TERRI SCHINDLER SCHIAVO JANUARY 2005 Dailies: News Digest, Restating the Obvious & Thank Yous...

The Terri Schindler Schiavo Daily Threads are created month to month as we watch local and national news regarding Terri and her family.

Since Terri's supporters are in every time zone, you may see something FIRST. Please share news with us that you don't see here already. Now, why would you want to do that? Terri's Daily Thread for September/October of 2004 was viewed over 15,000 times. Terri's November Daily Thread was viewed over 6,000 times. December's thread is over 3,000 views.

More and more good folks are finding out about Terri and that judicial tyranny would take her life, but for lots and lots of prayer and non-stop lobbying of relatives, friends, clergy, our leaders, the media, a passerby, a cashier - ANYONE who you feel comfortable chatting with.

Folks always want to know how can this be in America or on earth for that matter? Unfortunately, this is really happening to an innocent woman who just celebrated her 41st birthday. She's not the only one but she's the one with devoted parents and siblings who knows what's in Terri's heart. Terri has a strong will to live. That's apparent. It's been 14 years.

Besides, feeding tubes have been around practically since the Civil War. They are not high tech devices. Terri is "not hooked up to machines". Her feeding tube is the diameter of a piece of spaghetti.

Talkin' about Terri is the best way to lobby for her. It is a salespitch to save her life and subsequently, many lives. If you've never sold anything in your life, START NOW. START WITH TERRI.

See Terri's flash movies if you need more information. You can see for yourself that's she's interactive and follows the doctor's instructions.

NOTE: Terri's December Dailies are noted as a source above. There are lots of important links at the very top of that thread. If you missed Terri's Celebration of Life, you can click on it from there.

Debra J. Saunders from San Francisco from January 6, 2004. It looks like euthanasia is starting to spring up in California.

Death trumps choice

Debra J. Saunders Thursday, January 6, 2005

WHAT IF you knew that legalizing assisted suicide meant that sick and disabled people, who don't ask to die, nonetheless would be killed? That's the central question that Sacramento lawmakers will have to address as they consider a bill to legalize assisted suicide to be introduced by Assembly member Patty Berg, D-Eureka.

Simple fact: After The Netherlands essentially decriminalized the practice of assisted suicide and euthanasia, a government report conducted by Jan Remmelink found that 1,000 patients were killed without requesting to die in 1990, and 900 in 1995. More recently, the British medical journal, The Lancet, estimated that in 2001, among some 140,000 Dutch deaths, doctors euthanized some 3,000 patients, assisted in the suicide of about 140 patients -- but ended "life without patient's explicit request" for some 840 patients.

That's progress, I guess -- only 840 killed without asking for it. Why the change? "In 2001," The Lancet wrote, "physicians more frequently reported having become more restrictive about euthanasia and less frequently permissive. "

In 1997, The Lancet found that 8 percent of infant deaths in the Netherlands were physician induced.

Professor Raphael Cohen-Almagor of the University of Haifa wrote a paper for Issues in Law & Medicine in 2003, based on his interviews with Dutch doctors about the Remmelink data. He concluded, "Most of the interviewed Dutch authorities in the field of medical ethics are quite complacent about involuntary and nonvoluntary euthanasia, recruiting an array of justifications to show that there is no real cause for alarm even when patients' lives are terminated without their consent."

A noncomplacent doctor, Frank Koerselman, told Cohen-Almagor about an 85- year-old patient with pneumonia and depression. The man's family didn't want Dutch doctors to treat him. The patient's doctor was ready to take the easy way out. Koerselman said that he had to order security guards to remove the family so that he could question the patient in private. Then the patient opted for treatment, got it and was discharged from the hospital in very good condition, physically and mentally.

If he had not intervened as he did, Koerselman told Cohen-Almagor, the man would have died, and everyone would "say that I acted humanely and (I) would receive a nice bottle of wine from the family who physically wanted to prevent me from treating him."

Similar stories from Oregon, however, are anecdotal only. It should be noted that Oregon practices haven't been studied as the Dutch system has, and Oregon prohibits euthanasia.

Another difference: The Dutch medical system isn't plagued by the pressure to produce a profit. Pressures to cut costs are enormous in America, as politicians promise cheaper health care to assuage workers angry that their wage packages are eaten up by soaring medical costs.

People, who mean well, say, "Why not let people choose death to save society a little money?" The answer: Already some patients can't get the care they want -- even the care they paid for -- because of the bottom line. Already some suffer because some health-care administrator has decided their quality of life is so deficient they might as well die.

Let me be clear. Patients have a right to refuse care. They can say no to therapies, drugs, feeding tubes and being hooked up to life-extending machines. They should have the pain medication they need, even if it eventually kills them.

But assisted suicide changes the role of doctor from healers and protector of the sick and the disabled. Here is a noble profession that shields people who can't walk and live without assistance. Here is a calling dedicated to caring for people who are vulnerable, who may waste away, with all those messy smells and cosmetic changes that disease can bring. Still, the sick and disabled should know they will find comfort and relief from their doctors, not wrinkled noses and sneers.

Yet self-styled do-gooders want to turn these healers into professionals who kill the sick and disabled, because incontinence is undignified or because death is imminent anyway. But it's OK, people who call themselves compassionate argue, because they're doing it for the patient's own good.

Is it any wonder that some Dutch doctors took the role further and chose to kill the disabled for their own good, whether they asked to die or not? This is where the whole argument that assisted suicide is about choice evaporates. If assisted suicide offers choice for those who want it, but not for those who do not, then proposed legislation is not about promoting choice, but about promoting death.

E-mail: dsaunders@sfchronicle.com. Note: My husband, Wesley J. Smith, is a consultant to the International Task Force on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide.

URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/01/06/EDGOQAL6VE1.DTL

A message from Cheryl Ford, RN:

" In June of 2001, Ryan accidentally fell three stories through a skylight and was not breathing when paramedics began to work on him. He was resuscitated and spent over a year in a coma. Throughout that time, the Boone family continued to believe that Ryan would be healed and sought prayer for him repeatedly, via television, radio and the Internet. Ryan has gradually emerged from the coma, and is now talking and has regained his memory. The family gives thanks and praise to God for His faithfulness and answered prayer. "

Ryan Corbin is Pat Boone's grandson. Ryan was tube fed and had been in a coma for 6 months after his tragic accident in 2001.

Through prayers, extensive medical attention and therapy, but most importantly having the love and closeness surrounding him from his family and friends, Ryan sits smiling today from his wheelchair with his grandfather, Pat Boone.

Excepts taken from interview with Pat Boone on Larry King 2001.

MICHAELIS: He is on medications to maintain him so that hopefully over time, there is going to be the day he wakes up and they can start to rehabilitate him.

BOONE: They feed him through a tube -- excuse me, Lindy -- they feed him through a tube in his stomach. He has not had a bite of food in over two months.

KING: Are there ways they can say, well, looks like he is doing better. He might come out of this tomorrow?

MICHAELIS: His eyes are open. He blinks, he looks at you.

KING: He does?

MICHAELIS: Yes. He doesn't necessarily track to -- if you move or to your finger, but he makes eye contact and occasionally his eyes will move when somebody moves in the room and he will follow along with that movement.

KING: Can he answer yes or no by blinking? No?

MICHAELIS: Occasionally it has happened, but he blinks a lot and so there is questions as to whether that was a deliberate blink.

Terri unfortunately does not have a celebrity in her family who can easily reach out for public support in the same way Pat Boone did for Ryan. However, not having Pat Boone as her grandfather, does not eliminate Terri from needing the same therapy, medical attention, caring and family love that Ryan receives on a day to day basis.

TERRI NEEDS YOU!

I ask that you please join me this week in a calling and writing campaign to Pat Boone and Doug Corbin (Ryan's father) at "Ryan's Reach."

Ryan's Reach
2953 Edinger Ave,
Tustin , California 92780,
United States
1-949-733-0046

http://www.ryansreach.com/contact.htm

Ryan's Reach - Welcome

Please ask Mr. Boone to urgently come forth and speak out on behalf of Terri.

Direct them to Terri's website at www.terrisfight.org for information about her.

Please give them contact numbers:

Keith at 727) 399-8300, Gibbs Law Firm and
Cheryl at 813-695-0870, Fight4Terri@aol.com

We must bring all eyes and ears to the injustice Terri is experiencing right NOW in the state of Florida.

Terri continues to be held hostage in one small room for well over 4 years. She is denied her patient and legal rights.

For this reason, I repeatedly ask you to urgently speak out on her behalf. Please forward this email far and wide.

Thank you so much for your help and dedication in taking a unified stand in support of Terri.

Respectfully,
Cheryl Ford RN

Just sent the first hand account of the visit the attorneys had with Terri this past Christmas eve to Matt Drudge and Ann Coulter...I am praying that strong voices pick this up and spread this account of Terri across our land.

The ACLU of Florida does NOT KNOW that we are here and we will NOT STOP until the TRUTH about Terri's condition is upon the hearts of Americans everywhere.

It is a lack of knowledge, fed through the lying and insidious manipulations of george felos and michael shiavo and the ACLU that have kept so many in the dark.

And it is TIME for the CATHOLIC CHURCH in Pinellas County to STEP UP TO THE PLATE and BE WHAT THEY CLAIM TO BE.....

I will write to Pat Boone....too. Have sent emails to Greta Van Susteran at Fox News, Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck as well.

How can we do less????

We are warriors.....and with God's help and guidance, we can be active players in moving this heinous mountain of deceit that permits and forces a woman to suffer as Terri has, not to mention her family.

So PRAY, WRITE and CALL.........we will NEVER STOP and one never knows which email, which phone call, which prayer, which action will awaken someone with the power to STOP THIS TRAVESTY OF INJUSTICE and abuse.

Up above on amdgmary's post about Pat Boone's new foundation, I emailed them and THEY SHOW YOU WHAT YOU WROTE TO THEM after the email goes through. Here's what I wrote.

MEDICAID DOCTORS IN FLORIDA CHOMPING AT THE BIT TO STARVE-DEHYDRATE Terri Schiavo for a third time. She's alert and aware of her surroundings.

It is a case of state sponsored murder. Her rehab monies were spirited away from her to lawyers who prey on the disabled ending in their death by assisted suicide.

TERRI HAD NO LIVING WILL. THE JUDGES HAVE CRIMINAL AND CIVIL LIABILITY. Except for Governor Bush, all agencies reject the notion that Terri has been tortured and abused. THIS IS WHAT HITLER DID ON A REGULAR BASIS AND THIS IS WHAT AMERICA'S FUTURE LOOKS LIKE IF WE DON'T HELP TERRI.

She's here 14 years now as a disabled American. She's not terminally ill. They want to force her exit.

SEE HER VIDEOS AT www.fight4terri@aol.com. GOOGLE HER NAME AND SEE HOW MANY PEOPLE ARE TRYING TO FREE HER. WE PRAY TO GOD THAT HER LIFE BE GIVEN BACK TO HER. It is her's and nobody elses, not the husband whose committed adultery and lives with a woman and their 2 children. This is like Scott Peterson but the wife is STILL ALIVE.

We need the West Coast of the United States to help Florida's West Coast get Terri freed with her her parents and siblings. ASSISTED SUICIDE IS ILLEGAL IN FLORIDA BUT THEY WANT TO KILL TERRI.

Florida cannot fix this in Florida because there are too many euthanasists in our midst WITH DEEP POCKETS. THEY WANT HER TO DIE and this month if possible. Thank you, xxxxxxxxxxx

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