What Terri Schiavo Still Can Teach Us

Terri Schiavo. Her name — my sister’s name — is seared into the national memory as a face of the right-to-life movement, but it’s now been more than a decade since her death. Many are now too young to remember her witness, or they have forgotten. At the age of 26, Terri experienced a still-unexplained collapse while at home alone with Michael Schiavo, who subsequently became her guardian. After a short period of time, Michael lost interest in caring for his brain-injured but otherwise young and healthy wife. Terri was cognitively disabled, but she was not dying, and she did not suffer from any life-threatening disease. She was neither on machines nor “brain dead.” To the contrary, she was alert and interacted with friends and family — before Michael placed her in a nursing home and eventually petitioned the courts for permission to starve and dehydrate her to death. It was this decision by Michael that made my sister’s story a national story rather than simply a family story. It was this decision — to deprive my sister of food and water — that transformed our family’s struggle. Rather than trying to work with Michael to care for and rehabilitate Terri as aggressively as possible, we now were battling against Michael to fight for my sister’s life.

There are lessons to be learned from this emotional rollercoaster case that never should have been. I suggest you read the ENTIRE article.

http://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/bioethicist-tk-n333536

Terri Schiavo died 10 years ago today — not long after her feeding tube was removed by order of a Florida judge acting at the request of Schiavo’s husband that his wife be allowed to die.

She was 41 and had spent nearly half her life in a vegetative state after suffering a cardiac arrest in 1990, causing a severe lack of oxygen and brain damage. The highly publicized legal case surrounding her husband's plea not to keep her artificially alive roused debates across the world and at the U.S. Supreme Court.

What is Schiavo’s legacy? What have we since learned about brain function, vegetative states, and how we should talk about death — long before we're gone?

Today, some families still battle at the bedside. The condition of Bobbi Kristina Brown, found facedown in a bathtub Jan. 31, had not changed as of March 20, and people within her famous family have engaged in a fight and public arguments.

Many of us still have not gained enough wisdom from the Schiavo episode. And the political and personal ripples of that moment remain as well.

continue reading the facts of the case at the link provided above

Terri died of starvation and dehydration. If any person or even animal, has food and water with held from them, this is murder, or killing. It is not a natural death. The fact that Terri, and countless others, are killed by with holding basic nutrition and water, is a stain and crime against humanity. No human - or even animal - should die by forced starvation and dehydration.

Calvin Coolidge was elected to the Vice Presidency via one strong stand on a police strike, “There is no right to strike against the public safety by anybody, anytime, anywhere.”

If Jeb Bush had not been a weenie in this case, and had sent a phalanx of state law enforcement to insure this young woman was not “dried to death”, he would have the GOP nomination wrapped up today.

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