Let me ask you about this other question that's sort of in the background but always present, and that is the issue of the judges, of the judicial nominations that the president has made ...

— R.S.K.
http://mediamatters.org/items/printable/200503290001
where is the outcry about this LIE in the media?
maybe we should ask Dan Rather what he thinks about this?

[janelle]

Oh let's pull everybody's plug. Life has become more about money than dignity to live and be protected. Get ready when It's your turn. Let them euthanise you, put in your directives.

And what is so insulting about this case is people are saying she is her husband's property. He has the right to decide what becomes of her cause he is her husband. Geesh.I thought our society was way beyond this property thing when it came to women. Guess not.

[Jolie Rouge]

Former NIH director Healy misstated facts in Schiavo case

Dr. Bernadine Healy, a senior writer for U.S. News & World Report and former director of the National Institutes of Health, falsely claimed that "several" neurologists who "evaluated" Terri Schiavo determined that she had "a functional mind" and was "minimally conscious." In fact, discredited Dr. William Hammesfahr is the only neurologist who has examined Schiavo to argue that she is not in a persistent vegetative state (PVS).

Doctors debate Schiavo's condition
Friday, March 25, 2005


(AP) -- An affidavit filed this week that questions whether Terri Schiavo is in a persistent vegetative state is not the first time that diagnosis has been challenged in court. But the last time doctors fought it out in front of a judge, the diagnosis was upheld.

The issue arose again this week when a neurologist, Dr. William Cheshire of the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida, said in a court document that he believed it's more likely that Schiavo is in a "minimally conscious state."

In a persistent vegetative state, a person is awake but not aware of himself or his environment, and making only reflex movements. In a minimally conscious state, a person's behavior shows inconsistent but reproducible signs of consciousness. For example, a patient can occasionally follow simple commands -- scratch his nose if it itches -- or try to use an object such as a comb correctly.

The Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville said in a statement that Cheshire, at the request of the state of Florida, observed Schiavo at her bedside and reviewed her medical history but did not conduct an extensive examination of her.

In his affidavit, Cheshire said Schiavo showed several behaviors "that I believe cast a reasonable doubt on the prior diagnosis" of persistent vegetative state. For example, he said, her face brightens and she smiles in response to familiar voices such as those of her parents. Her eyes don't track moving objects consistently, but "she does fixate her gaze on colorful objects or human faces for some 15 seconds at a time," he said.

"Although Terri did not demonstrate during our 90-minute visit compelling evidence of verbalization, conscious awareness or volitional behavior, yet the visitor has the distinct sense of the presence of a living human being who seems at some level to be aware of some things around her," Cheshire said in the affidavit.

But the first part of that sentence, in fact, "starts to meet the criteria for vegetative state," said Dr. Gene Sung, director of the neurocritical care and stroke section of the University of Southern California.

Sung, who has not been involved with the case, said of Cheshire that "unfortunately his feelings, and possibly his religious beliefs, are affecting his medical decision." Cheshire is listed as director of biotech ethics for the Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity, which notes on its Web site that it was founded by Christian bioethicists.

Sung said the original diagnosis was based on repeated examinations by "very distinguished neurologists" and he said he is as comfortable with that diagnosis as he can be without examining Schiavo himself.

Dr. Roger Albin, a professor of neurology at the University of Michigan who also was not involved in the Schiavo case, agreed. "I don't think there's any reason to doubt the diagnosis. ...I don't think her evaluation could have been done better."

He also said he's not aware of any evidence that a person could emerge from years in a persistent vegetative state and enter a minimally conscious state, especially in a case such as Schiavo's, where blood flow to the brain had been temporarily cut off in 1990.

The diagnosis has been a court matter, both in 2000 and in 2002. In the latter year, a Florida judge agreed with four neurologists that Schiavo was in a persistent vegetative state. Brain scans and examinations were conducted in 2002, but no new neurological evaluation has been ordered since, and the medical record has been closed.

Testimony in those cases included statements from Schiavo's treating physician, Dr. Victor Gambone, who said in 2000 that he agreed with the diagnosis. He said Schiavo's daily caregivers told him they could not get any response indicating an appreciation of her surroundings.

In 2002, Dr. Ronald Cranford, an expert on persistent vegetative states who was brought into the case by Schiavo's husband, testified that key centers of Schiavo's brain probably had no viable neurons left. She was not actually fixing her gaze on her mother, as had been suggested, but rather showing a reflex action seen in patients in the a vegetative state.

Cranford said Thursday he still has no doubt the diagnosis is correct and that Cheshire is "flat-out wrong."

Two other neurologists also agreed with the diagnosis, including one appointed by the court to examine and evaluate Schiavo.

But doctors representing Schiavo's parents at the 2002 hearing had a different conclusion. Dr. William Hammesfahr, a Florida neurologist, said his examination of Schiavo found she is "definitely aware of her mother" and communicating by following instructions and in looking at people. And a radiologist said a brain scan in 2002 showed more normal appearance than one in 1996 and said there was a "significant probability that she would improve" with certain treatments.

But the court was not given any objective data to support that latter assertion, said Dr. Timothy Quill, director of the Center for Palliative Care and Clinical Ethics of the University of Rochester Medical Center, writing in a commentary published online this week by the New England Journal of Medicine.

Hammesfahr has been a figure of controversy. In 2001, the Florida Department of Health accused him of falsely advertising a neurological treatment and exploiting a patient for financial gain. The treatment is "contrary to current neurological knowledge," the department said. Hammesfahr denied the accusations, and in an interview Thursday he said the probation and fine against him were overturned on appeal.

On Thursday, Dr. Lawrence J. Schneiderman of the University of California, San Diego, a specialist in bioethics of medical futility and end-of-life care, said in an interview, "He's a quack, to put it the politest way I can."

Hammesfahr said he believes Schiavo can be helped by treatment and that numerous other neurologists, some of whom actually examined Schiavo, agreed. "I'm not the only person who has said she can be rehabilitated," he said. "Are we all quacks?

http://www.cnn.com/2005/HEALTH/03/2...s.ap/index.html

-----


okay - we can agree that Hammesfahr may be a "quack" - that does not mean eveyone who shares the same opinion in this case is also a quack.

and we already discussed the fact that a doctor can "consult" via records to make a diagnosese

[Jolie Rouge]

ok Jolie I'm all for pullin' their plugs too I mean seriously, people who work hard and try their best can't get decent affordable medical care yet these people can suck 1,000 a day off of taxpayers? Where is the justice in that?

That doesn't cover the medical expenses - just the cost of 24 hour security ... for comatose inmates. Not like they are going to jump out of bed and escape - ya know ? Restraints applied and even *I* could "guard" them... hire a few retired grannies - they can work on their knitting while they "guard" and will cost a whole lot less for the taxpayers.



The California Department of Corrections spent $1.27 million in just six months on medical care for six comatose inmates last year — and that’s not counting more than $1,000 per day for each guard it cost for security.

[Jaidness]

THANK GOD THE VOICE OF REASON HAS SPOKEN!!! THANK YOU!!!!
lmao are you mocking me? I am far from the voice of reason ahahahahaha...I don't mean to sound so harsh about the whole thing but there are so many other issues out there that need our attention and support and passion and research and understanding

[janelle]

Remember, as temporal beings we are all terminal. It has taken the Netherlands less than one generation to "progress" from "right to die" to active euthanasia of "...life unworthy of life," to quote the Nazi Medical Society, c.1933!

I took that from another web site but it is so true.

[Linus1223]

Thanks, Jaidness, for the articles that you've been posting.

[YNKYH8R]

lmao are you mocking me? I am far from the voice of reason ahahahahaha...I don't mean to sound so harsh about the whole thing but there are so many other issues out there that need our attention and support and passion and research and understanding
Not at all. :) But I wonder if anyone has noticed....when Terri dies the supporters will have a taste of what the Democrats went through when Kerry wasn't elected.

That's Karma Baby!

[janelle]

3/30/2005 3:51:34 PM
''My prayers have been with Terri & her family daily.I cannot even imagine denying this young lady food & water. To be denied the essentials of life,its criminal. I don't know what Michaels problem is, but Michael MOVE ON and let Terri be with her family and friends who love her and don't have an agenda. When the time comes God will take Terri home but as long as she is still here she must have a mission and none of us know what that is. Only God knows and I can only imagine his disappointed that we have denied one of his children the food & water she needs to exist.Think through your life,most of us have been touched by a handicapped person in one way or another, how can we deny this young lady life, because she is now handicapped? What a sad world if we only keep the perfect around & not value the imperfections that make this world whole. (sounds like something Hitler would have done) God Bless all of Terri's friends and family. I will continue to pray for all of you."


Another quote on the other web site. Beliefnet

[Jaidness]

thanks linus and ynkyhtr...
Ive often thought of saying just like so many said when the Dems lost, it's over...get overrrrrr ittttt
and now back to our regularly scheduled rantings lol

[Jaidness]

Morris joined effort to downplay President Bush's role in Schiavo case, claimed he "has stepped lightly on the issue"

Following the lead of Fox News host Brit Hume, Fox News contributor Dick Morris attempted to downplay President Bush's involvement in the Terri Schiavo case. In his March 30 column in The Hill, Morris claimed that Bush "has stepped lightly on the issue, and his popularity and effectiveness will not be affected." In fact, Bush and his staff have played a leading role in the case.

Morris's and Hume's statements ignored Bush's unusual and highly publicized actions on the night of March 20. Beyond signing the unprecedented legislation that granted a federal court jurisdiction in the Schiavo case, news reports noted the extraordinary steps Bush took to sign the measure as soon as possible after Congress passed the bill, including his abrupt return to the White House from a vacation in Texas. A March 21 New York Times article noted that Bush "made the rare decision to interrupt his Texas vacation and rush back to Washington to be in place to sign a bill that could restore Ms. Schiavo's feeding tube" and that "the White House said that the issue had become one of 'defending life,' and that time was of the essence." The article further noted that Bush's "dramatic return was seen as a powerful embrace of the 'culture of life' issues of religious conservatives who helped him win the White House in 2004."

Furthermore, the Bush administration helped lawmakers with "technical advice" in drafting the legislation that Bush later signed, and Bush's own Justice Department filed legal arguments in federal court supporting the efforts of Terri Schiavo's parents to have their daughter's feeding tube restored, according to a March 22 New York Times article.

Others have noted similar efforts by conservatives to minimize the role that Bush and members of Congress played in passing the legislation. In his March 28 "White House Briefing," Washington Post online columnist Dan Froomkin noted Bush's apparent "retreat into silence" on the Schiavo case following the release of opinion polls showing an overwhelming bipartisan consensus that Bush and Congress should not have intervened, as well as Bush's own recent drop in public approval ratings.

— N.C.

http://mediamatters.org/items/printable/200503300006

[Jaidness]

John Gibson's and Fox News' description of Schiavo case: "Terri's Fight"

On the March 28 edition of Fox News' The Big Story, host John Gibson again injected his opinion into news coverage of the Terri Schiavo case by characterizing Schiavo's ordeal as her "fight for life." For most of Gibson's segment on Schiavo, the on-screen text read: "Terri's Fight." Gibson has already suggested that Democrats "sided for [a] questionable husband and dying" in the Schiavo case.

Media Matters for America documented a number of "hard news" reporters and anchors from Fox News and other cable news outlets making statements in support of those who want Schiavo's feeding tube reinserted, referring to them as "Terri's advocates" and "Terri's supporters." As with the other phrases, Gibson's use of the phrase "Terri's Fight" amounts to taking sides in the dispute, since the court case centers precisely on whether Terri Schiavo would want to continue living in a persistent vegetative state and, by extension, who her true "advocates" are.

Gibson opened his March 28 show this way:

Hi, everybody, this is The Big Story. I'm John Gibson. Terri Schiavo is not giving up the fight for life, and neither are her parents.

The on-screen text during Gibson's segment -- "Terri's Fight" -- is an echo of www.terrisfight.org, the website of the Terri Schindler-Schiavo Foundation, an organization that works to "aid Terri and her immediate family by providing the resources they need to protect Terri from a court-ordered dehydration and starvation death."

Gibson made his personal views on the Schiavo case clear in a March 25 "My Word" commentary: "Just to burnish my reputation as a bomb thrower, I think [Florida Gov.] Jeb Bush should give serious thought to storming the Bastille. By that I mean he should think about telling his cops to go over to Terri Schiavo's hospice, go inside, put her on a gurney and load her into an ambulance. They could take her to a hospital, revive her, and reattach her feeding tube."

— S.S.M.
http://mediamatters.org/items/printable/200503290002

[YankeeMary]

Yes, it is called arguing when you keep directing questions at other people who are posting. I was just giving my opinion on the subject, and your the one that called me out by asking me questions. So yes, you were trying to pick an argument with me. And yes I still agree with her parents, and you will have to deal with your God someday as I will with mine about why I feel so strongly about saving her life. You can tell him why you feel so strongly about her dieing a slow death.

And like Janelle said, I'm tuning out on this subject all together because it is eating me up inside.
Why do you post if you want no one to reply, several times you have complained when no one responds to your post then when they do respond and you do not like it they are picking on you. If you start at the beginning of this thread you will see that I have not only quoted others but also commented on their posts, so it wasn't a "personal thing" here, actually Jolie probably could claim that before you could and its not personal with Jolie either. Yes our opinions differ and yes one day I WILL face my GOD and I am proud to say today, tomorrow and on that day right in front of him that I have lived my life to the fullest extent doing his work. I AM NOT ASHAMED THAT I HAVE COMPASSION FOR THIS POOR WOMAN. It is not a sin for me to feel this way. But I do believe JUDGING people is WRONG (the BIBLE says so). So how about this, you worry about your God and I will worry about mine. And may I suggest if you do not want others to comment on your posts then do NOT post, its that simple. I am sorry you felt as though I was hurting your feelings or whatever it is you are trying to say, for it was not my intentions. I have my own convictions over this as you do yours and guess what? They are allowed to be different. Debating is alot different then arguing.

[YankeeMary]

Should that read "inconsistent and inconclusive medical evidence vs. feelings/emotions" ??
I guess it depends which side of the fence you are on, then it could read that.

[Kyla Kym]

several times you have complained when no one responds to your post
Either your crazy, or I am, because as far as I know I never once complained because no one responded to my post on here. It would suit me just fine if I was able to state how I feel without having to debate my feelings on a thread. Please point out to me where I complained several times on here because no one responded to my post.


But I do believe JUDGING people is WRONG (the BIBLE says so).

You should practice what you preach, because you are judging people left and right. Just like when you judge her parents when you said earlier "No I do not think her parents have her best interest at heart".


I have my own convictions over this as you do yours and guess what? They are allowed to be different.

Exactly! Once again, practice what you preach! I didn't comment or question you about any of your post. I just posted my feelings and you felt the need to question me. I think your ideas are horrible, but I didn't question you on it. Why did you feel that I needed to explain why I fell the way I do to you?

[kidzpca]

her parents want her ...I wish they would take her so they would shut up about it and stop wasting our courts time and money. THEY make me sick, people are beginning to say maybe they have munchausens by proxy or whatever the name of it is when you hurt someone and then love the attention that you get from it. How selfish of them. I wish they would shut up about it so the media would leave the hospice people alone and maybe let them die in peace, where are their rights, who is fighting for them? .

Yep last I knew Munchausens by Proxy is ABUSE. Hmmmmmmm I think she's got it my dear.

[Jolie Rouge]

3/30/2005 9:59 PM

Experts draw distinct line in cases of Schiavo and the pope
By Cathy Lynn Grossman, USA TODAY


Is what is good for the pope good for Terri Schiavo?

Though the situations seem similar — feeding tubes for two people who cannot get adequate nutrition otherwise — they are not medically or morally the same, experts say.

The Vatican reported Wednesday that Pope John Paul II, weakened by Parkinson's disease, is now receiving supplemental nutrition through a feeding tube in his nose.

On the same day, the parents of Terri Schiavo failed again to get a court order to reinstate the gastric feeding tube that has sustained their daughter since 1990. Overwhelmingly, neurologists who have examined Schiavo say that although her brain stem, which directs functions such as breathing, is functioning, her cerebral cortex, which directs higher-order thinking skills, is gone.

"There is no comparison between Terri and the pope," says Dennis McCann, chairman of the religious studies department at Agnes Scott College in Atlanta. "He is emphatically not near brain death. ... It's understandable and proper in his case to supply the feeding tube. Terri Schiavo has been brain-dead for years even if we have the technical ability to keep her body going. The ethical question is, 'Why?' "

Michael Schiavo and the doctors and ethicists who support his drive to let his wife die say sustaining her body with food and hydration through a feeding tube is simply prolonging her death. The cause of that death will not be starvation and dehydration but the original severe brain damage following a heart attack, they say.

Schiavo's parents dispute this, and ethicists who support their view say there's no ethical basis for ruling that people who are partially brain-dead are dying.

John Kilner of the Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity in Bannockburn, Ill., says the definition of death is the entire brain, so Schiavo is "an alive human being who must ethically have treatment — unless you come up with some way of justifying in your own mind that this is not a living human being."

That, Kilner says, lands you on a slippery slope to euthanizing people who are "at the lower end of a quality-of-life scale. It's a dangerous way of looking at human beings."

But the pope has said that nothing outweighs the value of supporting life. Cutting off food and hydration is "euthanasia by omission," he said in a speech a year ago.

Still, Catholic moral theologians have for decades evaluated end-of-life care based on its physical, emotional and financial benefits and burdens on patient and family.

The Catholic Health Association continues to follow the ethical directives of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. These spell out that a feeding tube is extraordinary medical care to be decided on a case-by-case basis — not ordinary care, which is morally obligatory.

There's no requirement to "prolong life futilely," say the editors of the Catholic magazine Commonweal in an editorial released Wednesday. It slams some of Schiavo's political and pro-life advocates and decries the church hierarchy for failing to present the church's more nuanced views.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/2005-03-30-pope-schiavo_x.htm?csp=24&RM_Exclude=Juno

[Jolie Rouge]

...I don't mean to sound so harsh about the whole thing but there are so many other issues out there that need our attention and support and passion and research and understanding

I have posted threads about protecting our children from abductions, the quakes in Japan & Indonisia, the millions ( MILLIONS ) dead and dying in the Congo, the Sudan and Rwanda of starvation, disease, and violence; the abuses of the UN & UN peacekeepers, an explosion that killed more than 14 and injured scores more in Texas, a another missing 12 year old girl in Florida, a man tied up & dragged behind a car, escape tunnels from an Iraqi Prison, new information on Rilya ( three year old child "lost" in the Florida DCF system) ... hardly anyone notices :(



Not at all. But I wonder if anyone has noticed....when Terri dies the supporters will have a taste of what the Democrats went through when Kerry wasn't elected.

That's Karma Baby!


Are you comparing a life and death issue, a woman being slowly starved to death to an ELECTION ??

It almost sounds like you wish this person - a living breathing human being - will die a protracted and painful death so that some people will be able to flip the "Bird" and deliver a resounding FU to the administration, the GOP, and anyone who voted for them :confused: We have disagreed on a number of things, but this really sound childish and beneath you. Please tell me I am mistaken ...

[Victorious]

Yep last I knew Munchausens by Proxy is ABUSE. Hmmmmmmm I think she's got it my dear.

I'm not sure I understand... Are you saying that you think her parents have hurt her for attention? I know what Munchausens by Proxy is but I'm confused since her parents have had very little to do with her care and her husband had been in control.

[janelle]

Wednesday, March 30, 2005 10:05 p.m. EST
Mel Gibson: Terri's Killing Is 'Murder'



In his strongest comments yet on the Terri Schiavo case, actor Mel Gibson calls her killing "nothing more than state sanctioned murder.”




The actor and director spoke out Wednesday night in a telephone interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity.


"I heard their cry for help,” Gibson explained his public comments. Gibson insisted that Terri Schiavo is not in a vegetative state.


Gibson said he decided to take a public stand because "it is completely wrong to deprive this poor woman from food and water.”


He added that the court ordered method of killing – depriving her of basic sustenance -- "is a prolonged and cruel execution.”


Gibson said he is closely following the case and is astounded by the developments.


"I just sit here watching this whole scenario play out in front of me with my mouth wide open, that our country has come to this,” he said, adding, "I think it’s a really black day.”

The actor offered little hope for Terri Schiavo at this point, describing the appeals as "a little too little too late.”


"It’s nothing more than state sanctioned murder,” Gibson continued.


He was also disturbed that a local Florida judge was given the unquestioned power to sentence Schiavo to death.


"All the big guys, they’ve got their hands tied by some tin-horned judge down there,” he said. "Common, when they want to whip a judge they got no problem getting Judge Moore in a heart beat.”


"It’s so wrong and I watch it, appalled and stunned, that we have gotten to this.”

[janelle]

Y, you make it sound like the Dems and those who voted for Kerry are going to have a party when Terri dies cause they will have won over the Republicans this time. THAT IS JUST SICK.

OHHHH just wait until 08 and this comes back to bite the Dems big time.

[janelle]

NBC, CBS Playing Down Schiavo Case

The major TV networks are trying to play down the Terri Schiavo story as she enters her 13th day of court-ordered starvation and dehydration.


On Wednesday night two of the three major TV networks did not even bother to lead their evening news programs with the most controversial story of our day.
Both the "CBS Evening News" and NBC’s "Nightly News with Brian Williams" led their shows with news stories other than the Schiavo case.

Only ABC’s "World News Tonight" began its program with a full report on the latest developments in the Schiavo case.

CBS featured the Schiavo story as its second feature.


But NBC’s news broadcast wins the award for its effort to downplay the controversy.

Williams first led his program with a report on the Supreme Court’s decision to allow workers expanded rights in claiming age discrimination. He followed that with a report on the pope and his feeding tube.

Williams then simply offered a brief "update" on the Schiavo case narrated by Williams himself. No field report on the most-talked-about story in America, including the major story of the federal appeals court rejecting the Schindler family for the second time.

Why are the media elites in New York so cool to the Terri Schiavo story? Perhaps it’s not pleasant to cover the first court-sanctioned effort to starve to death a U.S. citizen.

[janelle]

Wednesday, March 30, 2005 9:15 a.m. ET
Bill Clinton Supports Rescuing Schiavo

While New York Sen. Hillary Clinton has virtually gone into hiding - as have many other Democrats - regarding whether or not Terri Schiavo should be starved to death, ex-President Bill Clinton was reportedly "egging on" one of Hillary's colleagues to support federal intervention to rescue Schiavo.

Reports CBS's Dottie Lynch:

"[Sen. Tom Harkin] forged the coalition with Republicans Frist, Santorum, Martinez and, according to two sources, had the support of former President Clinton for his actions. While Mr. Clinton apparently didn't talk to Harkin until after the vote, one source described Mr. Clinton as 'egging him on.'"

It wouldn't be the first time Bill Clinton urged fellow Democrats to side with conservatives on traditional values issues.

During the presidential campaign, the triangulator-in-chief advised Sen. John Kerry to find a way to support at least a few of gay marriage bans that were on the ballot in 11 states.

Kerry rejected the advice and lost the election.

So why hasn't Mr. Clinton exhorted Mrs. Clinton to join Harkin in the bid to save Schiavo? "He probably did," one longtime Clinton watcher opined to NewsMax. "And it looks like she turned him down."
================================================== ========
Clinton is great at the political game He knows where the votes are next time around and trying to tell Hillary she better belly up if she wants to have any chance of running let alone winning. :rolleyes:

[janelle]

http://www.catholicexchange.com/vm/images/27893_lead_image.jpg

Isn't she beautiful? This is in fact what she normally looks like....

Not much like a vegtable huh?

[janelle]

http://forums.justsaywow.com/messageview.cfm?catid=63&threadid=112465

[fatesfaery]

http://www.catholicexchange.com/vm/images/27893_lead_image.jpg

Isn't she beautiful? This is in fact what she normally looks like....

Not much like a vegtable huh?

As far as I know, that pic and the others of her with makeup were make in the first couple of years after her collapse. In fact, staff had restraining orders against Michael because he was so insistant that her hair and makeup were done.

[janelle]

Oh horse feathers. She would probably look the same way today if they made her up. Are we now to be determined if we are worthy of living on our looks? I see lots of old people with wrinkles that look worse than she does in carehomes. They are also brain damaged like my mother but she still means too much to me to let the staff stop feeding her and let her die.

Go to any carehome today and you will see hundreds of people worse off then she is and they are allowed to live. Her husband wants her dead, so she will die. Geesh he would kill half the people in my mother's carehome tomorrow if he had the chance,

[fatesfaery]

I never said a person's worth should be based on their looks, in fact that's downright silly. "This is in fact what she normally looks like...." is simply an incorrect statement and just as silly. The caption with that picture on terrisfight.org says "Terri after her injury."

Even with makeup, she wouldn't look like that picture, just like I'm not going to look like a picture of me taken 12-15 years ago. I don't believe anyone has been allowed to take photos or videos of her in over three years.
Anyone can have a blog and write anything they want in it and post any picture they want to 'prove' their thoughts....but that doesn't mean what they write is true or even often based on any sort of verifiable fact.

[nightrider127]

Y, you make it sound like the Dems and those who voted for Kerry are going to have a party when Terri dies cause they will have won over the Republicans this time. THAT IS JUST SICK.

OHHHH just wait until 08 and this comes back to bite the Dems big time.

Don't you think we have other things that deserve our attention at this time other than the 2008 election?

We got people dying in earthquakes, people going without food and meds and even a roof over their heads and a beloved Pope with a feeding tube down his nose whos day are clearly numbered.

Here locally, we have a 7 year old accused of exposing himself to a 6 year old and also accused of sexual abuse because he is also accused of wanting her to have sex with him.

Now there is some things to really worry about.

[YankeeMary]

Either your crazy, or I am, because as far as I know I never once complained because no one responded to my post on here. It would suit me just fine if I was able to state how I feel without having to debate my feelings on a thread. Please point out to me where I complained several times on here because no one responded to my post.



You should practice what you preach, because you are judging people left and right. Just like when you judge her parents when you said earlier "No I do not think her parents have her best interest at heart".



Exactly! Once again, practice what you preach! I didn't comment or question you about any of your post. I just posted my feelings and you felt the need to question me. I think your ideas are horrible, but I didn't question you on it. Why did you feel that I needed to explain why I fell the way I do to you?
It isn't worth it!!!

[YankeeMary]

It isn't worth it.

[YNKYH8R]

Are you comparing a life and death issue, a woman being slowly starved to death to an ELECTION ??

It almost sounds like you wish this person - a living breathing human being - will die a protracted and painful death so that some people will be able to flip the "Bird" and deliver a resounding FU to the administration, the GOP, and anyone who voted for them :confused: We have disagreed on a number of things, but this really sound childish and beneath you. Please tell me I am mistaken ...
When the election was over most of the people on here that voted for Kerry were stunned and hurt. Everyone else was like "majority rules" and "get over it" and gloated into sickness. Well guess what....majority rules now. This isn't about a woman dieing this is about how a fraudulent government isn't going to dictate how to run our lives.
I'm not taking away from Terri being in this condition. I think I have spoken enough to the way I feel in this case. My comments were made for those of you that voted for that butt slug in Washington to understand how we felt in October. Doesn't feel to good to be on the 'minority'. And I would hope that some people learn from this experience. We can get away from media, and people, but we can't get away from our emotions. Especially when they're hurt in this fashion. :(

[YNKYH8R]

Y, you make it sound like the Dems and those who voted for Kerry are going to have a party when Terri dies cause they will have won over the Republicans this time. THAT IS JUST SICK.

OHHHH just wait until 08 and this comes back to bite the Dems big time.
I don't know....looking at the numbers it looks like we're going to have some GOP converts. LOL! ;) :rolleyes: ;)

And no I will not be doing the dance of joy when she dies. I will be glad when it is over. I think we all need to move on.....this is a priavte family matter. (always has been always should be)

[YankeeMary]

Terri has passed on. I am not dancing or jumping for joy. Shame on anyone that would think that. Death is never a joyful matter for the living.

[YNKYH8R]

"The sleeping feel no more pain;(and) the living are scarred."

[Jolie Rouge]

3/30/2005 12:41 AM

Terri Schiavo dies in hospice
From staff and wire reports

http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/j/msnbc/Components/Photos/050331/050331_schiavo_hmed_8a.h2.jpg
Terri Schiavo is seen in a 1990 photo taken shortly after she had a heart attack that led to her incapacitated state.


PINELLAS PARK, Fla. — Terri Schiavo, the severely brain-damaged woman whose 15 years connected to a feeding tube sparked an epic legal battle that went all the way to the White House and Congress, died Thursday, 13 days after the tube was removed, her husband's attorney said. She was 41.

Schiavo died at the Pinellas Park hospice where she lay for years while her husband and her parents fought over her fate in the nation's longest, most bitter right-to-die dispute. Her death was confirmed to The Associated Press by Michael Schiavo's attorney, George Felos, 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."

A shy woman who avoided the spotlight, Schiavo spent her final months as the focus of a media frenzy and an epic legal battle between her husband and parents over whether she should live or die.

Her death came after her parents were dealt perhaps a final legal blow late Wednesday when the U.S. Supreme Court refused to intervene in the case Wednesday. That came hours after a lower court in Atlanta denied a request to restore a feeding tube to the brain-damaged Florida woman.

David Gibbs, an attorney for Schiavo's parents, had characterized the family's request to the Supreme Court as a possible "last resort."

Earlier Wednesday, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued its own denial, in which one of the judges criticized members of Congress for their remarks about "activist judges" during the debate on the case. It was the fourth time the circuit court has declined to intervene in the Schiavo case.

Judge Stanley Birch said a law passed by Congress last week to allow Bob and Mary Schindler a hearing in federal court was unconstitutional. "A popular epithet directed by some members of society, including some members of Congress, toward the judiciary involves the denunciation of 'activist judges,' " wrote Birch, who was named to the bench by President Bush's father. "An 'activist judge' is one who decides the outcome of a controversy before him according to personal conviction ... as opposed to the dictates of the law. ...

"In resolving the Schiavo controversy, it is my judgment that, despite sincere and altruistic motivation, the legislative and executive branches of our government have acted in a manner demonstrably at odds with our Founding Fathers' blueprint for the governance of a free people — our Constitution," Birch wrote

The full appeals court did not rule on the constitutionality of the law.

Two judges on the 12-judge panel said Schiavo's feeding tube should be restored so the court could consider the case more carefully under less severe time constraints.

Schiavo has been without food or water since the tube was disconnected March 18.

Judges Gerald Tjoflat and Charles Wilson, the two dissenters, said, "It is fully within Congress' power to dictate standards of review" for federal courts. "Indeed, if Congress cannot do so, the fate of hundreds of federal statutes would be called into question."

The appeals court had briefly raised the Schindlers' hopes by agreeing to consider their request for another hearing in a case that has spun through state courts for seven years. The same court, along with the Supreme Court, declined to hear the case last week.

State and federal judges who have heard the Schiavo case have come in for scathing criticism recently from lawmakers who said her feeding tube should not have been removed.

U.S. Rep. Tom Feeney, a Florida Republican, decried the "imperial judiciary." "The minute they put on those robes," he said last week, "some of them become arrogant, supremacist ideologues who substitute their own biases and prejudices for representative government."

Arthur Hellman, who teaches about federal courts at the University of Pittsburgh law school, said the comments about activist judges signal a growing chasm between the judiciary and Congress. "The problem, when you have a climate of mistrust, as you do now, is that language like this will be read at its worst," he said.

Federal courts were given jurisdiction to review the case after Congress passed the law for the Schindlers in an emergency session March 20-21.

Contributing: USA TODAY's Laura Parker and Joan Biskupic and The Associated Press.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-03-30-schiavo-review_x.htm?csp=24&RM_Exclude=Juno

[Jolie Rouge]

Terri Schiavo timeline

Dec. 3, 1963 : Terri Marie Schindler is born to a well-to-do Philadelphia family.


Nov. 1984 : Michael Schiavo and Terri Schindler marry.


Feb. 25, 1990 : Terri Schiavo collapses and her heart temporarily stops owing to a possible imbalance in potassium caused by a possible eating disorder.


Nov. 1992 : Michael Schiavo wins more than $1 million in malpractice suit.


July 1993 : Terri's parents try to have Michael removed as guardian, upset over her care.


February 2000 : Michael requests Terri's feeding tube be removed. A judge agrees.


April 2001 : The feeding tube is removed after a court battle. It's reinserted two days later.


Oct. 15, 2003: : Feeding tube removed again after judge finds there is no hope of recovery.


Oct. 21, 2003 : Florida Gov. Jeb Bush orders tube reinserted.


September 2004 : Florida Supreme Court strikes down "Terri's Law."


March 18, 2005 : Terri Schiavo's feeding tube is removed for third time.


March 21, 2005 : President Bush signs a law allowing case to go to federal court.


March 22, 2005 : A federal judge refuses to order Schiavo's feeding tube reinserted.


March 23, 2005 : The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals refuses to order tube reinserted.


March 24, 2005 : The U.S. Supreme Court refuses to hear family's appeal.

March 30, 2005 : The U.S. Supreme Court refuses another emergency appeal from the Schindlers.


March 31, 2005 : Schiavo dies 13 days after a court halted her tube feeding. She was 41 years old.

Source: The Associated Press


http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7257175/

[Jolie Rouge]

Friends Remember Schiavo Before Maelstrom
By JERRY SCHWARTZ
AP National Writer

She was not always Terri Schiavo, national obsession. Debbie Meyer remembers when she was Terri Schindler, a chubby child with big brown eyes behind Coke-bottle glasses, a guest at Meyer's 3rd-birthday party at the Philadelphia Zoo.

As the birthday girl, Debbie was given a key to storybooks posted around the zoo. Turn the key, and a recorded voice would talk about the animals. Other children at the party wanted a key, too, and were jealous.

But not Terri. ``She was just so excited,'' so happy to be there, so thrilled to among the animals she loved more than anything in the world, Meyer said.



This is the Terri she remembers - not the heartbreaking figure whose every facial tic was scrutinized for evidence of a conscious mind within. Not the central figure of a maelstrom, silent as multitudes debated her life and death.

For those multitudes who never knew her, it was easy to forget that this was a real woman who led a real life. But for her friends and family, it was impossible to forget.


Meyer, for instance, remembers the time more than 20 years ago when an excited Terri called her at college. She had a date - the first date this once overweight girl had ever had. Please, Terri begged, you have to come home and help me get ready.

Meyer couldn't make it home in time, but she was there the next day, to rehash Terri's spectacular night of romance. The boy was tall and handsome and he had kissed her.

The boy was Michael Schiavo; she had met him at a sociology class at Bucks County Community College, and they married a little more than a year later.

He would be her only lover.



She did not go to her senior prom. She had had crushes, of course, unrequited - a boy named Vincent in seventh grade, for one. She adored Danielle Steel romances, pored over Tiger Beat magazine with her friends, debated who was cutest - Starsky or Hutch. She liked Starsky, and with her friend Sue Pickwell wrote scores of letters to Paul Michael Glaser, the actor.

Once, she and Meyer went to see ``An Officer and a Gentleman'' four times in one day.

She was a shy person. Her high school yearbook, from Archbishop Wood in suburban Philadelphia, lists only one activity - library aide. The Rev. Chris Walsh, the school minister, said while several teachers remain from those days, only one remembers Terri, and not much about her.


Benjamin Shatz lived next to the Schindlers' four-bedroom colonial on Red Wing Lane in the Albidale section of Huntingdon Valley. All he remembers is ``a nice child, respectful, polite.''

Her shyness may have had something to do with her weight. Just 5-foot-3, she weighed 200 pounds in high school. ``She cried a lot when she went to get clothes,'' said her mother, Mary.

But Meyer remembers laughter, instead. ``Among those who knew her, she was always vivacious. She had a laugh that made everyone laugh,'' she said.


She collected Precious Moments figurines, and stuffed animals - she had more than 100 of them, and spent hours in her purple-and-white bedroom arranging them. Real animals were her passion; she rode horses and wanted to be a veterinarian, but she was an unenthusiastic student and never graduated college.


Once, she came home crying at night, sure that she had run over a rabbit or squirrel. Her family calmed her down and convinced her no animal had died, but then her brother Bobby retrieved the dead bunny and threw it in the bushes, so she'd never know.


Another time, the family's Labrador retriever Bucky collapsed, and Terri tried to give him mouth-to-muzzle resuscitation. He died as she held him.

The Schindlers - Mary and Robert (owner of an industrial equipment company) and their children Theresa Marie, Bobby and Suzanne - were a tight-knit family. Terri joined her mother for Mass on Saturdays, and all would gather round the table for roast beef on Sunday.


She was especially close to her mother. ``When people say I was her best friend, I say no,'' said Meyer. ``I was her closest friend. Her mother was her best friend.''


After she and Michael were married - on Nov. 10, 1984, at Our Lady of Good Counsel Church, she in Victorian white with a pink-and-white bouquet, he in a gray tuxedo - the couple lived in the Schindlers' basement.


In 1986, they moved into a condominium her parents owned in Florida, paying $400-a-month rent; the rest of the Schindlers also moved to the Sunshine State.


By this time, the 200-pound Terri was no more. Dieting, she had lost more than 50 pounds by the time she started college. She dyed her hair blonde, wore a bikini, liked to tan and drive her Trans Am past construction sites.


``Terri has always been beautiful from the inside out,'' Meyer said. ``And then when she lost all the weight, she really became quite beautiful on the outside as well. What was inside she allowed to shine out at that point.''


In Florida, Michael was hired as a restaurant manager, and Terri was an office worker for Prudential insurance. ``Everybody liked her. She was hardworking,'' said Jackie Rhodes, a co-worker and pal.

They would shop for clothes and eat at Bennigan's. When a colleague ran a golf benefit for Angelus House, a home for the handicapped, Terri and Jackie volunteered. Rhodes joined Terri in her frequent visits to see her grandmother at a nursing home 30 miles away.


Was she happy? Rhodes said she wanted to have children and had stopped using birth control, but had not become pregnant. She had seen a doctor about it.

Her friends and family say she was unhappy with Michael. He was controlling, they say, and tried to keep her away from them; he was abusive, they say, and told her that if she ever got fat again, he would leave her.


By this time, she weighed less than 120 pounds, and her ribs were visible. ``I eat, Mom. I eat,'' she told her concerned mother.

Her family doubts that she had a real eating disorder; her doctors are not sure whether anorexia or something like it was the root of the potassium imbalance they say probably caused her heart to stop on Feb. 25, 1990, when she collapsed in the hallway outside of her bedroom.


She was 26 years old, an ordinary woman about to be thrust - unwillingly, unknowingly, unconsciously - into an extraordinary adventure. She died 15 years later, a symbol to millions around the world, a person to those who knew and mourned her.


03/31/05 10:07


http://cnn.netscape.cnn.com/news/story.jsp?floc=ne-main-9-l1&flok=FF-APO-1110&idq=/ff/story/0001%2F20050331%2F1008521026.htm&sc=1110

[janelle]

I don't know....looking at the numbers it looks like we're going to have some GOP converts. LOL! ;) :rolleyes: ;)

And no I will not be doing the dance of joy when she dies. I will be glad when it is over. I think we all need to move on.....this is a priavte family matter. (always has been always should be)


GOP converts, OMG how can you think that? More people will be leaving the Dem party after this. They treat life and death issues with pro-death judges they appointed. This is a travisty. :mad:

[janelle]

http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_033005/content/see_i_told_you_so.guest.html

Culture of death hates Bush.

[cleaningla]

What about the conservative, Christian judge that refused to have the feeding tube re-inserted, The conservative dominated Suprem Court that refused to even hear anything about it. The republicans have all the power, they control the executive, judicial and legislative branches of government and they couldn't save this woman's life.

Oh right, blame it on the democrats when you have all the power. :rolleyes:

[YNKYH8R]

What about the conservative, Christian judge that refused to have the feeding tube re-inserted, The conservative dominated Suprem Court that refused to even hear anything about it. The republicans have all the power, they control the executive, judicial and legislative branches of government and they couldn't save this woman's life.

Oh right, blame it on the democrats when you have all the power. :rolleyes:
Yet isn't funny how they always forget that they are in charge... :D

[janelle]

The Supreme Court and judges did not suddenly become conservative just because a conservative President got elected. They still are liberal and vote that way. Bush does not give them orders and cannot give them orders. That is our system.

Party on Dude. :(

[cleaningla]

The Supreme Court and judges did not suddenly become conservative just because a conservative President got elected. They still are liberal and vote that way. Bush does not give them orders and cannot give them orders. That is our system.

Party on Dude. :(

The suprem court is 5-4 in favor of the conservatives, have you already forgetten that they were the ones that appointed your man to power in the first place.

[janelle]

Looks like half to me. Only one vote to change the outcome. And you know Bush is going to appoint lots of conservative judges in the next few years. Lots of the judges are old and will be retiring. That is what makes the liberal nuts with this election. It will be coming and coming with the even more majority approval now.

[cleaningla]

Looks like half to me. Only one vote to change the outcome. And you know Bush is going to appoint lots of conservative judges in the next few years. Lots of the judges are old and will be retiring. That is what makes the liberal nuts with this election. It will be coming and coming with the even more majority approval now.

i know I'm shaking in my boots...lol.

[llbriteyes]

I have a question, and its mainly for Janelle, but anyone may answer.

What *exactly* is Michael Shiavo's motive to murder his wife?

Linda

[adorkablex]

I'm sick of everything being blamed on some big liberal conspiracy.

George W. Bush can appoint all of the conservative judges he wants to, but I seriously doubt there's going to be alot of changes made. If they outlaw abortion, people will just start getting them in the black market or trying to give themselves one with a coat hanger.

And screw "pro-death" this and all of that crap spewed in this thread. :mad: It's not pro-death. It's pro-choice. It means that we think EVERYbody should have the right to choose what is best for them. Not that it should be chosen FOR them. I waited 18 years to be able to make my own choices. I'll be double danged if some hillbilly with a title is going to take them away from me.

And everytime I've ever had someone close to me die, all of the religous people in my family say "it was their time", "it was God's plan" etc. Just curious but if God hadn't meant for it to be her time, wouldn't he have changed someone's mind and intervened?

[TexasGal]

And everytime I've ever had someone close to me die, all of the religous people in my family say "it was their time", "it was God's plan" etc. Just curious but if God hadn't meant for it to be her time, wouldn't he have changed someone's mind and intervened?


There are too many people in this case trying to play God. Just because something happens doesn't make it Gods will.

[freebielover]

I'm sick of everything being blamed on some big liberal conspiracy.

George W. Bush can appoint all of the conservative judges he wants to, but I seriously doubt there's going to be alot of changes made. If they outlaw abortion, people will just start getting them in the black market or trying to give themselves one with a coat hanger.

And screw "pro-death" this and all of that crap spewed in this thread. :mad: It's not pro-death. It's pro-choice. It means that we think EVERYbody should have the right to choose what is best for them. Not that it should be chosen FOR them. I waited 18 years to be able to make my own choices. I'll be double danged if some hillbilly with a title is going to take them away from me.

And everytime I've ever had someone close to me die, all of the religous people in my family say "it was their time", "it was God's plan" etc. Just curious but if God hadn't meant for it to be her time, wouldn't he have changed someone's mind and intervened?


I totally agree with every word you said.

[kidzpca]

I'm not sure I understand... Are you saying that you think her parents have hurt her for attention? I know what Munchausens by Proxy is but I'm confused since her parents have had very little to do with her care and her husband had been in control.


And Her husband has control 'cause legally he has the right...proven time and time again in court.

But as for the parents hmmmmmm could be is it that they just couldn't let thier daughter go even though she was Married to Michael...REMEMBER the Shindlers' were in agreement that Michael was a great son-in-law, Husband etc.

It is only when Michael agreed with the Drs after 8 years that they made Michael the "Scape Goat". Too bad too.

IT is time that Bob Sr and Mary Shindler Grew Up and become adults about this whole situation.

May Terri R.I.P.

[kidzpca]

http://www.catholicexchange.com/vm/images/27893_lead_image.jpg

Isn't she beautiful? This is in fact what she normally looks like....

Not much like a vegtable huh?


The Picture is from 1990. But yes, She is Beautiful

[janelle]

I have a question, and its mainly for Janelle, but anyone may answer.

What *exactly* is Michael Shiavo's motive to murder his wife?

Linda

I answered this in another thread.

His common law wife wanted to get married, he got all the money that was coming and now it was going to be used up on her care, she was a drain on his new family, and he didn't want the parents to take care of her because of all the fighting and he hates them.

No matter what anyone says a spouse should let parents see their dying daughter, he can step out for the time they have with her. Let her receive the sacraments of her church with interfering and let her be buried in her church without interfering. The last two are freedom of religion and if he was denying her that he is the control freak.

The parents hurting her is rediculous. How could they cause her heart attack? She had her brain injury way before they took care of her.

[Jolie Rouge]

Terri deserved better from us all
Joe Scarborough

In the time I have been in Congress and a member of the media, I have never worked on a story that has had the personal impact of Terri Schiavo's fight for life.

Why is that?

Thousands have died in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. But no single death has drawn American's attention to their TV sets like Terri's.

Three thousand Americans were slaughtered on September 11th, but I cannot think of a single victim from that epic day whose death came close to grabbing the attention that Terri garnered over the past few weeks.

You probably would have to go back to the death of John Lennon to find a person who was not a president or a princess whose passing stirred up such interest.

So again I ask, why?

What was it about Terri's life and death struggle that divided families, political parties, and religious leaders?

I would like to be able to explain to you what it was about this story that got me more emotionally involved than any political election or vote that I ever took in Congress.

But I can't.

I have a few guesses.

First, the President's involvement in this case this month got the forces of the Left involved in a very personal way. This is, after all, a group whose own thought leaders had suggested of late that many in the movement hated George Bush so much that they were even cheering against American efforts in Iraq.

And then there was Tom DeLay.

Liberals despise Majority Leader DeLay in a way not seen since, well, since George Bush, or Rush Limbaugh, or Ann Coulter, or Mel Gibson, or anyone else with whom they disagree.

Add to the checklist the fact the evangelical and pro-life communities got involved, and suddenly it seemed inevitable that a political gangland war was waiting to happen.

My wife commented this morning that the real tragedy of this case is the fact that Terri Schiavo seemed to be a very shy, unassuming woman who would have deplored the kind of attention that was thrown on her the last few weeks of her life.

I explained to her that there was a bigger issue involved here. The government was allowing the killing of a young, helpless woman without clear and convincing evidence.

She stared at me as if to say that I was missing her point completely.

Sadly, I think Susan's point has been lost on most of us — even those who were fighting for Terri's life because of the shocking truths connected with her death.

This has been a tragedy for all concerned.

But on this day when the debate starts to wind down, it is important that we stop to remember the young woman who was caught in the middle of this ugly political fight.

Goodbye, Terri.

You deserved better from us all.



March 31, 2005


Liberal leaders support Terri
Joe Scarborough

When it comes time for America's elite to construct a straw man worthy of abuse, the Terri Schiavo case proves once again that conservative Christians remain a handy target.

Editorial pages have been filled with thinly disguised vitriol from opinion leaders who always seem to conclude that the decline of American culture began when pesky Christians began organizing themselves politically in 1980.

It is because of these whacked out Christians, elites reason, that Terri Schiavo is still alive. Yes. Further proof that the radical Right Wing Christians have taken over the Republican Party.

Been hearing that one for a quarter century now. If that were true, abortion would be illegal and kids would be praying in school.

And Terri Schiavo would be resting comfortably in her bed.

But the GOP is a diverse party in Florida and across America.

In both the Florida and US Senate, Republican lawmakers refused to take the necessary steps to save Terri Schiavo's life. Instead of blindly following the Christian Right, these politicians followed the polls.

What a relief!

But, interestingly enough, many liberal leaders have proven themselves to be more concerned with Terri's life than being popular among their peers.

The Village Voice's longtime liberal columnist Nat Hentoff wrote a compelling piece in America's premier progressive paper that makes Pat Robertson sound moderate.

Interesting stuff from a self-described atheist whose most recent columns have targeted Don Rumsfeld and America's war machine.

And other old time liberals like Jesse Jackson, Ralph Nader, and Iowa Senator Tom Harkin have all come to Terri Schiavo's defense.

These men are obviously not listening to the Christian Right. Instead, one suspects they are remembering the words of Hubert Humphrey and doing all they can to protect one who has fallen into the shadows of life.

If the straw man fits, beat it.

But in the case of Terri Schiavo, there are those who are neither conservative nor Christian who think it is not such a wonderful thing that we live in a land that sanctions the starvation of the weakest among us.



March 28, 2005


Political dustups give elites bad name
Joe Scarborough



Every year or so, we have a cultural debate that seems to divide Americans into two camps. And as you have learned from this week's shows, it is not always Republicans fighting Democrats.

I know many Republicans who support Michael Schiavo's efforts to end his wife's life, and I know many Democrats who agree with me that starving Terri to death is inhumane and beneath us as a country.

But it is during these kind of dustups in American culture that elites earn their bad name.

Too many sniff and snort at any hayseed or redneck who dares to question their take on Jesus, Janet Jackson, or Terri Schiavo.

And they will, more times than not, go to ridiculous ends to prove you and me wrong.

I could name countless distortions trotted out by the mainstream media, Washington think-tanks or political organizations, but will instead focus on the media's claim that those of us who believe a state sanctioned starvation is immoral are, well, dead wrong.

The New York Times told us in a headline last week that starving to death was a most gentle way to die.

The Associate Press cited a study that showed that on a sliding scale from one to nine, experts believed that dying from a lack of food and water was all in all, a very good death.

Fascinating, isn't it?

If starvation is such a rocking trip, then why did the New York Times report pre-Schiavo that famine victims clutched their stomachs in pain?

And speaking of famines, are we now to believe that Bob Geldof and those meddling kids who put together Live Aid in 1985 were robbing African famine victims of a peaceful slumber, a most pleasurable death?

If so, then why worry about famine relief at all?

Elites have had no problem coming on my show telling me how Terri Schiavo has no quality of life so she would be better off dead.

Certainly the same holds true of starving children in Africa who are abused, raped, infected, and dying. Using elites' logic, feeding these children only prolong their pain.

Maybe Elton John should headline the next Live Aid concert and sing 'Funeral for a friend' and 'Better off dead.'

Or maybe, just maybe, elites should stop telling Americans how to live their lives, how to die, and how stupid we all are when we just don't see eye to eye.



March 25, 2005

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6845031/#050331b

[Jolie Rouge]

Tone deaf to visceral issues
Joe Scarborough

Liberals are mad as hell and they're not going to take it anymore.

I have been trying to get members of the political left to talk about the human tragedy of a young, helpless woman being starved to death.

But all they seem to want to do is change the subject.

Democrats and their allies have faithfully followed the party line and refused to answer questions about Terri Schiavo's sad physical state. And no one in the liberal spin cycle wants to discuss offering hope to this helpless woman.

Instead, they lecture us on the intricacies of Texas law, or how this is all to save Tom Delay's hide, or what a hypocritical pig George W. Bush is — none of which has a thing to do with Terri Schiavo's imminent death.

For too many, the death of Terri Schiavo has become deeply personal. And for the life of me, I do not know why.

I have always worked hard to understand the thought process of political opponents. And in most cases, I have grown to understand why reasonable people of good faith could disagree on issues as diverse as gun control, gay marriage, and abortion. On most issues, I have succeeded in walking in the shoes of those with whom I disagree.

But that's not the case with Terri Schiavo.

I can try to understand why many would side with the husband, but I will never comprehend why the same political activists that fight for the protection of the spotted oil and snail darter are so eager to see Terri Schiavo die.

Moveon.org, Air America, and a host of other left-of-center organizations have sprung to life to support the death of Terri.

Obviously, many Democrats see this as a political opportunity to attack the President and Tom Delay. But the intensity of their anger at any one who tries to protect Ms. Schiavo's life is disturbing at best.

It is also politically dangerous.

Does the liberal wing of the Democratic Party really be known for supporting the killing of helpless women?

Of course not. But that is the corner in which they are painting themselves.

And that should trouble a Democratic Party whose two public relations moves over the past year have been opposing the spread of democracy in the Middle East and protecting the life of a helpless young woman.

Liberals can cite polls until they are blue in the face. They can talk about Texas laws and legislative hypocrisy. They can attack every last person who is trying to save this young woman from starvation.

But in the end, Americans shocked by this macabre chapter in American politics will see the Democrats as the party on the side of death and see George Bush as the defender of defenseless.

Maybe that's not fair. But it's a fact.

Why is it that the Democrats are so tone deaf on these visceral issues?


http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6845031/#050331b

[Jolie Rouge]

3/30/2005 12:41 AM

Terri Schiavo dies in hospice
From staff and wire reports

http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/j/msnbc/Components/Photos/050331/050331_schiavo_hmed_8a.h2.jpg
Terri Schiavo is seen in a 1990 photo taken shortly after she had a heart attack that led to her incapacitated state.


PINELLAS PARK, Fla. — Terri Schiavo, the severely brain-damaged woman whose 15 years connected to a feeding tube sparked an epic legal battle that went all the way to the White House and Congress, died Thursday, 13 days after the tube was removed, her husband's attorney said. She was 41.

Schiavo died at the Pinellas Park hospice where she lay for years while her husband and her parents fought over her fate in the nation's longest, most bitter right-to-die dispute. Her death was confirmed to The Associated Press by Michael Schiavo's attorney, George Felos, 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."

Contributing: USA TODAY's Laura Parker and Joan Biskupic and The Associated Press.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-03-30-schiavo-review_x.htm?csp=24&RM_Exclude=Juno


Attorney: Terri's husband cradled her
'It was a very emotional moment for many of us there'
Thursday, March 31, 2005

(CNN) -- Terri Schiavo died a "calm, peaceful and gentle death" around 9 a.m. ET Thursday, cradled by her husband and legal guardian, Michael, said attorney George Felos.

Felos, who is Michael's Schiavo's attorney, told reporters that when his client entered his wife's room at the Woodside Hospice in Pinellas Park, Florida, about 8:45 a.m., "it was apparent that it was the final moments for Mrs. Schiavo."

Also in the room were hospice caregivers; Michael's brother, Brian; and another Schiavo attorney, Deborah Bushnell, said Felos, who was himself there.

Her death came less than 12 hours after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected her parents' last appeal and nearly two weeks after doctors, acting on an order issued by a state circuit court judge, removed her life-sustaining feeding tube. She was 41 and had been incapacitated since 1990 after suffering a heart attack that caused permanent brain damage.

Felos said Michael Schiavo had been staying in a room just down the hall from his wife for the past two weeks, ever since her feeding tube was removed March 18 on an order issued at Schiavo's request by Pasco-Pinellas Circuit Court Judge George Greer.

Felos said it had become apparent Wednesday that she was nearing death, with her heart beating rapidly, her skin mottling and her breathing becoming more difficult. Even in Terri Schiavo's final moments, there was one last dispute between her husband and other family members.

Terri's brother, Bobby Schindler, and his sister, Suzanne Vitadamo, had been in the room visiting their sibling for about an hour and 45 minutes when a hospice administrator notified Michael Schiavo that his wife was in her final stages.

Bobby Schindler got upset when a hospice official asked the siblings to leave the room so that Schiavo's condition could be evaluated. "There was not a confrontation," said the Rev. Frank Pavone, a Catholic priest and friend of the family who was there. "He was simply emotionally upset as anyone would be. ... He was told on no uncertain terms" they had to leave.

The Schiavo side gave a different version, saying the brother confronted the police officer who was trying to shepherd them out. "Bobby caused a commotion with the police officer," said Brian Schiavo.

Michael Schiavo's attorney, George Felos, stood by his client's decision to have Terri Schiavo's brother and sister leave the room. "Mr. Schiavo's overriding concern was Mrs. Schiavo has a right and had a right to die with dignity and die in peace," Felos said. "She had a right to have her last and final moments on this Earth be experienced by a spirit of love and not of acrimony." He added, "I emphasize it because this death was not for the siblings and not for the spouse and not for the parents. This was for Terri."


Her parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, had begged to be with their firstborn while she drew her last breath but police denied their request, said Brother Paul O'Donnell, the Schindlers' spokesman and spiritual adviser.

When they were notified that their daughter had died, the couple hurriedly came to the hospice and stayed in the room where her body lay. "It's our understanding that the Schindlers spent some time with Terri's body," Felos said. "They were free to spend as much time as they chose with her body. After they left, the hospice workers bathed Terri's body, and Mr. Schiavo and all of us went back in to spend some more time."

Michael Schiavo was not present in the room during their visit.

'Terri, we love you dearly'

At one point about 30 to 40 hospice workers, many of whom had stayed past their shifts, formed a circle around Terri Schiavo's body, Felos said. A hospice chaplain said a prayer, he said. "It was a very emotional moment for many of us there," Felos said.

Bobby Schindler later told reporters: "Terri, we love you dearly, but we know that God loves you more than we do. We must accept your untimely death as God's will."

Neither he nor his sister mentioned that morning's incident in the hospice room, but they both indirectly criticized their brother-in-law. "After these recent years of neglect at the hand of those who were supposed to protect and care for her, she is finally at peace with God for eternity," Vitadamo said.

Michael Schiavo and the Schindlers had been locked in a bitter court battle since 1998. The husband contended his wife wouldn't have wanted to be kept alive by artificial means. The parents argued that if she had intense therapy she would significantly recover.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/03/31/schiavo.deathbed/index.html




Also in the room were hospice caregivers; Michael's brother, Brian; and another Schiavo attorney, Deborah Bushnell, said Felos, who was himself there.

Felos said it had become apparent Wednesday that she was nearing death, with her heart beating rapidly, her skin mottling and her breathing becoming more difficult. ...

Terri's brother, Bobby Schindler, and his sister, Suzanne Vitadamo, had been in the room visiting their sibling for about an hour and 45 minutes when a hospice administrator notified Michael Schiavo that his wife was in her final stages.

Bobby Schindler got upset when a hospice official asked the siblings to leave the room so that Schiavo's condition could be evaluated.


Doesn't this sound odd ?? The doctor makes the siblings leave the room - but M., his brother, and two lawyers get to stay while they "evaluate" her ??

[Jolie Rouge]

Terri Schiavo Dies, but Debate Lives On
By VICKIE CHACHERE, Associated Press Writer

PINELLAS PARK, Fla. - With her husband and parents feuding to the bitter end and beyond, Terri Schiavo died Thursday, 13 days after her feeding tube was removed in a wrenching right-to-die dispute that engulfed the courts, Capitol Hill and the White House and divided the country.

Cradled by her husband, Schiavo, 41, died a "calm, peaceful and gentle death" at about 9 a.m., a stuffed animal under her arm, flowers arranged around her hospice room, said George Felos, Michael Schiavo's attorney.

No one from her side of the family was with her at the moment of her death. Her parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, were not at the hospice, Felos said. And her brother had been barred from the room at Michael Schiavo's request moments before the end came.


The death of the severely brain-damaged woman brought to a close what was easily the longest, most bitter — and most heavily litigated — right-to-die dispute in U.S. history. "Mr. Schiavo's overriding concern here was to provide for Terri a peaceful death with dignity," said Felos, who also was present at the death.


But the Rev. Frank Pavone, one of the Schindlers' spiritual advisers, called her death "a killing," adding: "And for that we not only grieve that Terri has passed but we grieve that our nation has allowed such an atrocity as this and we pray that it will never happen again."


Schiavo suffered brain damage in 1990 and fell into what court-appointed doctors called a persistent vegetative state, with no real consciousness or chance of recovery, after a chemical imbalance caused her heart to stop. She had left no written instructions in the event she became disabled.

Her husband argued that she told him long ago that she would not want to be kept alive artificially. Her parents disputed that, and held out hope for a miracle recovery for a daughter they said still laughed with them and struggled to talk.


Pinellas County Circuit Judge George W. Greer sided with her husband and authorized the removal of the feeding tube keeping her alive. It was disconnected March 18.

During the seven-year legal battle, federal and state courts repeatedly rejected extraordinary attempts at intervention by Florida lawmakers, Gov. Jeb Bush, Congress and President Bush on behalf of her parents.


Supporters of her parents, many of them anti-abortion activists and political conservatives, harshly criticized the courts. Many religious groups, including the Roman Catholic Church, said the removal of sustenance violated fundamental religious tenets.

About 40 judges in six courts were involved in the case at one point or another. Six times, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to intervene. As Schiavo's life ebbed away, Congress rushed through a bill to allow the federal courts to take up the case, and President Bush signed it March 21. But the federal courts refused to step in.


The case prompted many people to ponder what they would want if they, too, were in such a desperate medical situation, and many rushed to draw up living wills. The case also led to a furious debate over the proper role of government in life-and-death decisions, and whether the Republicans in Congress violated their party's principles of limited government and deference to the states by getting involved.


In Washington on Thursday, the president was careful to extend condolences to Schiavo's "families" — meaning both Michael Schiavo and the Schindlers — even though he backed efforts to reconnect her feeding tube. "I urge all those who honor Terri Schiavo to continue to work to build a culture of life where all Americans are welcomed and valued and protected, especially those who live at the mercy of others," the president said.


House Republican Leader Tom DeLay condemned the state and federal judges who refused to prolong her life, and he warned that lawmakers "will look at an arrogant and out-of-control judiciary that thumbs its nose at Congress and the president."

"I never thought I'd see the day when a U.S. judge stopped feeding a living American so that they took 14 days to die," he said.


Gov. Jeb Bush, the president's brother, said that Schiavo's death "is a window through which we can see the many issues left unresolved in our families and in our society. For that, we can be thankful for all that the life of Terri Schiavo has taught us."


Outside the hospice — where over the past few weeks more than 50 protesters were arrested, many for trying to symbolically bring Schiavo food and water — demonstrators wept, prayed and sang religious hymns. Some threw their protest signs down in disgust. "You saw a murder happening," said one demonstrator, Dominique Hanks.


Schiavo's body was taken in an unmarked white van with police motorcycle escort to the Pinellas County medical examiner's office, where an autopsy was planned that both sides hoped would shed light on the extent of her brain damage and whether she was abused by her husband, as the Schindlers have argued.


In what was the source of yet another dispute between the husband and his in-laws, Michael Schiavo will get custody of his wife's body and plans to have her cremated.

Michael Schiavo's brother, Scott Schiavo, said the ashes will be buried in an undisclosed location near Philadelphia so that her immediate family does not attend and turn the moment into a media spectacle. A funeral Mass, sought by the Schindlers, was tentatively scheduled for Tuesday or Wednesday.


Asked about perhaps never knowing where his sister might be buried, Bobby Schindler said, "We've already said goodbye. ... He's been doing this kind of stuff for 15 years. What would make him stop now?"


Bob Schindler, Terri Schiavo's father, attended a public memorial service late Thursday at a church in Pinellas Park, telling his supporters: "We'll never forget you all. Thank you so, so much. And Terri thanks you, too."

Schindler received a standing ovation from the more than 200 people at the service, who hugged him and shook his hand as he left.

The ill will between the husband and his in-laws became plain in other ways: The Schindlers' advisers complained that Schiavo's brother and sister had been at her bedside a few minutes before the end came, but were not there at the moment of her death because Michael Schiavo would not let them in the room. "And so his heartless cruelty continues until this very last moment," said Pavone, a Roman Catholic priest.


Felos disputed the Schindler family's account. He said that Terri Schiavo's siblings had been asked to leave the room so that the hospice staff could examine her, and the brother, Bobby Schindler, started arguing with a law enforcement official.

Michael Schiavo feared a "potentially explosive" situation, and would not allow the brother in the room, Felos said. "Mrs. Schiavo had a right to have her last and final moments on this earth be experienced by a spirit of love and not of acrimony," the lawyer said.

Bobby Schindler did not address the family discord, but Pavone — who was with Schindler when he was asked to leave — said the brother "didn't raise his voice, but he became visibly upset" because he couldn't be with his sister when she died. A police spokesman refused to say whether there was a dispute.


Before she was stricken, Terri Schiavo had recurring battles with weight, and her collapse at age 26 was believed to have been caused by an eating disorder. Her parents, who visited her nearly every day, reported their daughter responded to their voices, and video showed her appearing to interact with her family. But the court-appointed doctor said the noises and facial expressions were reflexes.


Both sides accused each other of being motivated by greed over a $1 million medical malpractice award from doctors who failed to diagnose the chemical imbalance. Most of the money has been spent on her care and the legal battle.


Schiavo's feeding tube was briefly removed in 2001. It was reinserted after two days when a court intervened. In October 2003, the tube was removed again, but Gov. Bush rushed Terri's Law through the Legislature and had the tube reinserted after six days. The Florida Supreme Court later struck down the law as unconstitutional interference in the judicial system.

Schiavo lived in her brain-damaged state longer than two other young women whose cases brought right-to-die issues to the forefront.


Karen Quinlan lived for more than a decade in a vegetative state, brought on by alcohol and drugs in 1975 when she was 21. New Jersey courts let her parents take her off a respirator a year after her injury. Nancy Cruzan, who was 25 when a 1983 car crash put her in a vegetative state, lived nearly eight years before the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that her feeding tube could be withdrawn.

In both cases, however, the families agreed that lifesaving measures should be ended.

___

Associated Press reporters Allen Breed, Mike Schneider, Mark Long, Mitch Stacy and Ron Word contributed to this story.


http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050401/ap_on_re_us/brain_damaged_woman

[janelle]

Also strange that they were so worried that she would die a peaceful death without any argueing in the room when they have insisted all along that she is really dead inside and cannot comprehend anything. :confused: :confused: :confused:

So who was in denial as to how dead she really was? Her husband said she couldn't understand anything anymore and never would again. So why would he be concerned if people argued around her bed? Maybe he knew more about her condition than he let on. Maybe she related to him more than he let on.

[Jolie Rouge]

Michael Schiavo's brother, Scott Schiavo, said the ashes will be buried in an undisclosed location near Philadelphia so that her immediate family does not attend and turn the moment into a media spectacle. A funeral Mass, sought by the Schindlers, was tentatively scheduled for Tuesday or Wednesday.


Asked about perhaps never knowing where his sister might be buried, Bobby Schindler said, "We've already said goodbye. ... He's been doing this kind of stuff for 15 years. What would make him stop now?"


This man is a control freak ... that is just out and out mean ... Catholic Traditionalists do not 'hold' with cremation, and to deny her a funereal Mass and not even allow her parents & siblings to visit her grave ...

[nightrider127]

What he did to that poor womans family at the end is just inexcusable. If that had been my child, I am afraid I would be in jail right now because I would have fought anyone who got in my way in those final moments.

For him to do that to them, not let them go to her funeral or know where she is buried colder than any dry ice ever has been.

[Jaidness]

Also strange that they were so worried that she would die a peaceful death without any argueing in the room when they have insisted all along that she is really dead inside and cannot comprehend anything.
so what you are saying is that instead of a peaceful death she should have passed away amidst fighting and sniping? That it would have been better to have a hostile atmosphere during the end? What about all the other patients at the hospice? Don't they have the right to a peaceful death? Don't they have the right to a dignified passing? Would you want your loved one to be in that hospice during that time?
why shouldn't they be worried, who is to say what happens in the final moments? Do you know for a fact that at the very end she wasn't hovering over the scene? Amazing that even though time and time again it has been PROVEN that Michael was a kind, caring,concerned husband (and verified by Terris own parents)he is villified over and over again and judged to be a monster. The parents weren't even there, the police and the hospice itself removed her family, Michael was staying at the hospice...did the family? Why is it that he is always the bad guy? Have you ever given thought to how much of his life has been used up dealing with this? How many people would have given up on her and let the care be dictated by the state, how tedious it must have been for 15 years to have your life consumed by something that was proven time and time again would never get better? How nice it must be to be perfect and to know all the answers(and facts) and to be secure in your convictions, so that you can be able to judge someone elses motives and to pass judgement on them in such a way. I thought that was best left up to God?!

[llbriteyes]

WHO appointed? These were MOSTLY CONSERVATIVE judges. The best one was the judge appointed by Bush 41, who ripped his son a new one. lol

Linda



GOP converts, OMG how can you think that? More people will be leaving the Dem party after this. They treat life and death issues with pro-death judges they appointed. This is a travisty. :mad:

[llbriteyes]

Please quote the entire article. I refuse to sign up to read his rediculous crud.

Bush is all gung ho on the death penalty. Allowing the hospital to pull the plug on a baby in Texas (that was HIS law)? Where you get your information tells a lot about you.

Linda



http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_033005/content/see_i_told_you_so.guest.html

Culture of death hates Bush.

[llbriteyes]

This is not rocket science... The Courts are mainly concervative because of past conservative presidents. Every time Republicans disagree with something, they twist it back on liberals or Democrats, even when the people doing it are in their own party. That is our system. This is a real trait of Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity.


The Supreme Court and judges did not suddenly become conservative just because a conservative President got elected. They still are liberal and vote that way. Bush does not give them orders and cannot give them orders. That is our system.

Party on Dude. :(

[llbriteyes]

A country *ruled* by one party is called a dictatorship. That's when some people will exercise their constitutional right to bear arms against their government. Have fun.

Linda


Looks like half to me. Only one vote to change the outcome. And you know Bush is going to appoint lots of conservative judges in the next few years. Lots of the judges are old and will be retiring. That is what makes the liberal nuts with this election. It will be coming and coming with the even more majority approval now.

[llbriteyes]

It does if "they" *say* it does. lol

Linda



There are too many people in this case trying to play God. Just because something happens doesn't make it Gods will.

[llbriteyes]

1. No matter how many times you say it, it doesn't make it true. There IS no common law in Florida. It is NOT recognised. Your argument doesn't hold water.

2. He got money, yes. It was spent on Terri's care, $700,000 of which was controlled BY THE COURTS. The rest went to Michael, which he was FORCED to use on attorneys because her parents couldn't deal with the truth. There was ONLY one million. Not 1.4, not 1.6, ONE. There is NO life insurance monies to be had. This argument REALLY doesn't hold water.

3. She wasn't a drain on his *new* family. She was his WIFE. If she was, he would have simply divorced her, which WAS an option under Florida law. Your argument does not hold water.

4. He kept her alive for 15 years just to piss off her parents? How stupid does that sound now that you look at it? It would have been EASIER on him to divorce her and let her go to them. Your argument does not hold water.

5. Her parents were allowed to see her whenever they wanted to. Michael would go down the hall to a different room when they did. It was Terri's MOTHER who decided that after Easter she just couldn't take it anymore. As for at the end, it wasn't MICHAEL who made them leave. It was Hospice, who wanted to perform an evaluation who asked them to leave. The brother of Terri had a cow and was escorted from the building. The mother and father weren't even on the premises. Once again, your argument doesn't hold water.

6. She WAS allowed to receive sacrements. She was unable to take the wafer, however, she was served WHAT SHE COULD SWALLOW of the wine. Your argument doesn't hold water.

7. He has the right, as every spouse does, to bury his wife where he wants to. Don't you want to be buried with your husband? I do. Don't her parents want to be buried together? Creamation is NOT against Catholic law. This has been documented. Would you want a circus of mediaand the wacko protesters seen at the hospice at the funeral of your loved one? If so, what's wrong with you? Your argument does not hold water.

8. Yes... they did start to help take care of Terri. WAY after her heart attack. Her parents WERE hurting her, keeping her shell of a life not even viable. I wouldn't allow my children to remain in this state, just because I had a selfish need to see them. Your arguments don't hold water.

Now.... You may have answered, however, none of them address what his motive was. You haven't answered me sufficiently. I think many people on this group would love to know. The *facts* her parents are spewing, simply aren't facts. Court documents do not lie. The facts the parents have been stating lately, have contradicted what they stated to the judge in the court.

I would really like to hear back from you on this. Please address my points one by one, so that I may (or may not) be pursuaded by your rebuttle. I would like facts. Facts that support your version. Not emotional/religious diatribe, but facts.

Thank you.

Linda




I answered this in another thread.

His common law wife wanted to get married, he got all the money that was coming and now it was going to be used up on her care, she was a drain on his new family, and he didn't want the parents to take care of her because of all the fighting and he hates them.

No matter what anyone says a spouse should let parents see their dying daughter, he can step out for the time they have with her. Let her receive the sacraments of her church with interfering and let her be buried in her church without interfering. The last two are freedom of religion and if he was denying her that he is the control freak.

The parents hurting her is rediculous. How could they cause her heart attack? She had her brain injury way before they took care of her.

[llbriteyes]

Joe Scarborough is just another right wing christian conservative.


[QUOTE=Jolie Rouge]
Tone deaf to visceral issues
Joe Scarborough7

Crap was snipped.

[llbriteyes]

Can you not understand the reverance of death? Would you want people arguing around your dying loved one? And what about the other patients in the Hospice? Do they deserve to hear it? Does no one care about the OTHER patients? Does anyone remember the grandaughter who missed her grandfather's passing because of the media/wacko protesters outside the hospice?

What kind of evil people are these? ;)

Linda


Also strange that they were so worried that she would die a peaceful death without any argueing in the room when they have insisted all along that she is really dead inside and cannot comprehend anything. :confused: :confused: :confused:

So who was in denial as to how dead she really was? Her husband said she couldn't understand anything anymore and never would again. So why would he be concerned if people argued around her bed? Maybe he knew more about her condition than he let on. Maybe she related to him more than he let on.

[llbriteyes]

http://www.cathcemchgo.org/cremation.htm

Catholic teachings DO hold with cremation. Check it out. If Catholics don't hold with cremation, why is there an entire site dedicated to "Catholic" urns?

Linda


This man is a control freak ... that is just out and out mean ... Catholic Traditionalists do not 'hold' with cremation, and to deny her a funereal Mass and not even allow her parents & siblings to visit her grave ...

[llbriteyes]

He did NOTHING to that poor woman's family. The parents weren't even THERE.

As for the funeral, good for him. I wouldn't want the circus atmosphere at my or my loved ones funeral.

Its not cold. Its necessary.

Linda



What he did to that poor womans family at the end is just inexcusable. If that had been my child, I am afraid I would be in jail right now because I would have fought anyone who got in my way in those final moments.

For him to do that to them, not let them go to her funeral or know where she is buried colder than any dry ice ever has been.

[nightrider127]

He did NOTHING to that poor woman's family. The parents weren't even THERE.

As for the funeral, good for him. I wouldn't want the circus atmosphere at my or my loved ones funeral.

Its not cold. Its necessary.

Linda

I posted that based on what I had heard on the radio all night long. I found out later that wasn't the case at all. I turned on the news when I woke up (overnight worker here) and then came here to edit the post when I found out otherwise.

Still, it does seem rather cold to me that he wont let her parents attend the funeral, if there is going to be one at all or where he is going to bury the ashes. Surely the family would have enough class not to make a circus out of it. Course, I could be very wrong.

[sccountrygrl]

He did NOTHING to that poor woman's family. The parents weren't even THERE.

As for the funeral, good for him. I wouldn't want the circus atmosphere at my or my loved ones funeral.

Its not cold. Its necessary.

Linda


I personally think it has nothing to do with the media if the parents are there or not if the media wants to be there they will be there IMO he just wants to control the situation right down to the bitter end.


As far as the parents not being there they couldnt stand to see the condition their daughter was in. Would you like to watch your child dehydrate to death?It wouldnt have made a difference he would have got the satisfaction of kicking them out also.

[llbriteyes]

Thank you for the clarification. Its appreciated.

The circus follows the family. There's no getting around it. Who is to say though, that he won't allow them to come after the fact, and after the circus finds another cause? He just doesn't want that for her NOW. I certainly hope this will be the case.

Linda



I posted that based on what I had heard on the radio all night long. I found out later that wasn't the case at all. I turned on the news when I woke up (overnight worker here) and then came here to edit the post when I found out otherwise.

Still, it does seem rather cold to me that he wont let her parents attend the funeral, if there is going to be one at all or where he is going to bury the ashes. Surely the family would have enough class not to make a circus out of it. Course, I could be very wrong.

[llbriteyes]

Of course it has a lot to do with the media. Would you want your loved one to be swamped by wacko protesters and media at the time you consecrate them? Somehow, I think not.

If the parents couldn't stand to see the condition of Terri, I agree it must have been a very hard thing to watch. Guess what? Michael was there from the time the tube was pulled until she passed. He LIVED at that hospice. He was there at the moment of her death. Where were her parents? Not even on the premises.

I cannot believe you people really exist. No matter WHAT was done, it would've had an ulterior motive. No matter WHAT he did or did not do, he would be damned.

What scares the hell out of me is that it is people like you deciding politics. Making laws that affect me and mine. I always heard there were evil little elves, but I never saw them until now.

Linda


I personally think it has nothing to do with the media if the parents are there or not if the media wants to be there they will be there IMO he just wants to control the situation right down to the bitter end.


As far as the parents not being there they couldnt stand to see the condition their daughter was in. Would you like to watch your child dehydrate to death?It wouldnt have made a difference he would have got the satisfaction of kicking them out also.

[YankeeMary]

I personally think it has nothing to do with the media if the parents are there or not if the media wants to be there they will be there IMO he just wants to control the situation right down to the bitter end.


As far as the parents not being there they couldnt stand to see the condition their daughter was in. Would you like to watch your child dehydrate to death?It wouldnt have made a difference he would have got the satisfaction of kicking them out also.
I find it kinda ironic a preist stated on MSNBC that Micheal wouldn't let the family in...the parents weren't even there..lol...the preist lied outright. He said and I heard with my own ears Micheal will not let the parents in to be with Terri.
Isee you all are saying it it ok that the parents after 8 years of legal battles decide they do not want to be there then thats ok, but Micheal not wanting fighting going on is wrong. If you believe that Terri knew what was going on what does that say about the momma? Knowing her daughter was going to die and she wasn't PVS then she knew she had to die without her mother right by her side, a bit selfish if you ask me. See we could speculate thread after thread, the bottom line is her body is finally at rest and hopefully the parents can appeciate the fact that Terri's life touch alot of people and they can in time move on a have a "normal" life, which I also pray Micheal and his fiance (Jodi) can one day do.

[Jaidness]

*claps cheers and whistles for lilbriteyes*
ITA!!

[sccountrygrl]

First of all who are you to be calling me evil your the one that seems to think it's ok to starve/dehydrate someone to death and you call me evil. I dont think its okay for someone that has clearly moved on with his life to decide whether or not someone dies. How is he to be considered non-partisan?He has a family and then he has Terri now if Terri had made a recovery do you honestly think he would have left his family for Terri or hey maybe just moved her in with them that would be peachy huh I think not now you tell me who had motive now you tell me whose evil.

[Jaidness]

how had he clearly moved on when he was with her daily and cared for her or ensured her care daily?

[llbriteyes]

Once again... what was his motive.

And yes... now I DO know who is evil.

Have a good day.

Linda



First of all who are you to be calling me evil your the one that seems to think it's ok to starve/dehydrate someone to death and you call me evil. I dont think its okay for someone that has clearly moved on with his life to decide whether or not someone dies. How is he to be considered non-partisan?He has a family and then he has Terri now if Terri had made a recovery do you honestly think he would have left his family for Terri or hey maybe just moved her in with them that would be peachy huh I think not now you tell me who had motive now you tell me whose evil.

[sccountrygrl]

He has 2 Children so he clearly had time for some things.

[Jaidness]

I know a desire to love and be loved...is so evil lol

[llbriteyes]

Its called "having a life." He did everything he could for her. How cold you must be to be so hateful about this. I cannot believe you would want your husband to suffer so much, KNOWING your mind, nay your BRAIN, would never heal. You would make him suffer horribly just because of a whim on your part. Shame on you.

Linda


He has 2 Children so he clearly had time for some things.

[sccountrygrl]

Once again... what was his motive.

And yes... now I DO know who is evil.

Have a good day.

Linda


I could think of a dozen reason but for starters he has a fiance and 2 children.
And as far as your almighty opinion of me first of all you dont know me except for the opinions I have on this subjet and 2nd of all if you define evil as someone who airs on the side of life well your grossly misinformed as to what evil really is.

[sccountrygrl]

Its called "having a life." He did everything he could for her. How cold you must be to be so hateful about this. I cannot believe you would want your husband to suffer so much, KNOWING your mind, nay your BRAIN, would never heal. You would make him suffer horribly just because of a whim on your part. Shame on you.

Linda


I have never once said I had a problem with him moving on more power to him I have a problem with him not letting her mother and father assume responsibility of her like they want.

As far as my husband is concerned I'll have you know he said he could never do to me what Michael has done to Terri.The difference between my husband and Michael is he really loves me.And if it came a time where he moved on with his life and I couldnt blame him at all he would let my mother take care of me. Because there again she loves me too.

[llbriteyes]

If you had read what I had written before, the argument that he has a fiance doesn't hold water. Because... He could have divorced her. Absolutely, without question. As per Florida Law.

I don't HAVE an *almighty* opinion of you. First off, I am not *almighty* in that I DON'T pass judgements on something you *see* or *read* in the news. I base my *opinions* on fact. The ONLY *almighty* is our dear Lord. MY God is a just God. His is a loving God. He is a MERICIFUL God. The opinions you have bespoken here tell WELL of who you are. I don't need to make judgements or opinion.

My view of evil is none of your business, and you don't know what it is. IN YOUR OPINION, you see the merciful God wanting only life for his people. Anything other than YOUR OPINION is simply evil. I don't *err* on the side of life OR death. I just think of our precious Jesus and what he might do.

Jesus doesn't trash people. Jesus doesn't spew hatefulness. Jesus loves. Remember? The greatest of these is love? Doesn't it stand to reason HE would know what is best, and what happened couldn't have happened if He didn't WANT it to?

Yes... I know what evil is. No doubt in my mind.

Linda



I could think of a dozen reason but for starters he has a fiance and 2 children.
And as far as your almighty opinion of me first of all you dont know me except for the opinions I have on this subjet and 2nd of all if you define evil as someone who airs on the side of life well your grossly misinformed as to what evil really is.

[llbriteyes]

Why? Why should he let her parents assume responsibility. She (as by a court of law) knew what she wanted, and she didn't want to live like that. Why should he just disregard her wishes?

I'm glad you have your wishes known to your husband. But what if your family fights him over it? Michael loved Terri. He loved her enough to do what SHE wanted.

I think everyone should make their wishes known in writing. That way there will be no question.... Oh wait... Seems our government has no respect for the people it serves. Yes, I will say it... The RIGHT WING Christians (and this discounts your everyday Christians) want to make their view into law. "The sanctity of life" is a polictal code phrase to get laws in accordance to Christian beliefs in effect requiring non-christians to follow Christian beliefs. This is not only unconstitutional, but wrong.

Linda



I have never once said I had a problem with him moving on more power to him I have a problem with him not letting her mother and father assume responsibility of her like they want.

As far as my husband is concerned I'll have you know he said he could never do to me what Michael has done to Terri.The difference between my husband and Michael is he really loves me.And if it came a time where he moved on with his life and I couldnt blame him at all he would let my mother take care of me. Because there again she loves me too.

[janelle]

http://www.flowgo.com/funpages/view.cfm/10716


Whoa, whoa, whoa. I'm not reading this anymore. She had died and this is all that counts now.

[llbriteyes]

Nice card. It even quotes Randall Terry (lol). What it DOESEN'T do is answer the questions I asked of you.

Linda


http://www.flowgo.com/funpages/view.cfm/10716


Whoa, whoa, whoa. I'm not reading this anymore. She had died and this is all that counts now.

[YNKYH8R]

Nice card. It even quotes Randall Terry (lol). What it DOESEN'T do is answer the questions I asked of you.

Linda
Cause she knows you're right. Or she didn't take into account that someone might actually fight to keep her alive.... :cool:

[llbriteyes]

Agreed.

L


Cause she knows you're right. Or she didn't take into account that someone might actually fight to keep her alive.... :cool:

[Jaidness]

Who is Randall Terry?

Christian activist Randall Terry has reappeared in the news in recent days as the spokesman for the parents of Terri Schiavo. Terry, founder of the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue and the Society for Truth and Justice, appeared on Fox News at least four times in the past four days -- on the March 18 edition of Hannity & Colmes, and during live coverage of the Schiavo case on March 20 and March 21. But Terry has a controversial past that was not fully disclosed in any of his Fox News appearances or on the March 19 edition of National Public Radio's Weekend Edition, which aired a brief clip from Terry. In all but one of those instances, Terry was identified only as the Schindler family spokesman.

Only when Terry appeared on a March 21 "Fox News Alert" did another guest -- Fox News contributor and Democratic strategist Susan Estrich -- point out that Terry was "involved in the anti-abortion movement" and with Operation Rescue, which "operated outside the law."

On his own website, Terry noted that he "has been arrested over forty times for peaceful opposition to abortion," but he neglected to mention the details of his anti-abortion activities with Operation Rescue in the 1980s and 1990s. In an April 22, 2004, Washington Post article, staff writer Michael Powell summarized some of Terry's anti-abortion actions:

In 1988, Terry and his legions started standing in front of local abortion clinics, screaming and pleading with pregnant women to turn away. They tossed their bodies against car doors to keep abortion patients from getting out. They waved crucifixes and screamed "Mommy, Mommy" at the women. When Terry commanded, hundreds went jellyfish-limp and blockaded the "death clinics."

In 1989, a "Holy Week of Rescue" shut down a family planning clinic in Los Angeles. More than 40,000 people were arrested in these demonstrations over four years. Subtlety wasn't Terry's thing -- he described Planned Parenthood's founder, Margaret Sanger, as a "whore" and an "adulteress" and arranged to have a dead fetus presented to Bill Clinton at the 1992 Democratic National Convention.

Additional evidence suggests that actions by Terry and Operation Rescue may have provoked violence at abortion clinics. As the New York Times reported on July 20, 2001, "One of his [Terry's] most avid followers in Binghamton was James E. [sic: C.] Kopp, now charged in the 1998 murder of a doctor who performed abortions in Buffalo [New York]." Kopp was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to 25 years to life in prison. A November 6, 1998, Times report further detailed Terry's connection to Kopp:

In July 1988, when Randall Terry drove through the night from his home in Binghamton, N.Y., to Atlanta to start the series of anti-abortion protests that would finally put his new hard-line group, Operation Rescue, onto America's front pages, James Charles Kopp was in the van riding alongside him, said former leaders of Operation Rescue.

And when Mr. Terry was arrested on the first day of Operation Rescue's "Siege of Atlanta," Mr. Kopp followed him into jail, said the leaders, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Along with more than 100 other Operation Rescue members, according to some people who were there, Mr. Kopp remained in jail for 40 days and adhered to Mr. Terry's orders not to give a real name to the police or courts.

After his release, Mr. Kopp returned to Operation Rescue's Binghamton headquarters, and was there working alongside Mr. Terry as the group's power and influence in the anti-abortion movement surged in late 1988 and 1989, according to the former leaders of Operation Rescue.

Further, the Miami Herald reported on March 20 that Operation Rescue's "sympathizers continue to make an impact, some serving for the Bush administration."

As CNN noted on March 4, 1998, Terry was named in a lawsuit -- seeking to "force anti-abortion leaders to pay for damages caused in clinic attacks" -- which was filed by the National Organization for Women (NOW) under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, and Terry settled with NOW out of court. The New York Times reported on November 8, 1998, that Terry "filed for bankruptcy last week in an effort to avoid paying massive debts owed to women's groups and abortion clinics that have sued him." As the Los Angeles Times reported on February 28, Terry's use of bankruptcy law to avoid paying for the judgments against him helped prompt Senator Charles E. Schumer (D-NY) to propose an amendment to the bankruptcy bill recently passed by Congress that "specifically would prevent abortion opponents from using the bankruptcy code to escape paying court fines," although it was not included in the final version of the bill. Versions of that amendment appeared in earlier versions of the bankruptcy bill, which stalled action on it in 2002 and 2003 when "a core of House Republicans balked" at the provision, the Los Angeles Times noted.

According to a June 14, 2003, report by the conservative World Magazine (no longer available online, but reprinted on the right-wing bulletin board Free Republic), Terry solicited donations by declaring on his website that "The purveyors of abortion on demand have stripped Randall Terry of everything he owned," but failed to disclose that the money would be used to pay for his new $432,000 house. The report noted Terry's defense: "Terry told World that he wanted a home where his family will be safe and where 'we could entertain people of stature, people of importance. I have a lot of important people that come through my home. And I will have more important people come through my home.' " World noted that the same month he paid the deposit on his new home, a court ruled that Terry, who divorced his first wife and has remarried, "was not paying a fair share of child support." In an article on his website, Terry denounced the World report as "journalistic trash, a 'hit piece' of malice and misinformation."

Terry's words and personal life have also stirred controversy. As the Fort Wayne (Indiana) News Sentinel reported on August 16, 1993, at an anti-abortion rally in Fort Wayne, Terry said "Our goal is a Christian nation. ... We have a biblical duty, we are called by God to conquer this country. We don't want equal time. We don't want pluralism. ... Theocracy means God rules. I've got a hot flash. God rules." In that same speech, Terry also stated that "If a Christian voted for [former President Bill] Clinton, he sinned against God. It's that simple." According to a March 18, 2004, press release, Terry declared on his radio program that "Islam dictates followers use killing and terror to convert Western infidels." As The Washington Post reported on February 12, 2000, in his 1995 book The Judgment of God Terry wrote that "homosexuals and lesbians are no longer content to secretly live in sin, but now want to glorify their perversions." In a May 25, 2004, interview about his gay son with The Advocate, Terry stated that homosexuality is a "sexual addiction" that shouldn't be rewarded with "special civil rights."

According to the February 12, 2000, Washington Post report, Terry was censured by his church, the Landmark Church of Binghamton, New York, for a "pattern of repeated and sinful relationships and conversations with both single and married women." Terry denies the accusation.

— A.S.

http://mediamatters.org/items/printable/200503220001

[sccountrygrl]

"Why? Why should he let her parents assume responsibility. She (as by a court of law) knew what she wanted, and she didn't want to live like that. Why should he just disregard her wishes?"

We all know our Courts dont make any mistakes their all perfect!!Yeah right


"I think everyone should make their wishes known in writing."

Will totally agree with you there.We wouldnt even be having this discussion had that taken place in this situation


I base my *opinions* on fact.

And do you know these people? If not then you base your opinion on what you have seen or read.

The opinions you have bespoken here tell WELL of who you are. I don't need to make judgements or opinion.

No the opinions I have spoken here only tell what I think of this subject.And If my eyes dont play tricks on me you have stated your opinion on the subject and have judged me.


IN YOUR OPINION, you see the merciful God wanting only life for his people. Anything other than YOUR OPINION is simply evil

I do not have a problem with death or someone wanting to die

[llbriteyes]

I was particularly moved at his singing. lol

"... some serving in for the Bush administration."

Is it just me or does that scare the bezeesus out of you?

"...Terry said "Our goal is a Christian nation. ... We have a biblical duty, we are called by God to conquer this country. We don't want equal time. We don't want pluralism. ... Theocracy means God rules. I've got a hot flash. God rules."

Scary as hell. Whose God is he talking about (don't tell me, I already know). What about Buddists, Hinduism, Muslims, Wiccans, Non-Believers. Its scares me to death to know that there are people out there. And for those of you who say Christians aren't trying to take over our country, and aren't trying to push Christianity down other's throats, take another look at that.

Thank you for posting that.

Linda

[Jolie Rouge]

If you had read what I had written before, the argument that he has a fiance doesn't hold water. Because... He could have divorced her. Absolutely, without question. As per Florida Law.


As I have stated previously, if he divorced Terri he would have had to pay spousal support to her until her death or remarriage since it is doubtful she would be able to support herself. Instead of being a source of income, she would have been a drain on his finances. In addition her guardians ( prob. her parents ) would have been able to request an audit of the way her malpractice award had been spent and posiable sue him for mismanagment of funds, embezzlement ect. ect ect.

AND it seems he also had a problem "letting go" - he would not be the first man to prefer to see his wife dead rather than deal with the blow to the ego that divorce entails ( see Scott Peterson )


She (as by a court of law) knew what she wanted, and she didn't want to live like that. Why should he just disregard her wishes?

No writen directive, in fact she told other people the exact opposite ( people who had writen dated documentation ).

And why did it take him four years, three girlfriends and a child to choose to consider her wishes ?? He created the very situation that he claimed that Terri would find intolerable by YEARS of denying her therapy and rehabilitation; forcing her to be tube fed instead of spoon fed until her system could accept nothing else ... then he had to tubes removed and allowed her to starve to death.

[llbriteyes]

First, you don't need to yell at me. I read in a reasonable volume.

Second... It wasn't ONE court. It was 26. Most were consersative judges.

Third... No. I do not know these people (and neither do you), I do know, however, how to read court documents.

Fourth... I stand by my judgement.

When you seperate your emotions from common sense... well... the truth shall set you free.

Linda




We all know our Courts dont make any mistakes their all perfect!!Yeah right


"I think everyone should make their wishes known in writing."

Will totally agree with you there.We wouldnt even be having this discussion had that taken place in this situation


I base my *opinions* on fact.

And do you know these people? If not then you base your opinion on what you have seen or read.

The opinions you have bespoken here tell WELL of who you are. I don't need to make judgements or opinion.

No the opinions I have spoken here only tell what I think of this subject.And If my eyes dont play tricks on me you have stated your opinion on the subject and have judged me.


IN YOUR OPINION, you see the merciful God wanting only life for his people. Anything other than YOUR OPINION is simply evil

I do not have a problem with death or someone wanting to die

[Jolie Rouge]

Second... It wasn't ONE court. It was 26. Most were consersative judges.

The judges were looking at the procedures and technical aspects of the case, they were not condisering the MERITS of the case. How do you explain the Courts handing down a ruling on eight years of litigation in a matter a days - even hours. Did they take speed reading to plow thru, study and discuss reams of complex data and rulings ?

[sccountrygrl]

First, you don't need to yell at me. I read in a reasonable volume.

Second... It wasn't ONE court. It was 26. Most were consersative judges.

Third... No. I do not know these people (and neither do you), I do know, however, how to read court documents.

Fourth... I stand by my judgement.

When you seperate your emotions from common sense... well... the truth shall set you free.

Linda



I wasn't yelling at you only trying to separate my words from yours.
From what I have read the only judge that would sentence her to death was judge Greer the others refused to intervene
Common Sense would tell you this is an emotional subject.But as for separating the two common sense tells me that it is immoral to Starve someone to death

[llbriteyes]

Exactly what part of your brain came up with such drivel?

1. If custody was transfered to Terri's parents, THEY would be responsible for her care. However, even if they were awarded guardianship, the courts ruled that she would not want to live this way and they STILL wouldn't be allowed to put the tube back in. We're talking legalities here.

2. What source of income was Terri?

3. Audit WHO exactly? Terri's money was in control of the courts. Not Michael. Why are you spewing trash about mismanagement, embezzlement about Michael when there is absolutely NO WAY this could have ocurred? If you want an audit, you'll have to audit the court. What you have said about Michael here is pure conjecture, and an attempt to assasinate his character.

4. A problem letting her go... yeah, I suppose all of us would have a problem letting go of someone we loved. And what the heck does a crazed psychopath who killed his wife and child have to do with THIS case????

5. Once again... He took her for an operation in California, hoping it would help her. He went to nursing school to better be able to help care for her. He went through YEARS of therapy with her. He did NOT give up on his wife. It was only after years and years of this that he was forced to realize (by medical doctors and neurologists) that the fight was hopeless. That she would NEVER not only not be the woman he met and married, but she would never be able to respond to the slightest touch from anyone. Tell me, how would you feel if you were told that?

Linda



As I have stated previously, if he divorced Terri he would have had to pay spousal support to her until her death or remarriage since it is doubtful she would be able to support herself. Instead of being a source of income, she would have been a drain on his finances. In addition her guardians ( prob. her parents ) would have been able to request an audit of the way her malpractice award had been spent and posiable sue him for mismanagment of funds, embezzlement ect. ect ect.

AND it seems he also had a problem "letting go" - he would not be the first man to prefer to see his wife dead rather than deal with the blow to the ego that divorce entails ( see Scott Peterson )



No writen directive, in fact she told other people the exact opposite ( people who had writen dated documentation ).

And why did it take him four years, three girlfriends and a child to choose to consider her wishes ?? He created the very situation that he claimed that Terri would find intolerable by YEARS of denying her therapy and rehabilitation; forcing her to be tube fed instead of spoon fed until her system could accept nothing else ... then he had to tubes removed and allowed her to starve to death.

[llbriteyes]

First, what the congress and the president passed was completely unconstitutional. Period.

Next, the courts did their JOBS. They did EXACTLY what was legally expected of them to do.

Its only people like Tom Delay and that little short jerk from NC making noise about it. Interjecting religion into OUR daily lives. MY life. YOUR life. You don't like it, tough. You WILL do what they say. Its law after all. Whatever happened to a small government. Why do they decide its right to come into MY house and tell me what I HAVE to do? Pure crap.

Linda


The judges were looking at the procedures and technical aspects of the case, they were not condisering the MERITS of the case. How do you explain the Courts handing down a ruling on eight years of litigation in a matter a days - even hours. Did they take speed reading to plow thru, study and discuss reams of complex data and rulings ?

[fatesfaery]

And why did it take him four years, three girlfriends and a child to choose to consider her wishes ?? He created the very situation that he claimed that Terri would find intolerable by YEARS of denying her therapy and rehabilitation; forcing her to be tube fed instead of spoon fed until her system could accept nothing else ... then he had to tubes removed and allowed her to starve to death.

Actually, he didn't have children when the court battles began. Jodi Centonze's brother and sister in law were on Larry King last night. when asked the ages of Michael and Jodi's children, the brother answered 1 and 2..

http://www.sptimes.com/2005/03/26/news_pf/Tampabay/She_s_the_other_woman.shtml

[llbriteyes]

Common Sense and Morality are two different things and SHOULD be seperated.

Are you referring the conservative judge who was just kicked out of his church because he refused to rule on religious grounds?

The others refused to intervene because the original ruling was just.

If you were the least bit in knowlege about brain activity, you would KNOW they didn't just "starve" her to death. She had no idea what was happening to her. Her brain was flatlined. Nothing. Lights on, but nobody's home. By all accounts by CREDIBLE neurologists, she could feel no pain.


I wasn't yelling at you only trying to separate my words from yours.
From what I have read the only judge that would sentence her to death was judge Greer the others refused to intervene
Common Sense would tell you this is an emotional subject.But as for separating the two common sense tells me that it is immoral to Starve someone to death

[fatesfaery]

Someone posted that Michael Schiavo applied for a marriage license the same day that the court ruled that Terri's feeding tube could be removed.. I thought that was strange. I had to show a certified copy of my divorce decree when DH and I married.
http://usmarriagelaws.com/search/united_states/florida/index.shtml
"If Divorced: If previously married, the date of divorce or date of spouse's death must be supplied. If the divorce or spouse's death occurred within the past 30 days, a certified copy of the divorce decree or death certificate is required."

[llbriteyes]

I googled it and could find no proof of a marriage license.

Linda


Someone posted that Michael Schiavo applied for a marriage license the same day that the court ruled that Terri's feeding tube could be removed.. I thought that was strange. I had to show a certified copy of my divorce decree when DH and I married.
http://usmarriagelaws.com/search/united_states/florida/index.shtml
"If Divorced: If previously married, the date of divorce or date of spouse's death must be supplied. If the divorce or spouse's death occurred within the past 30 days, a certified copy of the divorce decree or death certificate is required."

[YankeeMary]

Actually, he didn't have children when the court battles began. Jodi Centonze's brother and sister in law were on Larry King last night. when asked the ages of Michael and Jodi's children, the brother answered 1 and 2..

http://www.sptimes.com/2005/03/26/news_pf/Tampabay/She_s_the_other_woman.shtml
Thank you very much for posting this. I was praying and thinking this is wth way I like to think it all happened. I know deep in my heart that he loved her regardless of all the mud slinging going on. I like to think Terri was loved in her life, if you all really believe Micheal is evil and wanted her dead then you are saying she was never loved and that her life up till she collapsed was nothing. To me that is a horrible way to remember someone. I like thinking he loved her and she loved him and that they had something special, and to top it off the thought that her parents loved Micheal during their marriage, just completes what everyone should wish for their fellow human being.

[Jolie Rouge]

Exactly what part of your brain came up with such drivel?

Personal derogotory comments & insults have no place here



1. If custody was transfered to Terri's parents, THEY would be responsible for her care. However, even if they were awarded guardianship, the courts ruled that she would not want to live this way and they STILL wouldn't be allowed to put the tube back in. We're talking legalities here.


This was not until stated until years into the case


2. What source of income was Terri?

Income based on investments of the orginal settlements



3. Audit WHO exactly? Terri's money was in control of the courts. Not Michael. Why are you spewing trash about mismanagement, embezzlement about Michael when there is absolutely NO WAY this could have ocurred? If you want an audit, you'll have to audit the court. What you have said about Michael here is pure conjecture, and an attempt to assasinate his character.


I did not say they would win but they could file suits and M. would be forced to respond further entangling him and his money in legal battle. Have discussed this with several lawyers who gave their esteemed opinions ...


4. A problem letting her go... yeah, I suppose all of us would have a problem letting go of someone we loved. And what the heck does a crazed psychopath who killed his wife and child have to do with THIS case????

Some people see divorce as admitting to have FAILED or that it is a blow to their self esteem or virility. Scott Peterson had a "charmed life" and seem to feel that murdering his wife & their unborn child was preferable to divorce or continuing to live life "burdened" by their existance.

Hmmmm... bit of a control freak - won't allow a Catholic Service or burial despite Terri having been a practicing Catholic. Won't let her family attend "his" funereal or even know where she is to be buried.... Threw her brother and sister out of the room as she was in her last moments ... but allowed his own brother and two of his lawyers to stay ....


5. Once again... He took her for an operation in California, hoping it would help her. He went to nursing school to better be able to help care for her. He went through YEARS of therapy with her. He did NOT give up on his wife. It was only after years and years of this that he was forced to realize (by medical doctors and neurologists) that the fight was hopeless. That she would NEVER not only not be the woman he met and married, but she would never be able to respond to the slightest touch from anyone. Tell me, how would you feel if you were told that?

The monay was awarded in November 1992. In Febuary 1993, despite recomendations from her doctor that she was responding to rehab and therapy and should be sent to a rehab hospital that specialized in Brain Injuries, M. had Terri sent to a Nursing Home where all therapy was forbiden - even to placing a damp washclothe in her hands to prevent her hands from curling in. Refused to allow "swallowing tests" which could determine if she could or could not swallow despite several RN's records and testimony that they had spoon fed her and she had no problems. Diverted money from her therapy and rehab to pay for lawyers to push forward the adgenda of having her feeding tube removed... even paying Felos $75,000 to "massage the media" ( quoting Felos himself ) ....

Announced his egagement in the paper the same day that Greer ordered Terri's feeding Tube removed the first time ... kind of established his priorities.

[Jolie Rouge]

Actually, he didn't have children when the court battles began. Jodi Centonze's brother and sister in law were on Larry King last night. when asked the ages of Michael and Jodi's children, the brother answered 1 and 2...

http://www.sptimes.com/2005/03/26/n...her_woman.shtml


We discussed this earlier in this thread ... I had heard ( on the radio ) that the children were 14 & 8. Someone ( can't remember who ) found documentaion that his children were 10 & 8. I had heard about children with "the other woman" when I started following this story in fall of 2000; does he have a third family ??? :eek:



I googled it and could find no proof of a marriage license.

"applied for" does not mean "recieved" or "was issued"

[llbriteyes]

Personal derogotory comments & insults have no place here

Odd... they seem to be flying about at will

Income based on investments of the orginal settlements

That was used for her care and attorney fees. If you have PROOF to say otherwise, please reply.

I did not say they would win but they could file suits and M. would be forced to respond further entangling him and his money in legal battle. Have discussed this with several lawyers who gave their esteemed opinions ...

I would love to see actual proof of this.

Some people see divorce as admitting to have FAILED or that it is a blow to their self esteem or virility. Scott Peterson had a "charmed life" and seem to feel that murdering his wife & their unborn child was preferable to divorce or continuing to live life "burdened" by their existance.

Have you proof that this is the same thing? No? And besides, the Peterson case is no where NEAR even close to this case. Scott Peterson was a sociapath.

Hmmmm... bit of a control freak - won't allow a Catholic Service or burial despite Terri having been a practicing Catholic. Won't let her family attend "his" funereal or even know where she is to be buried.... Threw her brother and sister out of the room as she was in her last moments ... but allowed his own brother and two of his lawyers to stay ....

Who is to say what might happen AFTER she's interred. I wouldn't want her family and their circus to attend either. Leave her in peace. Later, after this has died down some, I'm sure he won't object to them visiting, unless of course, he suspects them of dis-interring her.

AGAIN... must I explain the facts? He did NOT throw them out. For Christ's sake, at LEAST watch the news to get some reliable information. He didn't throw them out. The brother caused a scene, became beligerent with a police office and was escorted from the building. Michael had nothing to do with it.

The monay was awarded in November 1992. In Febuary 1993, despite recomendations from her doctor that she was responding to rehab and therapy and should be sent to a rehab hospital that specialized in Brain Injuries, M. had Terri sent to a Nursing Home where all therapy was forbiden - even to placing a damp washclothe in her hands to prevent her hands from curling in. Refused to allow "swallowing tests" which could determine if she could or could not swallow despite several RN's records and testimony that they had spoon fed her and she had no problems. Diverted money from her therapy and rehab to pay for lawyers to push forward the adgenda of having her feeding tube removed... even paying Felos $75,000 to "massage the media" ( quoting Felos himself ) ....

I want to see proof of all of the above. PROOF. He was NOT allowed to "divert" money, since the courts controlled it.

Announced his egagement in the paper the same day that Greer ordered Terri's feeding Tube removed the first time ... kind of established his priorities.

I would dearly love to see that paper. Wouldn't have a copy handy would you?

I cannot believe you people are still going on about this. The facts are out there. LOOK IT UP before you base your opinion on heresay. You all spew forth the same drivel (that was for you), and expect people to believe what you say. You have all become characters of yourselves. You can't even debate the actual issues, but must bring up God and morals. If your arguments were that sound, you should be able to debate them scientifically.

Linda

[Jolie Rouge]

The Terri Schiavo legacy
Fri Apr 1, 2005
By Linda Feldmann and Warren Richey

Her death ends one contentious battle but could have a wider impact as the US grapples with end-of-life issues.

WASHINGTON - The passing of Terri Schiavo ends one of the most protracted and high-profile right-to-die cases in American history. But beyond the personal tragedy it represents, the case also adds fuel to an array of unresolved legal and political issues and sets the stage for contentious national debate for years to come.

Already, the case of the brain-damaged Florida woman - who died Thursday after 15 years in what doctors called a persistent vegetative state and almost 13 days after her feeding tube was removed - has spurred some states to accelerate legislation aimed at preventing the kind of intrafamily conflict that kept Mrs. Schiavo in legal limbo for seven years.


The US Congress is also ready to take a fresh look at end-of-life issues, even after polls showed many Americans opposed the intervention of Congress and President Bush into the Schiavo case last month. Members of Congress from both parties, some spurred by right-to-life sentiments, others by advocates for the disabled, say the question of who makes decisions in disputed right-to-die cases is worth another look on Capitol Hill.

On a personal level, the legal tug-of-war over Schiavo has forced Americans to confront the unthinkable by vividly illustrating the importance of a living will.

Part of the culture war

At heart, the Schiavo case represents the latest skirmish in the nation's culture war, already heated over abortion, gay marriage, and stem-cell research. Social conservatives have long sought to tip the balance on these issues through appointment of conservative judges - and, analysts say, one direct effect of Schiavo could be to inflame passions even more than expected over a US Supreme Court vacancy that could come soon. The high court declined to take up the Schiavo case three times within the past two weeks.


"The most significant aspect of [the Schiavo case] is that it's likely a stage-setter for a huge conflagration over the first Supreme Court nominee," says Marshall Wittmann, a senior fellow at the Democratic Leadership Council and former Christian Coalition official.


But the most surprising aspect of the case, Mr. Wittmann adds, is that it brought to light the simmering tensions within the Republican coalition between the limited-government activists and religious conservatives. High-profile economic conservatives such as Grover Norquist and Stephen Moore, who usually support President Bush and the congressional Republican leadership, criticized their unorthodox move to turn what is normally a state issue over to the federal courts in the Schiavo case.


On the day of Schiavo's death, however, Bush remained undeterred. "The essence of civilization is that the strong have a duty to protect the weak," he said. "In cases where there are serious doubts and questions, the presumption should be in favor of life."


Negative public reaction to Congress's intervention may nevertheless deter similar attempts to federalize a case like this in the future, analysts say. "A good number of those who cast votes last time are going to be frightened the next time," says Douglas Kmiec, a constitutional law professor at Pepperdine Law School who is critical of the federal intervention in the Schiavo case. "The polling data is telling them that most people are not all on one side or at least not on their side. So they will be gun-shy."


Role of guardians at stake

While many Americans are opposed to government intervention in what they view as private medical decisions dealing with end-of-life issues, the Schiavo case has also raised concerns about the power of guardians and judges to end someone's life even when a patient's wishes remain a matter of dispute among family members.


Florida state law requires that evidence of an individual's desire to cut off hydration and nutrition must be "clear and convincing." But some legal analysts say such a standard alone is not enough to head off concerns about spouses and guardians who may have financial or other personal motives to end nutrition or other life-support. In such cases, these analysts say, judges should be required to make specific findings dealing with each issue, including the credibility of guardians and spouses, future treatment prospects, and whether earlier casual statements by an individual who is now in a persistent vegetative state were well-informed and specific enough to justify a decision years later by a spouse and/or judge to end that person's life.


Ultimately the goal of pro-life activists is to establish as a matter of constitutional law that government has an affirmative obligation to protect life. In contrast, death-with-dignity supporters emphasize the existing and well-established constitutional right to decline unwanted medical treatment and be free from government intrusion into the most private aspects of their lives.


Analysts are divided over whether Congress will continue to take actions that favor the pro-life side in this broad debate. While some political observers have criticized the congressional action in the Schiavo case as being politically motivated, others stress that broad support for the measure among both Republicans and Democrats suggests many politicians were acting out of conscience.


In the long run, any political fallout over Schiavo is hard to predict. But it's possible, say Wittmann and others, that the Schiavo case - specifically, the unusual intervention of Congress in a family matter - could contribute to unease among moderate suburbanites who vote Republican on the economy and national security but are less comfortable with religious conservatives' dominance of the party on social issues. And at a time of narrow Republican control in Washington, every vote matters.


For the Democrats, the Schiavo case also presented no clear partisan advantage. "If you look carefully, you see that everyone is divided by the issue one way or another," says Jim Guth, a political scientist at Furman University in Greenville, S.C. "The very fact that the Democrats in both houses had such a hard time reacting to this - some went along with the Republican bill that passed, some opposed, others refrained from voting - suggests this is not an easy issue to discern exactly where long-term or short-term political advantage lies."


Like the embryonic stem-cell issue - on which some strong abortion foes, such as Sen. Orrin Hatch(R) of Utah, favor expanded federal funding for research - positions on end-of-life issues often don't break neatly along the same lines as those on abortion and gay marriage. "There's a lot of debate on the evangelical side of the religious spectrum on these [end-of-life] issues," says Professor Guth. "I don't think anyone has settled into final positions on these yet. Some leaders on the religious right have, but among their constituency there's a lot more division on this than there is on abortion."

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/csm/20050401/ts_csm/alegacy&e=4

[Jolie Rouge]

Schiavo Family, Husband Spar Over Funeral
33 minutes ago

By VICKIE CHACHERE, Associated Press Writer

TAMPA, Fla. - The medical examiner completed the autopsy of Terri Schiavo on Friday, clearing the way for the release of the body to her husband, who plans to cremate her remains and bury the ashes without telling his in-laws when or where.

Results of the autopsy may not be released for several weeks, the medical examiner's office said. Husband Michael Schiavo hopes the autopsy will settle questions about her medical condition, but experts differ on whether that will happen.

Michael Schiavo and his in-laws spent Friday planning separate funerals for the 41-year-old woman, who died Thursday — 13 days after her feeding tube was removed.

Her parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, have scheduled a funeral Mass for Tuesday in nearby Gulfport. The Mass will be preceded by a gathering for people to express their condolences.

Michael Schiavo's family has said he plans to take the cremated remains to Pennsylvania, where she grew up, but her parents want to bury her body in Florida so her parents and siblings can visit her grave.

Michael Schiavo declined to comment on the autopsy. The body is now ready for release to an unidentified mortuary designated by her husband.

Terri Schiavo had been the center of a long legal battle over whether she would have wanted to be kept alive with the feeding tube for 15 years after suffering a devastating brain injury.

David Gibbs, the Schindlers' attorney, said there have been no further discussions between Michael Schiavo and the Schindlers about their daughter's remains. The Schindlers do not plan to press the issue in court, he said. "The court has already determined that (Michael Schiavo) will control the burial decisions," Gibbs said.


Outside the Pinellas Park hospice where Terri Schiavo lived for five years, just a few protesters returned Friday for a brief mass as city workers took down barricades used to control the crowd. Media crews from around the country packed up their gear.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=519&ncid=716&e=2&u=/ap/20050401/ap_on_re_us/schiavo

[llbriteyes]

It scares the hell out of me to KNOW there is a religious right in congress, or in government total. I shudder to think what laws they may pass that will effect my family values. My family values are VASTLY different than the current government. It doesn't make them WRONG, but to have to cowtow to a theocracy scares the hell out me. This is a simple fight for OUR freedom. Do you want people telling you how to live out your very daily life? Not me. Left unchecked (and it largely is), this government will tell me (and does) who I can sleep with. Who I can marry. And who and how I can bury. These are family issues. Not issues that end up with the president making an emergency law for ONE person in this VAST country. Who will be next? Does anybody remember the constitution?

We came her for freedom of religion. The constitution guarantees that right. But it is NOT the role of the government to tell me WHAT religion. When government makes laws based upon THEIR religion, then it is no longer FREEDOM of religion. ANY religion or lack thereof. It is important to note that religion is NOT only Christianity. It is Buddism. It is Muslim. It is Jewish. It is Wiccan. It is also Humanism. It is black. It is white. It is asian. It is us. It is who we are. Do I want to be ruled by my government's religion? I think not.

What comes next? Check out the local Federal Communications Commission. Look at what they're up to. They want to ban everything. What's next? Where's the next book burning? I don't like the way this country is going these days. It isn't only president Bush. Its the whole kit and kaboodle. Remember the Bill of rights? I wish they did.

Be afraid. Be VERY afraid.

What happened to freedom to think for yourself?

[Jolie Rouge]

I would dearly love to see that paper. Wouldn't have a copy handy would you?

I cannot believe you people are still going on about this. The facts are out there. LOOK IT UP before you base your opinion on heresay. You all spew forth the same drivel (that was for you), and expect people to believe what you say. You have all become characters of yourselves. You can't even debate the actual issues, but must bring up God and morals. If your arguments were that sound, you should be able to debate them scientifically.

Linda


I have posted alot of this information - with links - in this thread. Look them up if you are interested, I am not digging thru 650 + posts to find information already given.

You are the one being critical of people acting on their emotions but you are the only one who seems to be posting derogatory quips about others. Jaidness, Yankeemary, and I can disagree on some issues, but without being disrespectful.

[llbriteyes]

I guess it just comes down to, to each their own.

Linda


I have posted alot of this information - with links - in this thread. Look them up if you are interested, I am not digging thru 650 + posts to find information already given.

You are the one being critical of people acting on their emotions but you are the only one who seems to be posting derogatory quips about others. Jaidness, Yankeemary, and I can disagree on some issues, but without being disrespectful.

[firechic]

Jolie, have you ever posted an original post, as opposed to a c/p?

[llbriteyes]

Be careful, she'll accuse you of having motives of your own.

Linda


Jolie, have you ever posted an original post, as opposed to a c/p?

[firechic]

:D Well, all anyone has to do, is read her posts.

[Jolie Rouge]

So you insist I back up statements with documentation - then complain that I C&P articles to provide same, then try to put it off on me because you can't be troubled to read the information provided.

:rolleyes:

[firechic]

I, personally, never insisted such a thing. And ALL your posts are c/p.

[Jolie Rouge]

:D Well, all anyone has to do, is read her posts.

95 posts versus 21,265 posts .... hhhhmmmmmm

[firechic]

That's because I don't c/p everything I see.........duh

[Jolie Rouge]

I, personally, never insisted such a thing. And ALL your posts are c/p.


and you have personally read ALL 21,265 posts to be able to say that ??

I *AM* impressed.

[firechic]

Don't have to, just click on the first page, and there it is.

[Jolie Rouge]

gee and I thought this was a thread about Terri Schiavo ...

[firechic]

Whatever.

[sccountrygrl]

OMG I know that you are not seriously complaining about someone posting facts about the topic of this thread. That's called technology why type it all when you can c/p

[Jolie Rouge]

OMG I know that you are not seriously complaining about someone posting facts about the topic of this thread. That's called technology why type it all when you can c/p


LOL Well, some people feel like they need to complain about something.

First someone is complaining about having "proof" - then refuses to read the documentation offered - then complains that I C&P the articles ....

to quote firechhick : :rolleyes: "whatever" :rolleyes:

[firechic]

Ah, well, as my momma used to tell me........."never have a battle of wits with an unarmed person"

[llbriteyes]

Wrong again. Would someone close this thread please?



LOL Well, some people feel like they need to complain about something.

First someone is complaining about having "proof" - then refuses to read the documentation offered - then complains that I C&P the articles ....

to quote firechhick : :rolleyes: "whatever" :rolleyes:

[Jolie Rouge]

Why close the whole thread ? Everyone was civil in their disagreements until the last page or so ....

[Jolie Rouge]

I have asked the mods to delete posts 654 to 670.

I apoligise for feeding the fire, I am putting firechic & llbriteyes on ignore.

[firechic]

I don't feel I was being uncivil...I was just expressing the obvious.

[llbriteyes]

And I thank you.

This whole thread has gotten WAY out of order. Its gotten personal and hateful. I thought this was a place to debate events. Apparently I was wrong. Stooping to name calling and childish behavior is foolish.

And apparently, debating is childish behavior.

If this thread doesn't die a natural death, it should be locked.

Linda



I have asked the mods to delete posts 654 to 670.

I apoligise for feeding the fire, I am putting firechic & llbriteyes on ignore.

[Linus1223]

I could think of a dozen reason but for starters he has a fiance and 2 children.


Terri's parents are the one who encouraged him to move on with his life...

[kidzpca]

Also strange that they were so worried that she would die a peaceful death without any argueing in the room when they have insisted all along that she is really dead inside and cannot comprehend anything. :confused: :confused: :confused:

So who was in denial as to how dead she really was? Her husband said she couldn't understand anything anymore and never would again. So why would he be concerned if people argued around her bed? Maybe he knew more about her condition than he let on. Maybe she related to him more than he let on.


Likely Micheal didn't want people to argue around Terri's bed [B]OUT OF RESPECT FOR THE DYING.[B]

[sccountrygrl]

Terri's parents are the one who encouraged him to move on with his life...

Yes they did but dont you think with him moving on and having a whole new family including kids he should have the say so in what happened to Terri.

[YankeeMary]

Yes they did but dont you think with him moving on and having a whole new family including kids he should have the say so in what happened to Terri.
Yes I agree that he should have the say so in what happened toTerri.

[Linus1223]

Yes they did but dont you think with him moving on and having a whole new family including kids he should have the say so in what happened to Terri.
But again, it was HER parents who encouraged him to move on...

[KarlaJorge]

http://www.cathcemchgo.org/cremation.htm

Catholic teachings DO hold with cremation. Check it out. If Catholics don't hold with cremation, why is there an entire site dedicated to "Catholic" urns?

Linda


That is in the modern days, but TRADITIONAL Catholics DID NOT and DO NOT.

Historically. cremation was considered a pagan method of disposing of the human body. Today, however, human reasoning, cultural acceptance, and economic factors determine what is right and what is wrong when it comes to funeral procedures, rather than the Word of God.

The Revelation on Cremation

For committed Christians. the issue is: "What does the Bible say about cremation?" Our faith is grounded in the Judo Christian ethic which means that we must consider what the Old and New Testaments say on this important subject, which will eventually affect every person. (Hebrews 9:27).

The Old Testament

Is there scriptural allowance for cremation in the Old Testament? The answer is "No!' The universal law and practice of God's people Israel was to bury the body, not burn it.

Take Abraham, for example. As the "Father of the Faithful.' he chose to purchase a plot of ground for 400 shekels of silver as a place for burying his wife Sarah (Genesis 23:14). Why did he do that? Because it was the scriptural way to care for the dead. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were all buried, as were the more than two million Israelites who died in the desert.

The Old Testament forbade the Jews from following the customs of their pagan neighbors, and specifically ordered them to bury dead bodies (Deut. 21:23). When Moses died, God buried him in Moab (Deut. 34:6). Since that is God's method, should it not be ours. The Jewish commentary on the Law (The Mishna) denounced cremation as "an idolatrous practice.'

The only case of a body being burned in Israel is recorded in Joshua 7:15. Aachan and his family were stoned to death, and their bodies were ordered to be burned because of their horrible sin of rebellion against a holy God. Burning a body was a demonstration of God's 'fierce anger' in Bible days (Joshua 7:26). Should our remains be disgraced in this same way?

Amos 2 records the unpardonable sin of Moab, which was the burning of the bones of Edom's king (v. 1). The result of that sin of cremation in the 8th century BC was a God-sent "fire upon Moab." Burning has always been a demonstration of God's wrath. It is therefore not a fitting practice at biblical funerals.

The New Testament

In New Testament times the only bodies that were burned were those of criminals. The place of cremation was the garbage dump in the Valley of Hinnon which was located just outside the walls of the Holy City. There. in ancient times, human sacrifices were offered (2 Chron. 33:6) and the continuous burning of rubbish illustrated for the Jewish people unending judgment upon the wicked.

Jesus used the word "Gehenna" as a picture of Hell. where 'the worm does not die and the fire is not quenched' (Mark 9:48). Burning was the symbol of shame and disgrace, hardly the proper imagery for a Christian funeral. Jesus said that the dead should be buried, not burned (Matt. 8:22).

Our Lord's own body was carefully placed in a tomb. He was "buried" the Scripture says. Our identification with Christ in His death is said to be a "burial' (Romans 6:4). Believer' baptism graphically pictures that spiritual relationship. Cremation therefore, is a violation and a distortion of that scriptural object lesson. It must not be done.

Every funeral in the New Testament included a burial, even for such persons as Annanias and Sapphira, and Judas! (Matt. 27:710). It is therefore a statement of gross ignorance for any Christian to say: "There is nothing in the Bible that forbids cremation."


The Origins of Cremation

According to the historical records, the idea of reducing a dead body to ashes originated in heathen lands. The Romans, who also invented a crucifixion kind of death, were among the first to practice this abhorrent custom. The Hindus in India have always burned their dead and then sprinkled the ashes on the Ganges River Since they believe in reincarnation they want to dispose of the body quickly so that the next incarnation can take place. Should Christians emulate the Hindus? Interestingly, Christians in India believe that cremation is as pagan as idol worship, and therefore always bury their dead.

Cremation came to America via the uncivilized and non Christian peoples of the Middle Ages. These same pagans bored out the eyes of Christians, tore out their tongues, burned them at the stake, and fed them to the lions.

The first crematorium in America was built in Washington, Pennsylvania in 1876 by some very ungodly and atheistic men. The Roman Catholic Church responded very quickly to the spreading of this evil practice by banning it in 1886. Long before that date however, Christian pastors spoke out against this practice and condemned this pagan way of disposing of a Christians body.

It is therefore a rather recent development in our country, and sadly, it has now been adopted by many Christians as just another way to get rid of a dead body. Some Christians respond to this revelation by saying: "We know that cremation doesn't cause anyone to by-pass the judgment as some believe, and therefore it doesn't matter how we dispose of a loved one's body.' Oh, yes it does!

For a person to request cremation for themselves or another person is to go against the Bible and all of sacred history. Burial is the only biblical method as we await the resurrection, and no amount of reasoning about burial space, the sanitation of this method, and the high costs of funerals can change that. The question of cremation is not debatable, for God has spoken the final word.

The Word of God is very clear on this subject, both by direct statements and spiritual examples. As Christians we are not permitted to do with our bodies as we please. Indeed, we are challenged to exalt Jesus Christ in our bodies, 'whether by life or by death.' (Phil. 2:20).


Cremation Conclusions

1. Cremation is of heathen origin and therefore is unscriptural and non-Christian. Any practice, regardless of its nature, that is contrary to God's Holy Word is to be shunned by all conscientious believers.

2. Cremation removes the healing process that takes place naturally through a Christian burial. Usually, the four pounds of charred remains are sprinkled, in Hindu fashion, on some streams of water, or scattered by airplane to the four winds. Some people divide the ashes among the relatives so that each may have a part of their loved one's remains. Others just leave the ashes with the mortician who will probably thrown them in the city dump. When this happens, there is no committal of the body to the ground, no sacred place where the body is buried, and no place of remembrance in future years.

There is something absolutely horrifying about the cremation process itself. The body is placed in a gas oven heated to 3,000 degrees where it is burned to a crisp, and reduced to ashes. Can you imagine yourself being responsible for the cremation of the body of your mother or father, or a mate or your child?

Understand, there is no loving concern as an unknown mortuary worker pushes the body into the flames and afterward crushes the remaining bones with a mallet before placing them in an urn. How different from a Christian burial. which is so beautifully illustrated by the burial of Jesus and others in the Bible.

Cremation dishonors the redeemed body of a Christian and is the cheapest, legal way to avoid a sacred responsibility. It is a barbaric act that is unscriptural and therefore unwarranted.

"Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them.' Ephesians 5:11.

[Jolie Rouge]

4/2/2005

Schiavo cremated amid family feud
By Vickie Chachere, The Associated Press

TAMPA — Terri Schiavo's body was cremated Saturday as disagreements continued between her husband and her parents, who were unable to have their own independent expert observe her autopsy.

The cremation was carried out according to a court order issued Tuesday establishing that Michael Schiavo had the right to make such decisions, said his lawyer, George Felos. He said plans for burying her ashes in Pennsylvania, where she grew up, had not yet been completed.

Terri Schiavo's parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, had wanted to bury their daughter in Pinellas County so they could visit her grave.

Terri Schiavo, 41, died Thursday after the removal of the feeding tube that had kept her alive since 1990, when she suffered brain damage that court-appointed doctors determined had placed her in a persistent vegetative state. Her parents had fought in court to keep her alive, disputing the doctors' opinions and saying there was hope of improvement.

Michael Schiavo has not spoken publicly since his wife's death, but Felos said Saturday: "He's holding up. It's very difficult for him."

Michael Schiavo is required to tell his wife's parents of any memorial services he plans for Terri Schiavo and where her ashes are interred.

The Schindlers plan to have their own memorial service Tuesday at Holy Name of Jesus Catholic Church in Gulfport.

The Schindlers had sought to have independent medical experts observe their daughter's autopsy at the Pinellas County Medical Examiner's office, but the agency refused their request, family attorneys David Gibbs III and Barbara Weller said Saturday. The autopsy was completed Friday, the day after Terri Schiavo died, and results are not expected for several weeks.

Representatives of the medical examiner's office did not return a call seeking comment Saturday. The examiner's office has said it would conduct routine examinations and look for any evidence of what might have caused her 1990 collapse.

The Schindlers have accused Michael Schiavo of abusing his wife, a charge he vehemently denies.

Over the years, the couple have sought independent investigation of their daughter's condition and what caused it. Abuse complaints to state social workers were ruled unfounded — although one investigation remains open — and the Pinellas state attorney's office did not turn up evidence of abuse in a brief probe of the case.

Gibbs said the medical examiner's videotape, pictures and tissue samples from the autopsy could be reviewed by other experts if the family asks. While the autopsy report will be a public document, images will not be made public under a 2001 law passed after the death of race car driver Dale Earnhardt.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-04-01-schiavo_x.htm?csp=24&RM_Exclude=Juno

[janelle]

The Catholic Church allows creamation now. Since lots of people die in fires and their body is burned it only makes sense that creamation is allowed now.
The thoughts on this have changed but I don't know exactly when. How many years.

My cousin was creamated. He was a single man having divorced when he was diagnosed with a brain tumor. He wanted to be buried by his parents but the cemetary had no plot near their graves so he was creamated and buried between them. Creamation is not encouraged but it is allowed.

[llbriteyes]

The rule was changed in 1963.

QUOTE=janelle]The Catholic Church allows creamation now. Since lots of people die in fires and their body is burned it only makes sense that creamation is allowed now.
The thoughts on this have changed but I don't know exactly when. How many years.

My cousin was creamated. He was a single man having divorced when he was diagnosed with a brain tumor. He wanted to be buried by his parents but the cemetary had no plot near their graves so he was creamated and buried between them. Creamation is not encouraged but it is allowed.[/QUOTE]

[KarlaJorge]

The rule was changed in 1963.

QUOTE=janelle]The Catholic Church allows creamation now. Since lots of people die in fires and their body is burned it only makes sense that creamation is allowed now.
The thoughts on this have changed but I don't know exactly when. How many years.

My cousin was creamated. He was a single man having divorced when he was diagnosed with a brain tumor. He wanted to be buried by his parents but the cemetary had no plot near their graves so he was creamated and buried between them. Creamation is not encouraged but it is allowed.[/QUOTE]

There is no rule to be changed, you cannot change what the Bible says.

[Jaidness]

There is no rule to be changed, you cannot change what the Bible says.
KarlaJorge Quote:
says who?

[llbriteyes]

I was referring to Catholic Tenet. They make changes as seen deemed.

Linda




There is no rule to be changed, you cannot change what the Bible says.[/QUOTE]

[cleaningla]

I posted this before in another thread. It's from the vatican website.

http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG1104/__P4A.HTM

§3. The Church earnestly recommends that the pious custom of burying the bodies of the deceased be observed; nevertheless, the Church does not prohibit cremation unless it was chosen for reasons contrary to Christian doctrine.

[Jolie Rouge]

There is no rule to be changed, you cannot change what the Bible says.

Where in the Bible is cremation forbiden ? You have presented some compelling texts "for" burial, but nothing that forbids cremation.

Do you keep Kosher, there are hundreds of food restictitions - most of which made sense in the Times where there was no refridgeration - keeping to the dietary practices must have saved thousands from food poisoning.


Do you hold with slavery - also allowed in the Old Testement.


The Tradition in the Catholic church originated because in the days of the early Christians the matyrs bodies were burned because they beliived in the Resurection ( they also thought He was Coming *any day now* ) and the Rapture. The Romans burned the bodies as a sign of disrespect - and so it has been held in distasts by the Catholic Church ever since.

[KarlaJorge]

Where in the Bible is cremation forbiden ? You have presented some compelling texts "for" burial, but nothing that forbids cremation.


Take Abraham, for example. As the "Father of the Faithful.' he chose to purchase a plot of ground for 400 shekels of silver as a place for burying his wife Sarah (Genesis 23:14). Why did he do that? Because it was the scriptural way to care for the dead. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were all buried, as were the more than two million Israelites who died in the desert.

The Old Testament forbade the Jews from following the customs of their pagan neighbors, and specifically ordered them to bury dead bodies (Deut. 21:23). When Moses died, God buried him in Moab (Deut. 34:6). Since that is God's method, should it not be ours. The Jewish commentary on the Law (The Mishna) denounced cremation as "an idolatrous practice.'

The only case of a body being burned in Israel is recorded in Joshua 7:15. Aachan and his family were stoned to death, and their bodies were ordered to be burned because of their horrible sin of rebellion against a holy God. Burning a body was a demonstration of God's 'fierce anger' in Bible days (Joshua 7:26). Should our remains be disgraced in this same way?

Amos 2 records the unpardonable sin of Moab, which was the burning of the bones of Edom's king (v. 1). The result of that sin of cremation in the 8th century BC was a God-sent "fire upon Moab." Burning has always been a demonstration of God's wrath. It is therefore not a fitting practice at biblical funerals.

The New Testament

In New Testament times the only bodies that were burned were those of criminals. The place of cremation was the garbage dump in the Valley of Hinnon which was located just outside the walls of the Holy City. There. in ancient times, human sacrifices were offered (2 Chron. 33:6) and the continuous burning of rubbish illustrated for the Jewish people unending judgment upon the wicked.

Jesus used the word "Gehenna" as a picture of Hell. where 'the worm does not die and the fire is not quenched' (Mark 9:48). Burning was the symbol of shame and disgrace, hardly the proper imagery for a Christian funeral. Jesus said that the dead should be buried, not burned (Matt. 8:22).


The bible texts are there, if you want to look them up, but I am not going to further discuss this. Somebody asked where it was forbidden I just posted a finding on the matter, my mother is a Reformed Baptist Cristian, and knows the bible like nothing else. She had discussed this before with us, cause my grandmother wishes to be creamted and my mother simply is against it.

No further comments....

[Jolie Rouge]

ISSUES RAISED BY SCHIAVO CASE WILL BE DIFFICULT TO RESOLVE
Some final notes on the Terri Schiavo case
By John Leo


THE BEHAVIOR OF CONSERVATIVES. Uneven and sometimes awful, with lots of vituperation and extreme charges. (Jeb Bush does not remind me of Pontius Pilate; I don't think it's fair to circulate rumors that Michael Schiavo was a wife-beater.) Worse were the revolutionary suggestions that the courts be ignored or defied, perhaps by sending in the National Guard to reconnect the tube. This is the "by any means necessary" rhetoric of the radical left, this time let loose by angry conservatives. Where does this rhetoric lead?


THE BEHAVIOR OF LIBERALS. Mystifying. While conservative opinion was severely splintered, liberal opinion seemed monolithic: Let her die.

Liberals usually rally to the side of vulnerable people, but not in this case. Democrats talked abstractly about procedures and rules, a reversal of familiar roles. I do not understand why liberal friends defined the issue almost solely in terms of government intruding into family matters. Liberals are famously willing to enter family affairs to defend individual rights, opposing parental-consent laws, for example. Why not here? Non-intervention is morally suspect when there is strong reason to wonder whether the decision-maker in the family has the helpless person's best interests at heart.


A few liberals broke ranks -- 10 members of the black caucus, for instance, plus Sen. Tom Harkin, and Ralph Nader, who called the case "court-imposed homicide." But such voices were rare. My suspicion is that liberal opinion was guided by smoldering resentment toward President Bush, and the rising contempt for religion in general and conservative Christians in particular. We seem headed for much more conflict between religious and secular Americans.


THE BEHAVIOR OF THE NEWS MEDIA. Terrible. Pro-life columnist Nat Hentoff of The Village Voice called it "the worst case of liberal media bias I've seen yet." Many stories and headlines were politically loaded. Small example of large disdain: On air, a CBS correspondent called the Florida rallies a "religious road show," a term unlikely to have been applied to Martin Luther King Jr.'s civil rights demonstrations or any other rallies meeting CBS' approval.

More important, it was hard to find news that Michael Schiavo had provided no therapy or rehabilitation for his wife since 1994, and even blocked the use of antibiotics when Terri developed a urinary infection. And the big national newspapers claimed as a fact that Michael Schiavo's long-delayed recollection of Terri's wish to die, supported only by hearsay from Michael's brother and a sister-in-law, met the standard for "clear and convincing evidence" of consent. It did nothing of the sort, particularly with two of Terri's friends testifying the opposite.

The media covered the intervention by Congress as narrowly political and unwarranted. They largely fudged the debates over whether Terri Schiavo was indeed in a persistent vegetative state and whether tube-feeding meant that Schiavo was on life-support. In the Nancy Cruzan case, the Supreme Court said that tube-feeding is life-support, but some ethicists and disability leaders strongly dispute that position.


PUBLIC OPINION. Polls showed very strong opposition to the Republican intervention, but the likelihood is that those polled weren't primarily concerned with Terri Schiavo or Republican overreaching, if that's what it was. They were thinking about themselves and how to avoid being in Terri Schiavo's predicament. Many, too, have pulled the plug on family members and don't want these wrenching decisions second-guessed by the courts or the public.

If this is correct, it means the country has yet to make up its mind on the issue of personhood and whether it is moral and just to remove tube-supplied food and water from people with grave cognitive disabilities.

The following candid exchange occurred on Court TV last month in a conversation between author Wesley Smith and bioethicist Bill Allen:


Smith: Bill, do you think Terri is a person?

Allen: No, I do not. I think having awareness is an essential criterion for personhood.



Fetuses, babies and Alzheimer's patients are only minimally aware and might not fit this definition of personhood, and so would have no claim on our protections. Smith points out that other bioethicists narrow protection further, requiring rationality, the capacity to experience desire or the ability to value one's own existence. Tighter definitions of personhood expand the number of humans who can be killed without blame or harvested for their organs while still alive.


On Court TV, Bill Allen argued that the family could have removed Terri's organs while she was alive, "just as we allow people to say what they want done with their assets." This issue has been hiding behind the Terri Schiavo case for years. Soon it will be out in the open.



http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=2206&ncid=742&e=15&u=/ucjl/20050406/cm_ucjl/issuesraisedbyschiavocasewillbedifficulttoresolve

[janelle]

Babies don't fit the definition of personhood????? :eek:

[Jolie Rouge]

The Case of Theresa Schiavo
By Joan Didion

Theresa Marie Schindler was born on December 3, 1963, to prosperous and devoutly Catholic parents, Robert and Mary Schindler, in a Philadelphia suburb, Huntingdon Valley. Robert Schindler was a dealer in industrial supplies. Mary Schindler was a full-time wife and mother. They named their first child for Saint Teresa of Avila, the Spanish mystic who believed the Carmelites insufficiently reclusive and so founded a more restrictive order. We have only snapshots of Theresa Marie Schindler's life before the series of events that interrupted and eventually ended it. According to newspaper accounts published in the wake of those events, there had been the four-bedroom colonial on the leafy street called Red Wing Lane. There had been the day the yellow Labrador retriever, Bucky, collapsed of old age in the driveway and Theresa Marie tried in vain to resuscitate him. There had been the many occasions on which her two gerbils, named after the television characters Starsky and Hutch, got loose and into the air-conditioning unit in the basement.

She enrolled in the two-year program at Bucks County Community College, where, in a psychology class during her second semester, she met Michael Schiavo. He was from Levittown. He is said to have been the first person she had ever kissed. At the time they married two years later, in 1984, she was just under twenty-one; he was eight months older. After a honeymoon at Disney World, they moved in with her parents in Huntingdon Valley, then, when the Schindlers decided two years later to move to Florida, preceded them there. They lived first in a condominium the Schindlers had in St. Petersburg. Theresa Schindler Schiavo clerked at the Prudential Insurance Company. She dyed her hair blonde. She lay out by the pool and drank several quarts of iced tea a day. Michael Schiavo, who after his wife's cardiac arrest would begin and eventually complete studies in nursing and respiratory therapy at St. Petersburg Junior College, took restaurant jobs.


For all the media coverage of Theresa and Michael Schiavo that occurred fifteen years later, during the last days of her life, there appeared very little hard information about what happened on the evening of February 24 or the early morning of February 25, 1990, the hours that marked the onset of the ordeal. Michael Schiavo has said that his wife was already in bed when he came home that evening from the restaurant where he was then working. He went to bed. He woke at five AM, earlier than usual, to hear his wife falling on the floor in the hallway. "For some strange reason that day, I was just taking the covers off, and then she hit the floor," he told the St. Petersburg Times-Floridian nine months after the fact. He called 911. It has been established that Theresa Schiavo was, at the time the emergency crew arrived, in full cardiac arrest. After seven attempts to defibrillate, or electrically shock the heart into beating normally, a rhythm was restored.

Theresa Schiavo was taken to Humana Northside Hospital in St. Petersburg, where she stayed three months, at first in a coma. We do not know from either the Humana Northside discharge summary or the later coverage how this coma was scored on the Glasgow Coma Scale, which ranks eye, verbal, and motor response on a combined range from three to fifteen, "GCS three" signifying that the patient has no response and "GCS fifteen" that he or she can speak in an oriented way, open the eyes spontaneously, and obey motor commands.

When Theresa Schiavo emerged from coma it was to the generally unresponsive state in which she would remain for the next fifteen years. Different people have called this state by different names. Some commentators have referred to it as "locked-in syndrome," which it seems not to have been. Complete "locked-in syndrome," which is sometimes characterized as "living eyes in a dead body" and was the condition described by Jean-Dominique Bauby in The Diving Bell and the Butterfly,[1] is identified by tetraplegia (the paralysis of all four limbs), paralytic mutism (an inability to speak), the oculomotor deviation known as lateral gaze palsy, and the inability to breathe unaided. The patient, however, retains the ability to think and reason. "In my case, blinking my left eyelid is my only means of communication," Bauby, who before the stroke that injured his brainstem had been the editor in chief of French Elle, wrote by blinking to select letters as the alphabet was repeatedly recited to him.

On the major diagnostic points alone, Theresa Schiavo was not tetraplegic and could breathe unaided, but seemed not to have retained the ability to think. Most neurologists have called her condition a "persistent vegetative state," in which the patient has normal sleep-wake cycles but does not respond. Since the diagnosis of a persistent vegetative state is based on the absence of response, any response from a patient who has received the diagnosis is presumed to be reflexive.


A few neurologists, in what would be the last months of Theresa Schiavo's life, began to say that her condition could be a "minimally conscious state," a diagnosis in use only since 2002 to differentiate those patients previously diagnosed as vegetative who can track objects or people with their eyes and seem intermittently able to respond to commands. Early in March, at the request of the Florida Department of Children and Families, which was seeking custody of Theresa Schiavo, she was seen by a neurologist from the Mayo Clinic's Florida hospital, William P. Cheshire, the director of Mayo's Autonomic Reflex Laboratory. Some doctors and bioethicists with interests in the matter suggested that, as a conservative Christian, Dr. Cheshire brought a bias to the case, but his affidavit seemed to raise questions not before widely addressed. He noted that the patient had not had a complete neurological examination in nearly three years, had never had such advanced testing as positron emission tomography (PET) or functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), and that in the absence of such examination and imaging there remained "huge uncertainties" about her neurological status.

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Late this past winter, Robert and Mary Schindler petitioned the court for time to allow that an MRI be done on their daughter, but the request was denied. "One of the Respondents' affiants," the order denying the request read, the "Respondents" in this action being the Schindlers, cautions that fMRI testing is an experimental procedure that has shown promise but is not yet routinely used for clinical purposes and that any fMRI testing should be conducted in an academic setting with ongoing research protocols investigating coma/VS [vegetative state]/MCS [minimally conscious state].
Michael Schiavo, the order continued, contends that no MRI can be conducted on Terri Schiavo without brain surgery to remove a device that was previously inserted in her brain [a "thalamic stimulator" implanted during an experimental procedure at the University of California Medical Center in San Francisco in 1990] and that such an invasive procedure has not been previously favored.

The denial was based on grounds that the Schindlers had not met the burden, established by an appellate court in 2002, of presenting evidence that new diagnostic techniques or treatment "would significantly improve the quality of her life."

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Only in 1997, seven years after the cardiac arrest and a year before he first requested that the feeding tube be removed, did Michael Schiavo first mention these recalled wishes to the Schindlers. In 1992 he had pursued (and finally settled, for approximately $1.1 million after fees) a medical negligence suit against the doctors who had supervised Theresa Schiavo's infertility treatment, arguing that they had failed to pick up the potassium imbalance. During the course of this 1992 malpractice action Michael Schiavo (who had not yet been videotaped in what seemed to be a legal office explaining that his wife had never wanted to "live on tubes," never wanted "to be a burden") was asked how he saw their future:

A: I see myself hopefully finishing school and taking care of my wife.

Q: Where do you want to take care of your wife?

A: I want to bring her home.

Q: If you had the resources available to you, if you had the equipment and the people, would you do that?

A: Yes. I would, in a heartbeat.

Q: How do you feel about being married to Terri now?

A: I feel wonderful. She's my life and I wouldn't trade her for the world. I believe in my marriage vows.

Q: You believe in your wedding vows, what do you mean by that?

A: I believe in the vows I took with my wife, through sickness, in health, for richer or poor. I married my wife because I love her and I want to spend the rest of my life with her. I'm going to do that.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/18050

[Jolie Rouge]

Some of what made the case so toxic was clear. The general claim those opposed to the termination of feeding seemed to be making, for the absolute value of life, could be applied as well to fetuses. (It could also be applied to the death penalty, but the politics of the pro-life movement have not encouraged this seamless-garment approach.) Yet this specific case, which had to do with whether a healthy woman whose brain was damaged to a catastrophic but still unestablished extent should or should not continue living, was never about abortion alone. It had at its core a virtually unthinkable but increasingly urgent question, one that few on either side of the debate wanted to address aloud.

The question began with the different ways in which we define a life worth living, but it did not stop there. The question had ultimately to do with whether or not there could be occasions when the broad economic and ethical interests of the society at large should outweigh any individual claim to either the most advanced medical attention (which Theresa Schiavo, outside the one procedure at UCSF in 1990, did not have) or indefinite care. This was the question no one on any side of the debate wanted to hear.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/18050

[Jolie Rouge]

Schiavo Autopsy Shows Massive Brain Damage
By MITCH STACY, Associated Press Writer

LARGO, Fla. - The autopsy of Terri Schiavo backed her husband's contention that she was in a persistent vegetative state, finding she was severely and irreversibly brain-damaged and blind as well. The report, released Wednesday, also found no evidence that she was strangled or otherwise abused before she collapsed.

Yet medical examiners could not say for certain what caused her sudden 1990 collapse, long thought to have been brought on by an eating disorder.

The findings vindicated Michael Schiavo in his long and vitriolic battle with his in-laws, who insisted her condition was not hopeless and suggested that their daughter was the victim of violence by their son-in-law.

In its report, the medical examiner's office cast doubt on both the abuse and eating disorder theory.

The autopsy results on the 41-year-old woman were made public more than two months after Schiavo died of dehydration on March 31 following the removal of her feeding tube 13 days earlier. The death ended an extraordinary right-to-die battle that engulfed the courts, Congress and the White House.

The autopsy showed that Schiavo's brain had shrunk to about half the normal size for a woman her age and that it bore signs of severe damage. "This damage was irreversible, and no amount of therapy or treatment would have regenerated the massive loss of neurons," said Pinellas-Pasco County Medical Examiner Dr. Jon Thogmartin, who led the autopsy team. He also said she was blind, because the "vision centers of her brain were dead."

George Felos, attorney for Michael Schiavo, said the findings back up their contentions made "for years and years" that Terri Schiavo had no hope of recovery. He said Michael Schiavo plans to release autopsy photographs of her shrunken brain. "Mr. Schiavo has received so much criticism throughout this case that I'm certain there's a part of him that was pleased to hear these results and the hard science behind them," Felos said.

Nevertheless, attorney David Gibbs III said Schiavo's parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, continue to believe she was not in a vegetative state and questioned the conclusion that she was blind.

The finding that she was blind counters a widely seen videotape released by her parents of Terri Schiavo in her hospice bed. The video showed Schiavo appearing to turn toward her mother's voice and smile. She moaned and laughed. Her head moved up and down and she seemed to follow the progress of a brightly colored Mickey Mouse balloon.

The parents said the video that showed she was aware of her surroundings, but doctors said her reactions were automatic responses and not evidence of consciousness.

In Washington, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the autopsy did nothing to change President Bush's position that Schiavo's feeding tube should not have been disconnected. He had signed a bill, rushed through by Congress in March, in a last-ditch effort to restore her feeding tube.

Thogmartin also said Schiavo would not have been able to eat or drink if given food by mouth as the Schindlers wanted after the tube was removed. In fact, he said, she might easily have choked to death if such feedings had been tried. "Removal of her feeding tube would have resulted in her death whether she was fed or hydrated by mouth or not," Thogmartin told reporters.

The autopsy included 274 external and internal body images and an exhaustive review of Terri Schiavo's medical records, police reports and social services agency records.

Thogmartin said that the autopsy produced no conclusion on what triggered the temporary heart stoppage that caused her collapse and brain damage. He said there was no evidence of drug use, though he cautioned that Schiavo was not tested in 1990 for every conceivable substance that could have been in her blood.

He said there was no proof she suffered from an eating disorder such as bulimia, which can disrupt the body chemistry with lethal effect. The main piece of evidence cited for an eating disorder — the low levels of potassium in her blood in 1990 — could have been caused by the emergency treatment she received at the time, Thogmartin said.

While she had lost more than 100 pounds since high school, Schiavo never confessed to an eating disorder, she did not take diet pills and no one had witnessed her purging food, the medical examiner said.

He also discounted the possibility that she had overdosed on caffeine from drinking large amounts of tea in an effort to keep her weight down.

The cause of death was ruled dehydration from removal of the feeding tube, but the underlying reason for her brain damage was officially listed as "undetermined."

In addition, the autopsy found no traces of morphine in her system at her death, although she had been given two doses in the days before she died. The Schindlers had contended that morphine might have been used to speed their daughter's death.

The Schindlers fought their son-in-law in court over their daughter's fate for nearly seven years, battling to the end with conservatives at their side. Michael Schiavo said his wife never would have wanted to be kept alive artificially in such a condition.

Courts repeatedly rejected extraordinary attempts at intervention by Florida lawmakers, Gov. Jeb Bush, Congress and the president on behalf of her parents.

Experts said that the autopsy demonstrates how difficult it is for people to recover from severe brain damage. "People should understand that sometimes, for known or unknown reasons, individuals sustain massive brain injury that for which healing is not possible," said Dr. Karen Weidenheim, the chief of neuropathology at Montefiore Medical Center in New York. "Everything that could have been done was done for this lady for 15 years, and this case is very tragic."

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/a...schiavo_autopsy
___

On the Net:

Pinellas-Pasco Medical Examiner's Office: http://www.co.pinellas.fl.us/forensics

[YankeeMary]

Babies don't fit the definition of personhood????? :eek:
You are correct in a sense IMO, but as long as their brain isn't dead or injured, they grow, learn, walk, run, think, they don't live in a PVS. There is no comparison to a "normal" brain and a dead brain.

[janelle]

You are correct in a sense IMO, but as long as their brain isn't dead or injured, they grow, learn, walk, run, think, they don't live in a PVS. There is no comparison to a "normal" brain and a dead brain.

I guess that is why so many monsters get away when they kill a baby. Just a few years in jail and then out to do it again. How would you feel if it was your baby? I know a baby doesn't have the knowledge of an adult but how do we measure the value of life?

This is how silly this argument can go. Babies are not as valuable as adults. God sees us all as equal in value and we are not to play God with anyone. It gets dangerous so don't even go there.

Even a baby with a brain injury is as valuable in God's eyes. A human life. When we start to pick and choose who is valuable enough to live and who isn't then we are getting like the Nazis. Too horrible to think about.

[Jaidness]

This is how silly this argument can go. Babies are not as valuable as adults. God sees us all as equal in value and we are not to play God with anyone. It gets dangerous so don't even
Even a baby with a brain injury is as valuable in God's eyes. A human life. When we start to pick and choose who is valuable enough to live and who isn't then we are getting like the Nazis. Too horrible to think about. go there.

tell that to the mothers who lost their children in IRAQ, and to the children that lost parents....

[YankeeMary]

I guess that is why so many monsters get away when they kill a baby. Just a few years in jail and then out to do it again. How would you feel if it was your baby? I know a baby doesn't have the knowledge of an adult but how do we measure the value of life? Simple, if you once walked and talked etc...then you are stricken down and are brain dead, thats a great indicator that your life is over.
This is how silly this argument can go. Babies are not as valuable as adults. Who said? YOU? God sees us all as equal in value and we are not to play God with anyone. It gets dangerous so don't even go there. I didn't go there the doctors that played God went there...they kept a body alive after the Lord took her soul.

Even a baby with a brain injury is as valuable in God's eyes. A human life. When we start to pick and choose who is valuable enough to live and who isn't then we are getting like the Nazis. Too horrible to think about.
Comparing a baby to a married adult that is brain dead isn't even on the same page. As far as a murderer killing my baby that isn't the case at all. There wasn't a murder, he didn't put Terry in that position...I understand your line of thinking I really do but it is irrelevant. Everyone has a right to live as well as the right to die, and the right to rest in peace. If anything was done against Terry then in the end they will answer to the Lord, until then everyone should allow her and her memory and honor to rest in peace.

[janelle]

I don't think Terri was suffering. Those who say she was a vegtable. How can a vegtable suffer? She didn't know what was going on, she didn't care what was going on. Why was she pushed to die? Her husband wanted her dead that is all. He could have gone on with his life, divorced her quietly and gone on with his new family. That is what I do not understand. Her parents would have taken care of her so what was the big deal?

Now her parents are suffering big time. Her widower is happy to go on with his life and his new family keeping her ashes in a secret place not telling anyone what has hapened to them and not burying her so her parents could go to a place to decorate and greive. He isn't mister kind heart to me. :mad:

[YNKYH8R]

You don't understand? He was fullfilling her wishes.

What would have been the point of keeping her alive?

[Willow]

I believe that Terri told him not to keep her alive in that state.

[fatesfaery]

Schiavo's Cremated Remains Buried in Fla.

Published: 6/20/05

http://home.bellsouth.net/s/context.dll?id=1800&type=apphoto&name=apphoto&redirecturl=http://216.77.188.54/editorial/images/30/4595830/main-flco10506210025.jpeg

TAMPA, Fla. (AP) - The cremated remains of Terri Schiavo, the severely brain-damaged woman who died after her feeding tube was removed in March, were buried Monday in a Clearwater cemetery.

The burial failed, however, to bring a close to the Schiavo saga. Instead, acrimony flared anew, with her parents complaining that they were not notified beforehand about the service.

Michael Schiavo, who said he promised his wife he would not keep her alive artificially and waged a long legal battle to remove her feeding tube, had the words "I kept my promise" inscribed on her bronze grave marker.

The marker also lists Feb. 25, 1990 - the day she collapsed and fell into what most doctors said was an irreversible vegetative state - as the date Schiavo "Departed this Earth."

Schiavo actually died March 31, nearly two weeks after her feeding tube was removed by court order. The marker lists that date as when Schiavo was "at peace."

David Gibbs, an attorney for the woman's parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, decried the words on the marker.

"Obviously, that's a real shot and another unkind act toward a grieving mom and dad," Gibbs said.

Two days after Terri Schiavo's death, the 41-year-old was cremated and her husband, Michael Schiavo, was given possession of her remains.

The husband had said her ashes would be buried at a family plot in Pennsylvania. But on Monday his attorney, George Felos, said in a statement that the service and interment had taken place at Sylvan Abbey Memorial Park in Clearwater.

The statement did not explain why Michael Schiavo, who lives near Clearwater, decided to keep his wife's remains in Florida. He did not return a phone call seeking additional information.

Schiavo's parents had opposed her cremation and hoped to bury her in their adopted state of Florida. Services for Schiavo already had been conducted in nearby Gulfport, where her parents live, and in Pennsylvania, where she grew up.

The Schindlers' attorney said the family was notified by fax only after Monday's service, when the family had already started getting calls from reporters.

Felos' statement said the Schindlers were notified of the service and burial.

A pond and fountain also mark the woman's grave, where the flat bronze marker was festooned with flowers Monday evening.

Terri Schiavo collapsed in 1990 after a chemical imbalance caused her heart to stop. She left no written instructions in the event she became disabled, and her husband said she never would have wanted to be kept alive in what court-appointed doctors called a persistent vegetative state with no hope of recovery.

Her parents, however, doubted she had any such end-of-life wishes. They maintained she would benefit from rehabilitation, despite most doctors saying her condition was irreversible.

The seven-year battle engulfed the courts, Congress, the White House and divided the country.

[janelle]

Even when you have a living will it can be changelled. Her parents wanted to take care of her. Her siblings wanted to take care of her. What was the harm? He already got the settlement money and spent it on himself and his new family.

No wonder the parents changed their mind about him when he started up with another woman and had a family and then kept them from seeing their daughter. I would be sick if I had a SIL like him. At that point he should have stepped out of the picture.

She was cremated only three days after she died? I will never believe they could have done a through autopsy on her in that time frame. :mad:

Now her parents are dealt the final insult by not being able to go to the service for her. I pray they will be able to have one of their own at her burial sight and not be kept away.

[fatesfaery]

She was cremated only three days after she died? I will never believe they could have done a through autopsy on her in that time frame. :mad:

Now her parents are dealt the final insult by not being able to go to the service for her. I pray they will be able to have one of their own at her burial sight and not be kept away.

My son died on Wednesday, they had completed the autopsy and released his body by Thursay afternoon. All autopsies are done by the same certain medical standards and procedures, it only takes a few hours to complete one.

Her parents have already had two services for her, one in FL and one in PA. If I were in Michael's place, I'm not sure I would have wanted them there either.

[YNKYH8R]

Even when you have a living will it can be changelled. Her parents wanted to take care of her. Her siblings wanted to take care of her. What was the harm? He already got the settlement money and spent it on himself and his new family.

No wonder the parents changed their mind about him when he started up with another woman and had a family and then kept them from seeing their daughter. I would be sick if I had a SIL like him. At that point he should have stepped out of the picture.

She was cremated only three days after she died? I will never believe they could have done a through autopsy on her in that time frame. :mad:

Now her parents are dealt the final insult by not being able to go to the service for her. I pray they will be able to have one of their own at her burial sight and not be kept away.
What was the harm? How about..going against her wishes?

[YNKYH8R]

She was cremated only three days after she died? I will never believe they could have done a through autopsy on her in that time frame. :mad:

How long do you think an autopsy takes? :confused:

[schsa]

He spent the money on her care. Nursing homes, rehab, doctors, none of that is free. And she wasn't in some awful place. She was receiving good care where she was. Do you have any idea what the cost is for a good nursing home these days? Almost a years salary for some people.

As far as the cremation goes, he did the right thing. That puts an end to her parents demanding that she be dug up so that they can do what they want with the body. And they don't have the right. The courts decided that over and over again. And even Bush can't go against a court ruling.

And I sure as heck would not have had her parents and their right to life group at any sort of funeral or memorial service. They put Michael through hell and back and they were turned down over and over again by the courts. If they were on death row making appeals, they would have been put to death long before this. Michael did what he could for his wife. He loved her enough to let her go. Her parents were wrong to keep her alive just because they could.

The autopsy said it all. She was blind and brain dead. She could not feed herself or swallow. I feel for her parents because they were so obsessed with keeping her alive that now that it's over what will they do. I am happy for Michael that he was able to fulfill his wife's final wish. He has stood by her and he didn't give up either. I hope that the rest of his life is peaceful.

[YankeeMary]

Even when you have a living will it can be changelled. Her parents wanted to take care of her. Her siblings wanted to take care of her. What was the harm? He already got the settlement money and spent it on himself and his new family.


The harm was, is that an American woman was having her rights violated. The harm was, that by keeping her body alive was costing tax payers money. It would have been different if there was hope for her but there wasn't. There was no settlement, it was a lawsuit from my understanding but it was spent on Terri's care and on attorney fees. No on his new woman, stop pulling stuff out of the air....geezzz...so much for respect for the dead. I think it is such a shame that Terri's memory means so little to others. Is it to hard to try to imagine that Micheal loved her enough to let her go? That he loved her enough to not allow her to lay there like that any more? I like to think that LOVE for Terri is what inspired Micheal to make it through all of this. I like thinking that when Terri died she knew the love of a good man and knew the feelings of being needed.

[gravittr]

i must be cold hearted. but i would not want to live like that. how is that living. if couldnt hear my kids. see them, touch them,love them like they needed to be. what good would i be doing them. she wasnt feeling anything. she no means breathing on her own. doing anything on her own. how long should someone stay in that kind of shape before someone says enough is enough. she lived her life the best she could while she was around. this all doesnt mean her husband isnt loving her any less. yes he does need to go on. he couldnt hold to some thing the rest of his that wasnt there.

[janelle]

She was able to breath on her own. She only needed a feeding tube to stay alive.

Yes, I know what a good nursing home costs. My mother was in two different ones until she died. She paid the nursing home from her own account or my sister did. I believe Terri's parents were properous so who says they would not have paid? Going to court and paying lawyers took lots of money that should have gone to Terri so why did the husband put them through that?

You think she should have died? Then tell that to the thousands and thousands of people in care homes right now who would die if they aren't taken care of. They have Alzheimer's and dementia like my mother. They do not know where they are or even who they are but we take care of them because God told us to take care of them.

What you do to the least of these you do to Me. It was in God's hands when she should die. She wasn't in pain, she was only a pain to other people, like her husband.

[janelle]

She was able to breath on her own. She only needed a feeding tube to stay alive.

Yes, I know what a good nursing home costs. My mother was in two different ones until she died. She paid the nursing home from her own account or my sister did. I believe Terri's parents were properous so who says they would not have paid? Going to court and paying lawyers took lots of money that should have gone to Terri so why did the husband put them through that?

You think she should have died? Then tell that to the thousands and thousands of people in care homes right now who would die if they aren't taken care of. They have Alzheimer's and dementia like my mother. They do not know where they are or even who they are but we take care of them because God told us to take care of them.

What you do to the least of these you do to Me. It was in God's hands when she should die. She wasn't in pain, she was only a pain to other people, like her husband.

[YNKYH8R]

She was able to breath on her own. She only needed a feeding tube to stay alive.

Yes, I know what a good nursing home costs. My mother was in two different ones until she died. She paid the nursing home from her own account or my sister did. I believe Terri's parents were properous so who says they would not have paid? Going to court and paying lawyers took lots of money that should have gone to Terri so why did the husband put them through that?

You think she should have died? Then tell that to the thousands and thousands of people in care homes right now who would die if they aren't taken care of. They have Alzheimer's and dementia like my mother. They do not know where they are or even who they are but we take care of them because God told us to take care of them.

What you do to the least of these you do to Me. It was in God's hands when she should die. She wasn't in pain, she was only a pain to other people, like her husband.
He didn't take them to court, they took him. And having alzheimer's and dementia have it a world better than she did.

[cleaningla]

http://www.wftv.com/news/4634214/detail.html



http://images.ibsys.com/2005/0621/4634213.jpg

Departed this Earth February 25th 1990. Huh? :rolleyes:

[janelle]

Departed this earth in 1990. That shows what he thought of her after she was incapasitated. Just a body without a soul to him. Just sick. :mad:

And Y if you think alzheimer's and dementia patients have it so cushy why don't you volunteer at a care home and see how they live? NO WAIT, you may start a petition to have them all euthanised. :eek: :eek:

[YankeeMary]

Departed this earth in 1990. That shows what he thought of her after she was incapasitated. Just a body without a soul to him. Just sick. :mad:


Thats all she was Janelle a body without a soul...helloooooo. How is that sick? Unreal, her soul was with the Lord, you admit that just can't face the fact that he didn't put her in that condition and that the results showed she was already brain dead. Sometimes I feel like its beating a dead horse around here.

I would trust Adam 100% to care for my mother if (God forbid) she developed dementia or altz. Your comment wasn't fair but was very disrespectful to Adam.

[janelle]

"And having alzheimer's and dementia have it a world better than she did".
================================================== ========
This shows Adam has never been around Alzeheimer's patients. I was telling him maybe he never should cause he may get the wrong idea about them.

If brain damaged people's souls are in heaven then we have lots of people walking this earth with their souls in heaven. God takes the soul when the person stops breathing and their heart stops.

My mother had a stroke when I saw her in the hospital she was probably brain dead or near it. I never stopped seeing her as my mother with all the rights of a human. If she had come out of it and had been worse off than she was before you can be sure I would still see her as my mother and still visit her. Like I said one woman in the carehome only slept and ate. No one took her food away and they took very good care of her. She had no quality of life but she still had a life. Only God can stop her heart and knnow when she should come to be with Him.

Maybe He is trying to teach us how to treat others who are not as strong as we are.

[YankeeMary]

I mean no disrespect what so ever to your Mother (God rest her soul), but this isn't about her, Your mother lived a full live and was a like 92 (if I am not mistaken), thats a huge difference from Terri. Your mother didn't have a feeding tube right? You ise to take her to like Wendy's and such, correct? The 2 very different "cases" are non-comparable. Regardless of how you or I look at it, once a brain is "flatlined" legally they are considered DEAD, it doesn't matter how many organs you have that work. Once your are dead and I mean the second you are dead, the Lord (God willing) takes your soul. Ashes to Ashes.

[YNKYH8R]

Wow my BBS is looking mesed up..is anyone else having this problem?

Anyway when I said that Alt patients have it a world better than Terri I was refering to how Alzeheimer's patients can actually communitcate witht he rest of the world, unlike Terri. Alzeheimer's patients aren't generally in a vegetative state, unlike Terri. There is now a way to actually help prevent the onset of Alzeheimer's early on in life, unlikeTerri. Alzeheimer's is a brain disease that causes slight damage. Terri was BRAIN DEAD. No function, none, that means that the lights are on but no one is home. It's like owning a PC with the memory wiped; you can turn it on but it won't function. This woman lacked all the basic functions that made who she was. No commnunication, no comprehension of surroundings (Hell she didn't know if she was on foot or on horseback.) I know it is diffulct to envision but that is the way it is. And how do we know this? Because it is not possible to function even on a basic level with the type of brain injury she had. Unlike Alzeheimer's patients who can live relatively productive lives. I bet if Terri whad a choice (that is if she had a chioce and even knew what a choice was) she'd choose Alzeheimer's over being confined to a useless body, blind, and non functioning for 15 years. Remember if you want to have the true Terri ecperience then put duct tape over your eyes and mouth (leave a hole for a straw to take in nutrition) and live in a straight jacket in a bed, while catheterized for 15 years. You wouldn't last the day.

[YNKYH8R]

http://www.msnbc.com/comics/editorial/tmate050621.gif

[cleaningla]

Wow my BBS is looking mesed up..is anyone else having this problem?

Anyway when I said that Alt patients have it a world better than Terri I was refering to how Alzeheimer's patients can actually communitcate witht he rest of the world, unlike Terri. Alzeheimer's patients aren't generally in a vegetative state, unlike Terri. There is now a way to actually help prevent the onset of Alzeheimer's early on in life, unlikeTerri. Alzeheimer's is a brain disease that causes slight damage. Terri was BRAIN DEAD. No function, none, that means that the lights are on but no one is home. It's like owning a PC with the memory wiped; you can turn it on but it won't function. This woman lacked all the basic functions that made who she was. No commnunication, no comprehension of surroundings (Hell she didn't know if she was on foot or on horseback.) I know it is diffulct to envision but that is the way it is. And how do we know this? Because it is not possible to function even on a basic level with the type of brain injury she had. Unlike Alzeheimer's patients who can live relatively productive lives. I bet if Terri whad a choice (that is if she had a chioce and even knew what a choice was) she'd choose Alzeheimer's over being confined to a useless body, blind, and non functioning for 15 years. Remember if you want to have the true Terri ecperience then put duct tape over your eyes and mouth (leave a hole for a straw to take in nutrition) and live in a straight jacket in a bed, while catheterized for 15 years. You wouldn't last the day.

You really do need to go to a nursing home and volunteer to work with Alzeheimer's patients.

Working in the secure unit was scary for me at first, but after a while I got used to it all.

I'd try to describe them to you, but not all of them will try to choke you, or walk around with a t-shirt and no pants (at all) as if they are wearing the emperor's new clothes.

I was just a housekeeper and I remember running into rooms and pulling the cart in front of the door, I was so afraid of them. They all turned out to be pretty harmless and I did get used to it, but I still would rather be like Terri, than have Alzeheimer's.

Maybe you should go check it out and then come back when you know what you are talking about.

[YNKYH8R]

I'd rather be walking around through stuff around than blind in a bed for 15 years. That is just where we differ. :)

[YankeeMary]

I perfer to simply just die. I wouldn't want my body kept alive as Terry"s was, nor would I want to live my old age out having alzeheimers/dementia...but thats just my preferance. I have been around alzeheimer, dementia patients as well as people in Terry's condition all 3 are horrible. Now remember I am saying I wouldn't want to live like that, I am not saying run out a kill all alzeheimer/dementia patients.

[janelle]

The people who wanted her tube pulled keep contradicting themselves. First she is a vegtable with no comprehension of what is going on around her, no feelings, not aware she is blind, aware of nothing. Then she is suffering living like that. :confused: No she is not suffering.

Alzeheimer's and dementia patients suffer. They become very afraid of many ordinary everyday things. My mother cried many times but the people around her comforted her and helped her to feel better. My mother didn't have it as bad as others who wander all day. Just walk around confused.

Compared to alzeheimer's patients, Terri was a breeze to take care of and she was in better shape. No fear, no crying, no pain. Just had too healthy a heart and organs to stop operating. I can't help to think if she had had a child her husband would have been more reluctant to pull the tube. Having a child ask, "you why are you killing mommy"? He would have to explain it to a child and he may have had a hard time explaining.

Alzeheimer's is becoming an epidemic now. If you do not want to live like that than you better make a living will telling people to stop feeling you and abandon you in the woods. Not that I believe it will happen. Please God I hope it doesn't ever happen in our society. But you never know with the way we are going. :confused:

[YNKYH8R]

I never said she was suffering, you're right she wasn't suffering. It is just so cruel to keep someone alive in that fashion to just to make yourself feel good. I mean I understand that they had a hard time letting her go; but that's their fault. THey surrounded themselves with people who offered false hope. And now that the results are back and there was no chance at I would be mad at the docotrs that strung them along thinking there was something that could be done. I don't hate the Schindler's (hates a strong word) I just see the court battles to keep her alive, when she didn't want to be, pointless. Sorry to be blunt but she was s hell of her former self with no hope of recocvery.

[YNKYH8R]

Alzeheimer's is becoming an epidemic now. If you do not want to live like that than you better make a living will telling people to stop feeling you and abandon you in the woods. Not that I believe it will happen. Please God I hope it doesn't ever happen in our society. But you never know with the way we are going. :confused:
Yes, I have a living will that states if ever an event arises in which I will have to be kept alive artifically I choose to die naturally; DNR.

[YNKYH8R]

I understand what is going on. Since you are catholic you believe that even though her heart was beating she must have been alive and therefore aware of what was going on and there was no justifiable reason to let her go; just as you believe in original sin. So basically debate either point with you in moot. Oh well.

[janelle]

I believe she was alive but did not know what was going on. No one knew that though until the autopsy, so they thought she may know what was going on. The autopsy tells me they really had no reason to kill her since she wasn't even suffering a little bit. The autopsy gives me more reason to wonder why they thought it was better to kill her since she didn't want to live like that. She didn't know.

But we know and knew what was going on. Now the parents are left to greive forever. I think they would be better off if they had been able to take care of her. Their greiving would be helped by being with her all the way.

Look at it from a mother's point of view. She was there when her baby came into the world but was kept away when she died. Now that is cruel. I married my husband but I did not give my whole self to him body and soul. I took vows but I never said I was to be his property. We don't have ownership of people in this country. My body and soul still belongs to me and I would hope we would want others in our family to be included during our end here on earth. I know my hubby would not be that controlling but sadly some men are.

[Bubblescc]

Question, There wasnt anything in writing stating what she wanted was there? Please correct me if I am wrong but I didnt think there was....

if there was not then why was this necessary? The husband had moved on with his life, what was the harm in allowing the parents take responsibility for her?
Another question who was paying the bills?

[YNKYH8R]

I believe she was alive but did not know what was going on. No one knew that though until the autopsy, so they thought she may know what was going on. The autopsy tells me they really had no reason to kill her since she wasn't even suffering a little bit. The autopsy gives me more reason to wonder why they thought it was better to kill her since she didn't want to live like that. She didn't know.

But we know and knew what was going on. Now the parents are left to greive forever. I think they would be better off if they had been able to take care of her. Their greiving would be helped by being with her all the way.

Look at it from a mother's point of view. She was there when her baby came into the world but was kept away when she died. Now that is cruel. I married my husband but I did not give my whole self to him body and soul. I took vows but I never said I was to be his property. We don't have ownership of people in this country. My body and soul still belongs to me and I would hope we would want others in our family to be included during our end here on earth. I know my hubby would not be that controlling but sadly some men are.
It was out of respect to Terri, regardless of what she did and did not know he wanted to respect her wishes and take her off life support. (yes it was a feeding tube but it did support her life.) It sucks that they never got over there loss. But my wife and I have already discussed that we would want to have our daughter the way we remembered her. Not like that. This was her choice and he was just full filling his end.

[schsa]

The reason he didn't hand her over to her parents is because she had told him that she wouldn't want to live in a vegative state. It was something she said to him and he felt it was his job to do as she asked. Too bad she didn't have it in writing. That's why her marker says that he kept his promise.

I have a living will and my family knows that if anything happens to me they had better let me go. I won't live knowing I have alzheimers or any other debilitative disease. It's easy for me because I don't have children. So I can make these decisions knowing that there is no one that I have to worry about if I am gone. But I will take my own life rather than stay alive just because a machine or a care giver can keep me alive. It is my own decision.

[janelle]

Well it would have been nice of him to have decided that at the biginning when they had to insert the feeding tube in the first place. He could have said no, she said she would not want to live this way.

Oh wait, he couldn't have done it then cause the court settlement from the hospital hadn't come through yet. She had to stay alive so peole could see her condition and award the big settlement. Then after the money rolled in he could disclose that she once told him she didn't want to live like that.

OHHHH PUUUULLLEEEAAASSSEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[schsa]

I think he didn't do it in the begining because he felt that there was still hope. The court case was decided the day that she went to the hospital and things went wrong. She didn't have to be kept alive for that. I honestly believe that he had hope in the begining that she would get better. He did have her in some great facilities and he paid dearly for them. But I think that just like anyone he had to come to the realization that she wasn't going to get any better. That she wasn't going to just wake up one morning and come home. And when he was able to accept that, he was ready to let go. Her parents didn't agree.

If she had died at the hospital, he would have collected even more because the hospital and the doctors would have then been responsible for her death.

[YankeeMary]

Well it would have been nice of him to have decided that at the biginning when they had to insert the feeding tube in the first place. He could have said no, she said she would not want to live this way.


So it would have been ok in the beginning to starve her to death, but it is murder 15 years later??????

[gingerswit]

All I have to say is I believed it when we were told she was brain dead. (so many just wouldn't believe it) When the reports said that yes indeed she was brain dead, I had to say I am glad she was finally "allowed" to pass and pass in a PAINLESS way. She was not with us, she was brain dead. I hope some of these angry people (that are all over the place) can move on, and stop using her memory as a way to put others down because you believed it to be "wrong". Sure you may not have liked it but to use her memory in such hateful ways is just so sad :( She is finally where she belongs and is one happy camper :) And probably doing cartwheels!

[janelle]

No one is saying it's would be murder now but not when she needed the feeding tube to begin with. But I would believe him more that she didn't want to live that way if he had told the doctors she said that when they first inserted the feeding tube. Fifteen years later is way too long to or even a year is too long to suddenly remember she once said it.

Mark Furhman had written a book on just what happened the morning of Terri's collapse. Her husband said he waited about 40 minutes to call for help and then he called her father. Why not call 911 as soon as he found her. Many questions the family wants answered,

[YankeeMary]

No one is saying it's would be murder now but not when she needed the feeding tube to begin with. But I would believe him more that she didn't want to live that way if he had told the doctors she said that when they first inserted the feeding tube. Fifteen years later is way too long to or even a year is too long to suddenly remember she once said it.

Mark Furhman had written a book on just what happened the morning of Terri's collapse. Her husband said he waited about 40 minutes to call for help and then he called her father. Why not call 911 as soon as he found her. Many questions the family wants answered,
Seems to me the family wants more than answers. And yes you and others have said it is murder now thats the whole problem. Thats the reason their was an autopsy done to find out if there was a chance that she could have recovered, if the autopsy would have ended up with different results you best believe, her family, would have pushed for murder charges. And he didn't just up one day and decide I am sick of looking at her so I have to end this, oh yeah she said she didn't want to live this way. In the beginning he didn't think she was "gone" he thought there was hope. Through time and countless doctors saying she wouldn't recover, then is when he decided to end her body's life. It wasn't out of the blue or with malice. He was just defeated.