Tue Mar 29 10:23:19 2005 the left of the reverend jesse jackson. As we've been telling you through the day he was expected to speak to the media after he had a visit with terri schiavo. As you know she is now in day 12 without food or water inside that hospice there in pinellas park.
>> We've been in touch with the family lawyer for about the last week. Yesterday mrs. Schindler and bobby called me and asked would I come and pray with them and be with them and i was anxious to do so. Because this is one of the profound moral, ethical issues of our time, the saving of terri's life, the day we pray for a miracle.
We ask God's intervention and god has done it before. Reach out to people across lines that divide across these biblical and ideological lines that divide and you look at in a singular way but also for what this crisis represents to america and to americans and to world health, as a matter of fact.
I've been in situations as a minister with people in advanced stages of cancer, who needed drugs to help them fight the pain and then they slip into a coma and maybe even if they struggle with pain another shoT. And you can see on the monitor their pulse falling. It's time to pull the plug and within minutes always died. This is a different situation.
Without food or water for 12 days there are vital signs. She is being starved to deatH. She has been dehydrated to death. And that's inhumane. It's immoral and unnecessary. There is no rational reason for this to happen.
I've been on the phone today talking with the senate asking them to be creative enough to try to fashion some emergency legislation to stop the starving , to stop the dehydration. We called the governor's office. He's to get back to uS. We did call michael schiavo and asked if we could go in and have prayer with terri. He finally got back and said he thought not.
My interest has not been the politics of and the finger pointing that's gone oN. We really do need family unity in ways that terri would never perhaps have had before.