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October 4, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A high court judge in Britain has ruled that the family of a brain-damaged woman is not allowed to withhold food and water to cause her death. Justice Baker ruled last week that the 52-year-old patient known publicly only as M should not be allowed to starve to death because her life still contained some positive elements. Her family had argued that M’s daily routine was too limited for her to want to continue living. “She cannot enjoy a drink, a cup of tea or anything. She has got no pleasures in life,” M’s sister...

Our daughter Laci Faith Lowell August 17, 2011 (HLIAmerica.org)- Let me just start off saying that abortion never had a chance with us. We found out in November 2005 that we were going to have a baby. I had just gotten out of the Army, and we had settled in Cibolo, Texas - right near San Antonio.  When we first started trying to have a baby, we were surprised at how long it took.  I have always joked about my little “swimmers,” and how they were probably swimming in circles.  So we prayed, and we told Jesus that if he...

he death of Terri Schindler Schiavo in 2005 is a distant memory for most Americans. But for the family that spent seven years fighting Terri's estranged husband and the court system to stop the starvation of their daughter and sister, recollections of the 13 days Terri lingered without food or water before finally succumbing to death remain vivid and painful. And the knowledge that other brain-damaged patients could suffer a similar fate has propelled this once-ordinary family into around-the-clock activism. "It was almost like there really wasn't an option," said Terri's sister, Suzanne Schindler-Vitadamo, when I interviewed her last weekend...

We dehydrate profound cognitively disabled people to death in the USA–a death that comes slowly over about a two week period, often resultin in tissue cracking and even bleeding. We dress it up in nice clothes by claiming we are merely withdrawing unwanted medical treatment. But when the treatment is basic sustenance, not only are we intentionally causing death, but symbolically, we are saying that the dehydrated person’s life is so unworthy of being lived, we won’t even give them proper food or water. This approach to severe cognitive disability started with people diagnosed as persistently unconscious, known officially by...

Nebraska girl born with no arms and legs has blamed unfair scoring after she failed to make her school's cheerleading squad three years in a row. Julia Sullivan, 16, has complained to the school board after she said she was given 'no accommodation for her disability' during try-outs. The wheelchair user did not make the team after she received a low score in the jumps/kicks category of the trials. Miss Sullivan got her highest marks in the communication skills and enthusiasm/spirit categories. The Aurora High School student, who said that she likes to dance, said: 'I just think it would...

Gary Harvey (WASHINGTON D.C.) - Where does one turn when you become disabled, vulnerable or old and become unlawfully a victim of the system? There are no kind words for the injustice that Chemung County New York has visited upon my husband, Gary Harvey and me. Gary at work. My husband a veteran who served his country and fought for our freedom is being denied his.Until January 2006, my husband was leading a normal life. I am telling this story on behalf of a “Person”. Not a corporation, not a piece of “Human Capital” and definitely not a legal...

A new national survey in England finds disabled Britons are opposed to the national government legalizing the practice of assisted suicide, and one pro-life group is welcoming the results.The survey, commissioned by disability group Scope, found 70% of disabled people are “concerned about pressure being placed on other disabled people to end their lives prematurely” “if there were a change in the law on assisted suicide.” The survey also found that most young adults share the concerns of older generations about the dangers of legalizing assisted suicide.The survey found 77% of disabled people aged 18-24 and 71% of disabled...

Know what doesn't go over well with advertisers? Making fun of disabled children. On April 18, political blog Wonkette published a post titled "Greatest Living American: A Children's Treasury of Trig Crap On His Birthday" (none of which we will quote here). Trig, for those who don't remember, is Sarah Palin's youngest son, who has Down Syndrome. The initial response to this "celebration" of Trig's birthday was limited to comments getting in on the action, contributing the sort of jokes that would make Gilbert Gottfried proud. But then, according to Slate's David Weigel, conservative bloggers stumbled across it and the...

Simon Fitzmaurice with his wife and children DUBLIN, April 12, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – In a powerful op-ed in today’s Irish Times, an Irish man with degenerative motor neurone disease (MND) has revealed how he was heavily pressured by the medical community to refuse the ventilator that is keeping him alive. After having been admitted to intensive care for pneumonia, a common complication for paralyzed patients, Simon Fitzmaurice began receiving assisted breathing and a feeding tube. Shortly after being admitted, Fitzmaurice said, a doctor came in and told him it was rare and expensive for patients to have a ventilator at...

Terri Schiavo was subjected to a painful 13-day starvation and dehydration death by her former husband who refused to provide her with proper medical care and rehabilitative treatment.Not wanting to see other patients endure the same ordeal, the foundation Terri’s family started to help disabled people receive proper care announced today it is supporting the New Beginnings Community Center of Medford, New York that will help people in similar situations.The Terri Schiavo Life & Hope Network told LifeNews that New Beginnings is a state-of-the-art outpatient rehabilitative facility for Veteran’s, Traumatic Brain Injury Survivors and other cognitively and physically disabled persons....

Not only those with a “future-like-ours,” but all human beings possess equal basic rights. In Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, the distinguished philosopher Don Marquis offers his evaluation of my book The Ethics of Abortion: Women’s Rights, Human Life, and the Question of Justice: Kaczor’s book contains the most complete, the most penetrating and the most up-to-date set of critiques of the arguments for abortion choice presently available. It is required reading for anyone seriously interested in the abortion issue. It is a good introduction for anyone who wishes to read a serious and thoughtful account of all of the various...

EXCLUSIVE: Minnesota resident Jim Stene voted last November -- and thought he was casting his ballot for President Gerald Ford. "He was exploited, plain and simple. He was exploited," his father, Alan Stene, charges. "This is a moral and ethical issue." Jim Stene, 35, suffers from anoxic encephalopathy, severe brain damage caused by a lack of oxygen to the brain. He has lived with the condition since 1987, when, as a 12-year-old boy, he jumped into a river to save the life of his drowning sister, Heather. Stene had spent the last 15 years living in a group home in...

One of the terrible things about euthanasia and food and fluids cases, is the readiness by which many are willing to make despairing totally disabled people dead, that is, people who are fully conscious but completely paralyzed.  Indeed, recently Belgian doctors euthanized such a woman, and then a different set of doctors harvested her organs.  We have also had bioethicists, who once said dehydration should be for people who are unconscious, turn around and say that locked in patients have an even greater claim to withholding food and fluids since they are aware of their helplessness.But this readiness to...

Veterans with disabilities and financial problems are often stuck without proper homes and fight for housing benefits alone. A conglomeration of local organizations and experts hope to turn the page on that trend with a new neighborhood concept designed to aid veterans. Billed the Veterans Village at Cypress Pond Estates in Palmetto -- will be a 78-home subdivision that offers affordable, maintenance-free homes and assistance with financing and accessibility for the disabled.

I'm a Disability-Rights activist and writer who lives in a hospital's long-term care unit. I was born with Arthrogryposis, and I'm at the stage where I live with a chronic pulmonary condition. In July, I will have been in long-term care for ten years, and in this ten year period, alot of people around me have died. With all the people I have gotten to know through the years, and who have died, I think most of them died with dignity.--This includes my sweet wife, who died in 2006 from Cystic Fibrosis. The will of an individual is nobody's...

Zach Neff is all high-fives as he walks through his college campus in western Missouri. The 27-year-old with Down syndrome hugs most everybody, repeatedly. He tells teachers he loves them. "I told Zach we are putting him on a hug diet - one to say hello and one to say goodbye," said Joyce Downing, who helped start a new program at the University of Central Missouri that serves students with disabilities. The hope is that polishing up on social skills, like cutting back on the hugs, living in residence halls and going to classes with non-disabled classmates will help students...

London, England (LifeNews.com) -- British television pundit Virginia Ironside is drawing gasps from pro-life advocates from across the globe for advocating killing disabled children. She said any "good mother" would smother a disabled child with a pillow because of the frustration bringing up such a baby would pose. "If I were the mother of a suffering child -- I mean a deeply suffering child -- I would be the first to want to put a pillow over its face," Ironside said in a video clip of a new BBC television interview she gave."If it was a child I really loved,...

MALMO, Sweden, Sept. 2 (UPI) -- A Swedish man who is blind and has Down syndrome and some autistic traits was bound by the arms for much of the last 25 years, officials said. The man, who also is unable to speak and was considered to be at risk for self-destruction, resides in an assisted living facility in Malmo, Swedish news agency TT/The Local reported Thursday. "I have never heard of anything like it. Our investigators and inspectors are very experienced, but all have been deeply shocked. This treatment is illegal," said Christer Neleryd of the National Board of Health...

Harrisburg, PA (LifeNews.com) -- In a ruling involving a mentally disabled man whose legal guardians sought the power to end his medical care, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has determined that state law requires life-preserving treatment for people who are not near death and have not refused treatment. The Alliance Defense Fund and allied pro-life attorneys filed a friend-of-the-court brief on behalf of 53-year-old David Hockenberry, who has had acute mental disabilities since birth, arguing that his legal guardians should not be allowed to deny him life-preserving treatment while he is not terminal or unconscious.Hockenberry’s guardians unsuccessfully attempted to deny him...

University efforts to test Amazon’s electronic readers—Kindles—as substitutes for standard textbooks has run into trouble with the Obama Administration. The idea behind using Kindles is to save money by supplanting bulky paper-based books with lighter and smaller electronic devices. For example, one small hand-held Kindle could hold all the books needed for a four-year degree. Despite the seemingly obvious benefits, the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division is threatening legal action against any school that might be tempted to try the devices. Thomas Perez, head of the Civil Rights Division, warns that the devices violate the Americans with Disabilities Act. “Even...