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President Obama on Thursday signed a memorandum requiring hospitals to allow gays and lesbians to have non-family visitors and to grant their partners medical power of attorney. The president ordered the Department of Health and Human Services to prohibit discrimination in hospital visitation. The memo is scheduled to be made public Friday morning, according to an administration official and another source familiar with the White House decision. An official said the new rule will affect any hospital that receives Medicare or Medicaid funding.

Even a casual observer of American society can tell that there is a certain sinister chaos spreading throughout every aspect of public life these days. Naturally, as it filters through society it finds its way into our homes, families and personal lives as well. The reports of monumental breakups and takeovers, meltdowns, dysfunctions, cutbacks, disasters, protests, catastrophic events, scandals, and just plain moral chaos are, shall we say, legion, and it does not look like there will be any let up in the dismantling of our formerly decent society any time soon. Public officials and the movers-and-shakers of social...

Concert to Support Terri Schiavo Foundation Has Randy Travis, Collin Raye Indianapolis, FL (LifeNews.com) -- The family of Terri Schiavo, the disabled woman whose husband killed her by depriving her of food and water, will sponsor a benefit concert to raise funds for its foundation to help other patients like her. The show will feature popular country music recording artists Randy Travis and Collin Raye. http://LifeNews.com/bio3083.html

"On March 31, five years ago, Terri Schiavo died a court-mandated and government-enforced death," said Fr. Pavone. "I saw for myself, as I held her hand and prayed at her bedside, that this death was not 'peaceful' and 'beautiful' as euthanasia advocates want us to think. Moreover, as health care is placed more and more in the hands of the government, we have to be more vigilant than ever to protect the Terris of today and tomorrow." "Terri's Day" was established by Terri's family and Priests for Life to foster education, prayer, and activism to counter discrimination against the disabled....

Monday March 29, 2010 March 31 Marks Fifth Annual National Memorial for 'Terri’s Day' NAPLES, Florida, March 29, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Friends of Terri Schiavo are calling on the pro-life community to commemorate her murder by dehydration and starvation on March 31, the anniversary of her death, by learning more about Terri's story and praying for other vulnerable individuals at risk of a similar fate.Fr. Frank Pavone, National Director of Priests for Life, will be the celebrant and homilist at the Annual National Mass for Terri’s Day, Wednesday night, March 31 at the Ave Maria Oratory of Ave Maria...

In the five years since Terri Schiavo was slowly dehydrated to death, her loving family has been subjected to repeated callousness and intentional cruelties–canards about their motives, personal vituperation, etc.. That’s life in the public eye. But now a new line of despicability has been crossed that cannot be allowed to stand.Fox’s Family Guy stooped even beneath its usual scatological obsessions to literally mock a dead woman, whose only “crime” was to have been profoundly cognitively disabled. The episode–which I embedded below only after much thought, opens with a fictional school play, Terri Schiavo: The Musical. In it, Terri is...

CALL TO ACTIONREGARDING: Terri SchiavoPlease read and forward.   Friends,   You may already know Terri Schiavo's situation. Many of you have personally expressed your concern about this tragedy that is currently unfolding in the Florida Courts.   Matters got worse on Friday, July 10th, when Terri's family was informed that the appellate court would provide no relief. In two weeks, Terri's case will head back to Judge George Greer's court where he will order Terri's starvation death to commence.   Terri's family intends to do everything possible to stop this action, but time is running out FAST. One...

Clearweater, FL (LifeNews.com) -- Terri Schiavo has left the hospital she entered following reports she was coughing up blood. However, her family still says it doesn't have any answers about her medical condition because her husband, Michael, is violating a court order and refusing to disclose the information. His actions prompted family members to file a motion instructing him to release the latest information to them. A 1996 court order requires Michael Schiavo to make medical information available to Terri’s parents. Bob and Mary Schindler, Terri's parents, and her siblings have been involved in a long, drawn-out legal battle with...

Jeb Bush On Sarah Palin: 'I Don't Know What Her Deal Is.' Toby Harnden February 24th, 2010 Some breathtakingly candid comments from Jeb Bush – who could surely be one of the strongest GOP candidates in 2012 should he wish to run – about Sarah Palin. They come 18 minutes and 39 seconds into this fascinating Newsmax interview with the former Florida governor. Bush praises her “charisma” but then says that she needs to add to this “some depth of understanding of the complexity of life”. She has an “innate ability to communicate and connect with folks” but seems to...

This city has proclaimed today Terri Schiavo day. Last year Mrs. Schiavo, 27, suffered a loss of potassium in her body that caused her heart to stop beating and resulted in a coma. She underwent surgery, performed by Dr. Yoshio Hosobudhi of the University of California at San Francisco in December, to implant a stimulator in her brain. The brain stimulator implant was a success, said her husband, Mike. Mrs. Schiavo is slowly emerging from the coma at the Mediplex Medical Center, a neurological care center in Bradenton, he said. She will undergo at least a year of speech, occupational...

LONDON (Reuters) - A man in a deeply unconscious state for five years has been able to communicate with doctors using just his thoughts in a study scientists say is a "game changer" for care of vegetative state patients.British and Belgian researchers used a brain scanner called functional magnetic resonance imaging to show the man, who suffered a severe traumatic brain injury in a road accident in 2003, was able to think "yes" or "no" answers to questions by wilfully changing his brain activity. Experts say the result means all patients in coma-like states should be reassessed and it may...

This isn't an idle exercise. Bioethics matters. The field exerts tremendous influence over the most important questions of public policy and moral values: How should we treat the most vulnerable and dependent among us? What makes us human? Indeed, is it even morally relevant that one is human? Trends in bioethics, thus, illuminate where we are as a society and the nature of the culture we are creating for our progeny. 10: The ascendance of an anti-human environmentalism.Deep ecology, the most radical expression of environmentalism, maintains that human beings are the world's enemy -- the AIDS of the Earth, as...

By Alex Schadenberg, Chairman, Euthanasia Prevention CoalitionNovember 24, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Many people will have read the story of Rom Houben, the Belgium man who was diagnosed as being in a permanent vegetative state (PVS) for 23 years, but who in fact had a condition known as Locked-in Syndrome. A person in locked-in syndrome is fully aware of all of their surroundings and they hear and remember the conversations that take place around them, but due to their cognitive disability they are unable to respond.The case of Rom Houben is significant given that many bioethicists are attempting to redefine...

A man thought by doctors to be in a vegetative state for 23 years was actually conscious the whole time, it was revealed last night. Student Rom Houben was misdiagnosed after a car crash left him totally paralysed. He had no way of letting experts, family or friends know he could hear every word they said. Rom Houben was trapped in a coma for 23 years and had no way of letting anyone know he could hear what they were saying (pictured posed by model) 'I screamed, but there was nothing to hear,' said Mr Houben, now 46.

Five years ago the beginning of the end of Terri Schindler Schiavo’s life was transforming America into two battle camps, which fought bitterly over to preserve the life of who Terri’s father Robert Schindler told me he lovingly called his angel, Terri or to let government let her be starved to death. Yet after five years should America just simply move on? Would you simply move on if it were your child who suddenly was incapacitated and went through Terri Schiavo’s experience? It is an interesting question because there are those in the media and even probably in your office,...

After World War II, the U.S. government invested an enormous amount of money in medicine; medical research, medical procedures and medical technologies. This investment made contemporary scientific medicine into American medicine, characterized by a continuing flow of new treatment possibilities. These advances raised all kinds of ethical questions. Some were personal and individual, others were social and political. Both type questions are addressed by a new academic discipline called bioethics. The first attempt to develop a scientific medicine took place in Greece in the 5th century B.C. It was called Hippocratic medicine. Closely linked with this first scientific medicine was...

ScienceDaily (Sep. 21, 2009) — Scientists have found that some individuals in the vegetative and minimally conscious states, despite lacking the means of reporting awareness themselves, can learn and thereby demonstrate at least a partial consciousness. Their findings are reported in the online edition of Nature Neuroscience....This learning requires conscious awareness of the relation between stimuli -- the tone precedes and predicts the puff of air to the eye. This type of learning was not seen in the control subjects, volunteers who had been under anaesthesia.

I received a telephone call telling me a friend died of a heart attack. His name was Bob Schindler. His death certificate may say he died of cardiac arrest but those of us who knew Bob know he really died of a broken heart. I first met Bob, his wife Mary and their son Bobby in 2001 while I was in Charlotte, North Carolina to deliver the keynote address at the U.S. National Right to Life Prayer Breakfast. Bob and MaryÂ’s daughter was Terri Schiavo. They approached me to ask for help to save Terri from being starved and...

[This week] the pro-life movement mourns the loss of Mr. Robert Schindler, Sr., the father of Terri Schindler-Schiavo, whose fight for life captured the heart of the pro-life community in 2005. Mr. Schindler [was buried] in Philadelphia [yesterday] without the fanfare or accolades that are due a real champion who fought one of the most insidious evils of modern society — the legalized murder of the innocent. His funeral [was] not be televised on all the cable news networks, no cardinals [attended] it, and the President of the United States [[did] not deliver the eulogy — thank God. Mr. Schindler,...

Terri Schiavo's Father Dies At 71 (St. Petersburg, FL) -- The father of a woman who was at the center of a battle over "end of life" issues has died. Terri Schiavo's dad, Robert Schindler, passed away on Saturday at the age of 71. Schindler, his wife Mary, and their two other children became national figures back in 2005 while fighting to keep Terri alive on a feeding tube, against the wishes of her husband, Michael. Bobby Schindler released a statement saying he was "heartbroken" over the loss of his father and called his father "a man of integrity, character,...