Terri deserves to live her life. Good points about Judge Greer never seeing Terri in person. Good point that Terri could be at the tv station sitting with Dad and Atty Gibbs.
I WAS REALLY IMPRESSED.
Time is of the essence and praying AND lobbying the Governor, Fla Legislature are all necessary.
Who's faith isn't stronger since they've been helping Terri? Terri's dad said his faith was never stronger. Terri is bringing people closer to God.
God Bless Terri!
Here's the link for EWTN: ewtn.com
Email addy: worldover@ewtn.com.
Thanks for the recap. There was nothing on the Paula Zahn show with the Schindlers. Either I got the wrong air date, or something else happened.
Look what just showed up in a California newspaper: Doctor-assisted suicide on agenda State Dems plan bill based on Oregon's law By Steve Geissinger, SACRAMENTO BUREAU Inside Bay Area
SACRAMENTO — The divisive and emotional clash over doctor-assisted suicide swept from Oregon into California on Friday, with lawmakers from the Bay Area and Southern California rallying support at the Capitol for a similar law here but also plowing into building resistance. Their planned legislation, first brought to public light by The Daily Review last November, would make California only the second state in the nation to legalize physician-aided death.
"If I become terminally ill and doctors are unable to save me, I want the freedom to leave this world on my own terms," said Assemblyman Lloyd Levine, the Van Nuys Democrat who is co-authoring a bill based on Oregon's voter-approved law.
"As Californians approach the twilight of their lives," he said, "they deserve to have control over their health care."
Assemblywoman Patty Berg, a Eureka Democrat and co-author of the bill whose district extends south to the Bay Area, said that "there have to be alternatives to the way some people spend their final days."
Steve Mason, the 64-year-old poet laureate of the Vietnam Veterans of America, was among a string of bill supporters that included representatives of some hospice and senior groups to speak during a four-hour informational hearing. Mason, an Oregon resident, told lawmakers he is suffering from terminal lung cancer and has begun the process of using that state's Death with Dignity Act of 1997. Nearly 200 terminally ill patients have chosen physician-assisted death in Oregon since the law went into effect.
Members of the California Assembly Aging and Long-term Care and Judiciary committees, meeting jointly, also heard from a parade of opponents, which include the Catholic Church and the California Medical Association.
Church teaching "respects life from conception through natural death," Tod Tamberg, a spokesman for Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahoney, said in an interview.
While recognizing that "extraordinary means are not necessary to preserve life," said Tamberg, "the taking of life under other circumstances is rejected by our faith." Lawmakers said the informational hearing on the measure has triggered a rare debate of conscience in the normally partisan Capitol.
Votes to come in the next few months, after the bill is formally introduced, likely will be determined more by religious convictions, moral beliefs and family stories than by political affiliations, they said.
Oregon's law does not allow euthanasia, when a physician or somebody else administers deadly medication. Instead, it allows adults with fewer than six months to live to receive life-ending drugs from a doctor and take them themselves.
First, they must be determined to be mentally competent, see two physicians, make written and oral requests for the medicine and wait through a cooling-off time. Only the patient can make the decision, not a family member or guardian.
The federal government still is pursuing legal challenges to Oregon's law.
Despite the failure of two previous efforts in California, the bill's authors expect to get their majority-vote measure through the Democrat-dominated Legislature. They also figure Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a social moderate, will seriously consider it. The governor so far has made no public statements about the proposal. In 1992 California voters rejected Proposition 161, which would have allowed euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide. In 1999 former Assemblywoman Dion Aroner, D-Berke-ley, tried unsuccessfully to pass a law allowing doctors to prescribe medicine that would speed the death of terminally ill patients.
Supporters of the new bill said polls show public opinion has shifted heavily in their favor during the past few years.
Berg, who chairs the committee on aging in the lower house, said that "right now, many patients go without food or water for weeks to hasten their deaths. I think there needs to be an alternative to that."
But among the foes of physician-assisted suicide is the powerful California Medical Association.
Politics should not mix with the doctor-patient relationship, especially when it could hinder the physician's ability to administer painkilling medication, CMA spokesman Peter Warren said in an interview.
"It's a no-win situation for the doctor and patient," he said. "When you're dealing with a painful and terminal disease, the line between life and death is not a straight line."
Meanwhile, the primary figure of the 1990s movement to gain the legalization of doctor-assisted suicide, Jack Kevorkian, 76, is serving a 10- to 25-year sentence in Michigan. The doctor, who says he assisted in the suicide of more than 130 people, was found guilty of second-degree murder.
Contact Sacramento Bureau Chief Steve Geissinger at sgeissinger@dailyreviewonline.com.
Pass the word about Terri.