Let Lauren Live!

ChristtheKingMaine ^ | May 7, 2008 | Judie Brown

[8mmMauser]

LAUREN RICHARDSON - YOU CAN HELP!
By Judie Brown

It has been a source of ongoing sadness to read of the difficulties Lauren Richardson’s father has had over the course of the past several months. For those of you who are not familiar with her case, Lauren overdosed on heroin on August 28, 2006. She suffered oxygen deprivation and, as a result of the overdose, is now in a coma and unable to speak out for herself. At the time of the overdose, Lauren was expecting a baby. Her parents honored what they knew would have been her wish and did all they could to keep her healthy and comfortable until the child was born. Today, though Lauren may not be aware of it, she is the mother of Ember Grace, who was born in February 2007.

Since the birth of her daughter, Lauren remains unable to speak of her concerns, but she has a loving father who is doing all he can to protect her from suffering the same fate as Terri Schiavo. However, Lauren’s mother, who has been named her legal guardian, is sadly not of the same opinion and is working with attorneys to pressure the courts to permit Lauren’s starvation.

Lauren’s father has kept hope alive, even at times when there appeared to be no hope in human terms. Lauren’s father is a man of hope in Christ and is dedicated to spending every breath he has on defending Lauren, regardless of what it might cost him in physical exhaustion and worldly goods. The most recent update for those concerned about Lauren tells us the following:

We struggle at times as we seek to share with the public the details of what is happening with Lauren because of the disagreement we have with Lauren’s mother. We cannot understand her reasoning in refusing a path of hope, healing and restoration for Lauren and insisting on causing her death by withholding food and water from her. The issue in Lauren’s case is the eternal truth that all people, no matter what their medical condition, bear the image of God and deserve basic care and an opportunity to be restored to health.

Bobby Schindler, Terri Schiavo’s brother, has written about Lauren in an editorial earlier this year, "False Compassion," and is working closely with Lauren’s father in order to provide expertise that he is uniquely qualified to share during a trying time like this.

There are many links on the Life for Lauren web site that will assist you in tracking this case and learning who is supporting Lauren’s ongoing care and who is opposing it. More importantly, there is something you can do to express your concerns.

ACTION NEEDED NOW

The governor of Delaware, Ruth Ann Minner, is being asked by pro-life Americans across this nation to intervene in this case in order to save Lauren from what many fear is an imminent court order dictating that Lauren be starved and dehydrated to death. I am asking you to be one of those who communicates your passionate belief that Lauren’s life is sacred and deserves to be protected from those who would order her death. The governor’s e-mail address is governor.minner@state.de.us.

Further, it would mean a great deal to Lauren’s father, Randy, if you sent him a copy of your e-mail to Governor Ruth Ann Minner. Randy’s e-mail address is Lifeforlauren@aol.com. 

During a recent visit to Anchorage, Alaska where Bobby Schindler was invited to speak, he told a reporter from The Catholic Anchor, "Once we accept that killing is an acceptable answer to human suffering, we lose any type of parameters. Euthanasia is a form of abandonment. It is not compassion."

Truer words were never spoken. As I frequently tell people who argue that we pro-lifers are being heartless and cruel for fighting to defend the rights of a "hopeless case," "God is the author of every human being’s life, and He has never given permission to a single one of us to arbitrarily rob another human being of life for any reason including disability or illness."

As Flannery O’Connor once wrote on the subject of false compassion, "In the absence of faith, we govern by tenderness. And tenderness leads to the gas chamber."

Lauren Richardson is not terminal – she is severely disabled. Lauren Richardson should not be murdered.

Judie Brown is president of American Life League and a member of the Pontifical Academy for Life.

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Karen Weber

This is how it is reported by BRIAN SKOLOFF on AP:

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WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — A Florida woman put on a feeding tube after she had a stroke is at the center of a court case that is similar to the lengthy legal dispute over the fate of Terri Schiavo.

Karen Weber, 57, has been periodically in a nursing home and a hospital in Okeechobee since her December stroke.

Much like the Schiavo case, Weber's husband and mother cannot agree how alert she is and whether she should be kept alive by a feeding tube. Unlike it, the family has remained cordial.

Weber does not have a living will and cannot talk. A judge issued an injunction, prohibiting the tube's removal, and has appointed a committee composed of a neurologist and two psychologists to determine her competency.

Weber's husband, Raymond, claims she is in a vegetative state. He sought earlier this year to have the tube removed and have his wife transferred to a hospice ward, where she would likely die. But Weber's mother and siblings are fighting to keep her alive, arguing she is alert and responsive.

The arguments are similar to those made about Schiavo, who was diagnosed as being in a persistent vegetative state after her heart stopped in 1990.

Schiavo's husband wanted her feeding tube removed against the wishes of her parents. She died in 2005 amid protests outside her hospice after her husband prevailed in the polarizing dispute that reached Congress, President Bush and the U.S. Supreme Court.

Weber's husband and mother, Martha Tatro, have remained cordial, often visiting the woman together in the hospital.

Tatro, however, refuses to let her daughter die.

"She doesn't want this," Tatro said Tuesday.

Raymond Weber would only say: "I don't want this to become a media event." His attorney, Colin Cameron, said his client does not want this case "to turn into a Terri Schiavo-type circus."

"Mr. Weber is of the opinion that Karen does not want to live as a vegetable and that she would prefer the body to take its natural course," Cameron said.

Raymond Weber did not contest the March injunction that kept his wife's feeding tube in place, Cameron noted. If the judge determines that Karen Weber has the capacity to make her own choices, Raymond Weber would abide by the decision.

"There is no intent at this point to fight what's going on," Cameron said.

Tatro's attorney, Joseph Rodowicz, said he visited the woman in March and April, and that she was responsive and aware. Using body language, she indicated she did not want the feeding tube removed, he said.

"I actually witnessed her moving her hands and responding," Rodowicz said. "Based on that, my view of the law is that she's competent enough to make her own determinations and she made it clear to me that she does not want to go to hospice."

However, an attorney appointed by the court to represent Karen Weber said he visited her about two weeks ago and she was unresponsive.

"Now whether she comes and goes or has good days and bad days, that's yet to be determined," said the attorney, John Cook.

Tatro claims the drugs her daughter is taking, including powerful pain medications, can affect her awareness at times.

Her prognosis is unclear, but Rodowicz noted that "people wake up from comas. ... She's certainly not in a vegetative state."

Rodowicz also noted that even the existence of a living will in this matter wouldn't solve the problem.

"The question is when do you reach that incompetence level? When does that living will trigger?" he said.

Weber's mother acknowledges she likely will never fully recover.

"She can live, though, if that's what you call recovery, and that's all that's important," Tatro said, crying. "She wants to live, and it's up to the good Lord what kind of life she has."

Fight over feeding tube reminiscent of Schiavo case

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[8mmMauser]

From LifeNews...

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West Palm Beach, FL (LifeNews.com) -- A Florida woman who has been disabled by a stroke and is on a feeding tube could become the next Terri Schiavo. Karen Weber's husband wants to have her feeding tube removed because he claims she is in a persistent vegetative state and will not recover.

Should he remove the feeding tube, Weber would likely suffer the same kind of painful 13-day starvation and dehydration death that Terri suffered.

In a situation that is eerily similar to the one Terri and her family faced, Weber's husband has given up on her care while her family is fighting to save her life and says she is alert and responsive.

According to an Associated Press report, Weber has been bouncing back and forth between a hospital and nursing home since the December stroke.

Both sides are battling in court and a judge has already issued an injunction prohibiting the removal of the woman's feeding tube while a committee decides her competency.

Like Schiavo, Weber is unable to communicate her own medical treatment wishes and left no living will instructing doctors and family members.

AP says Karen's husband Raymond Weber has said he doesn't want the battle to become a media event and her mother, Martha Tatro, has said she will do everything she can to prevent Karen's euthanasia death.

In the Schiavo case, Terri's family said she was able to communicate with them and had independent experts and physicians who said she could make a partial recovery if given appropriate medical care and rehabilitative treatment.

In a lawsuit that eventually reached all levels of the state and federal courts, Terri's former husband Michael Schiavo won approval to remove her feeding tube and take her life.

Terri died on March 31, 2005 after suffering for nearly two weeks with no food and water.

Since her death, the Schindler family has started a foundation in Terri's name to help patients like her receive medical care and treatment and to provide legal and other resources for their families.

In a sign the Schindler family may get involved in a similar case in their own back yard, the family's foundation alerted LifeNews.com to Weber's case.

Related web sites:
Terri Schindler Schiavo Foundation - http://www.terrisfight.org

Florida Disabled Woman on Feeding Tube Could Become Next Terri Schiavo

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[8mmMauser]

From LifeSiteNews...

Mor on doctor undergoing tantrum because he hasn't been allowed to kill Sam Golubchuk...

WINNIPEG, Manitoba, June 4, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Efforts to keep 84 year-old Canadian Samuel Golubchuk alive are "grotesque", an "abomination", "immoral" and "tantamount to torture", according to a doctor who has been trying to have Golubchuk's treatment ended so as to "allow him to die". Dr. Anand Kumar, a critical care specialist, has resigned from Winnipeg's Grace Hospital rather than obey a court order to continue treating Mr. Golubchuk. Dr. Kumar was the physician who originally made the decision to remove Mr. Golubchuk's life support against the strong wishes of Golubchuk's family........

Doctor Claims Efforts to Keep Disabled , Still Responsive Man Alive "Grotesque" and "an Abomination" Resigns rather than obey court injunction to not deny patient nutrition and hydration

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[8mmMauser]

Hearing it from David Gibbs, Pat Anderson and others...

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AGOURA HILLS, Calif. (FBW)—Two thirty-minute television programs to air June 12 and 19 will explore the debate surrounding the death of Terri Schiavo and feature, among others, Richard Land, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention and David Gibbs, head of the Florida-based Christian Law Association.

Joni Eareckson Tada, whose ministry, The Christian Institute on Disability—a division of Joni and Friends International Disability Center—has produced the programs which will be broadcast globally via Trinity Broadcasting Network. Terri Schiavo is the severely disabled Florida woman who died of starvation and dehydration in 2005 after her feeding tube was removed as a result of a court order.

“For the first time in the U.S., society has been given the ability to put to death a profoundly disabled person,” Eareckson Tada said according to a news release. She makes the point that Schiavo needed to be treated as a person with a disability and not as a terminally ill person.

Land, who as president of the ERLC is a champion of pro-life issues and also serves as the vice chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), said he believes people like Schiavo deserve protection.

“As human beings we don’t have the right to take on god-like qualities and start deciding for others when the quality of their life has diminished to the point that they no longer deserve protections that we give to more healthy, more productive people,” Land said.

Gibbs, who served as legal counsel for Schiavo’s parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, said during the show he believes Schiavo should have been given a chance to live.

“Whether [Terri] would ever get better or not, in the condition that she was in, she was as alive as any person watching this show,” Gibbs said.

The show also features an interview with Pat Anderson, the Tampa attorney who fought on behalf of Terri Schiavo, and photographs provided by Florida Baptist Witness taken by its managing editor, Joni B. Hannigan, who reported on the case for more than two years and for the last 13 days of Terri’s life from in front of the hospice in Pinellas Park.

This two-part expose on the life and death of Terri Schiavo will be broadcast on TBN Thur., June 12 at 7:30 p.m. EST, and Thur., June 19, 7:30 p.m. EST. For more information, go to www.joniandfriends.org.

Land, Gibbs in two-part documentary on Terri Schiavo

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[8mmMauser]

In the old days I figured professors to be just so smart it was beyond my ken. Their superiors must be even a magnitude smarter than that. Wow, did I give that presumption too much energy.

Imagine! The President of Yale himself falls into the simpleton trap of the far left by projection classic enough to be featured in a dictionary. Haters call people they hate haters.

Thread by wagglebee.

New Haven, CT (LifeNews.com) -- Yale University is in the news again after an art student generated national controversy with her project that supposedly included video footage of multiple self-abortions. Now, the president of the Ivy League school is accused of comparing pro-life advocates to Saudi Arabia extremists.

At the American kickoff of a religious foundation former British Prime Minister Tony Blair started, Yale University president Richard Levin made a comment sure to upset the majority of Americans who are pro-life.

He said that pro-life Americans who support the current Bush administration policy of prohibiting taxpayer funding of abortions overseas are like Saudi extremists.........

Yale University President Compares Pro-Lifers to Extremists After Abortion Flap

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[8mmMauser]

Sun has a prayer request for one in dire need of our prayers. Please visit the thread.

Please pray for my nephew's girlfriend, Debbie, who has Hodgekins, Stage 4 (worst stage).

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[Dante3]

I was just reading about Karen Weber in The Washington Times. At least the husband did not contest the injunction to keep Karen's feeding tube in place. Her mother's attorney visited Karen and said she indicated she did not want the feeding tube removed. The lawyer concluded that she is not in a vegetative state and people do recover from come.

There are also cases where doctors have declared somebody in a vegetative state and they have recovered.

BTW, it was disgusting to see on FR posters mocking Sen. Byrd for being hospitalized and at least one wished he would die.

[Dante3]

I agree that Christ will not support her.

BTW, what is the lastest on crazy judge Greer?

[Saundra Duffy]

I will never forget Terri.

[Dante3]

No will I. A true horror story.

[floriduh voter]

Judge Greer's the judge for the HULK HOGAN DISSOLUTION OF MARRIAGE (Bollea v. Bollea). After their son's driving put John Graziano into a semi-conscious that, Mrs. Hogan/Bollea filed for divorce from Hulk Hogan. She better watch out or Greer will favor Hulk in the final divorce settlement. He hates women you know...Graziano had part of his brain removed, is in a bed hooked up to machines (a real example) and wears a stocking cap over his head since part of it was removed.

WEAR YOUR SEATBELTS EVERYBODY.

www.judgegeorgegreer.com (I'm a little concerned there are vacancies on the Fla Supremes. If Crist puts Greer on that, MORE INNOCENT PEOPLE WILL DIE. Greer and Crist are both stupid lawyers.

[floriduh voter]

'I agree that Christ will not support her."

Actually, Christ will support Karen Weber. Crist will not.

[floriduh voter]

Proving one’s right to live is a daunting task because the bar is set so low.

[Dante3]

I had heard about this tragic case and the cold way Hogan and son were reacting to it. But I didn’t know the Hogans were getting divorced. And of all judges, she got a crazy one.

[floriduh voter]

The bar is set low by the bad guys who will never admit that what they do is murder people.

[Dante3]

How true. Thanks for the correction. :)

[Dante3]

IMHO, they enjoy it.

[floriduh voter]

It happens all the time.

[floriduh voter]

www.tampabay.com Greer was interviewed earlier this year or last year about getting “another high profile case”. He loves being the man stickin’ it to the ladies.

[floriduh voter]

FYI: http://worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=66216