Posted on 03/24/2005 5:26:02 PM PST by Congressman Billybob
By the time you read this, Teresa Schiavo may be dead of starvation as required by Florida Judge George Greer. Thousands of people have produced millions of words on this subject. I should write nothing, unless I have more to offer than the MSM (mainstream media). I do.
Personal experience colors what I say. On 1 January 1994, my mother was taken to Mission Memorial Hospital in Asheville with serious injuries from an auto accident. She’d suffered both a heart attack and a stroke after the accident. She was in a coma, but still alive.
Seven years before, her life was saved in that same excellent hospital, by emergency surgery to repair an aorta aneurism. She spent a week in intensive care, and told both her sons that she did not want to be “hooked up to tubes again.” In 1994, my brother was in a different hospital after the accident; decisions on my mother’s care rested on me alone.
Four different medical specialists were called in. I took their advice. I talked to all the grandchildren. Ultimately I made not just one decision, but a series of them, leading directly to my mother’s death, four days later.
I have not yet steeled myself to write the complete history of those four days. Someday I should, because advances in medical care mean that many more Americans will face similar decisions about family members. I understand what Terri Schiavo’s family are going through except the extraordinary time those burdens have been on their shoulders and their hearts.
That said, what can I offer on this subject? For the best medical discussion, I recommend Charles Krauthammer’s excellent column this week. On the legal side, events now are a direct consequence of a legal failure seven years ago, and the arrogance of judges who cannot admit error and merely dispense with the case, rather than take the tougher path and decide it.
The attorneys for Terri’s family should have filed for her divorce from Michael Schiavo seven years ago. He was clearly guilty of adultery. She was clearly blameless. I’m unaware of any divorce action brought by a “next friend” for a woman who cannot speak. But I am aware of divorces the other way – husbands and wives who obtained divorces from spouses who were profoundly disabled, or in prison, or who had disappeared. Turnabout is fair play.
Had Michael been removed as the husband, he would not have been named, or continued, as her guardian. Therefore, what is happening now would not have occurred.
Then there are Michael’s reasons for bias. He had three personal reasons at home (a “wife” and two children). He had hundreds of thousands of reasons in the bank (a million-dollar malpractice settlement). But Judge Greer also had reasons for bias.
In Florida, judges are subject to retention elections. In his last election, Judge Greer received substantial contributions from at least five lawyers who have represented Michael over the years. This is a matter of public records in Florida. None of the MSM have bothered to research and report on this.
Speaking of bias, ABC had its own mini-Rathergate this week. ABC touted a “memo circulated among Republican Senators” which sought to make political hay from Terri Schiavo. The memo is a fraud. It contains references any Senator or staffer would have known not to use concerning legislative business. It also lacks the standard cover sheet and initials of sender for all intraSenate memos. This fraud story was broken by www.Powerline.com; they have the details.
Like CBS, ABC rushed to broadcast with a forged document because it didn’t ask competent experts whether it was false. ABC was in a rush (dare we say biased?) to attack the Republicans. The bias has continued in an ABC poll that misstates the facts of the Schiavo case to produce false results. A day after this memo was exposed as a fraud, Lanny Davis cited it as true on Fox News. Given Davis’s history, that was predictable.
Lastly, on the Internet I’ve seen a brain scan of Terri Schiavo She has a larger gap of fluid than in a normal brain. But I’ve also seen the scan of a woman with a similar void – who was given up for brain dead – who recovered, and who corresponded with me and others and released her medical records, to present an alternative to the assumptions of “experts.”
What we have here is a gross failure of common sense and decency in state and federal courts. Terri Schiavo should be in the physical custody of her parents, who love her, not in the hands of her “husband,” who wants her dead. Her soul now and forever is in the hands of God.
About the Author: John Armor is a First Amendment attorney and author who lives in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. John_Armor@aya.yale.edu
Good article, John.
I am not getting everyone all het up over campaign contributions.
Lawyers contribute alot in campaigns. And they contribute to locals running for judges, etc. I don't think it is illegal and if they can't tribute to their fellow friends running for judge, well how can the jduges campaign.
And all the connections in that county. It is not a huge place, in areas like that the same people sort of run everything. The truly bad person here is Felos, he is the one with the vision of death paying for his life and his kids life. He picked this topic to become an expert in and it fits his nutty persona. And he has made the hospice industry his little moneymaker. It is all a package for his ego and his desire for publicity and his weird desire to admire dying women as beautiful and the object of his grandiose desires to kill them. The man needs an intervention. He is round the bend.
Not true. At least part of your post. Terri is going to have communion at the end. The MS crew forbade Terri's parents from taking in their priest and give her communion tonite.
Cruel and hateful. But regarding communion as food is not the reason for it. The reason is these two camps hate each other beyond all telling. And now MS is torturing the Schindlers to be best of his ability.
I wonder what all of them will do when this is over. I see this as a horrible family feud, fueled by the terrible condition, greed, hatefulness and mistrust. And blown up by the death group with Felos as the ringmaster and MS was used. And more publicity with the life group. And Terri is dying for the agendas of the lawyers and the stupid vain egoism of MS.
She had last rites when the tube was removed. She will have communion at the end according to the lawyers.
Go away little ghoul...back to DU where you belong.
Sounds like a rambling and superficial opening to an extremely important subject.
Greer also temporarily appointed HIMSELF Terri's guardian...a 'conflict of interest' if there ever was one!
And it could be that was God's plan to begin with. It is entirely possible that the intervention that took place for the past several years was in fact not God's will, but the will of secular man or religious man not putting the whole matter in God's hand.
Unfortunately, we don't always know God's will and it may be contrary to the teachings and learnings that we as modern man have developed throug the years.
I find that an odd frame of mind which has permeated our society as well.
These elderly built the society we enjoy... with dedication and long hours of hard work. Instead of being honored and reverenced for their contributions .....they're being kicked to the curb like useless fodder.
Having aborted a few generations of our tax base and allowing illegal immigration to suck out massive resources from Medicaid/Welfare......we now have to start "culling" the useless eaters to make ends meet. What a sad state!
I say we start the culling process with politicians and judges. :)
Thanks - I will bookmark to read later.
God rules.
For your services. For your family.
(Raises glass in memory of her thirst for justice.)
May she rest (now) in peace with her God.
Than you, Esquire.
*
For Michael Schiavo, George Greer and all the rest who collaborated in this act of infamy, it's just beginning. Like Cain, who slew his brother Abel, they assume that once the object of their vexation is dead, the show is over and life will go on as planned.
It never does.
God said to Cain "Where is thy brother? What hast thou done with him?" Every murderer hears these words in his heart, hard though he may try to stop his ears and pretend he's done nothing wrong. Cain was tortured by them as they opened up to him, the reality of what he had done. Like Cain, Schiavo now must face the reality of what he's done.
Some repent, like Norma McCorvey who precipitated Roe v Wade. The rest dig themselves deeper into denial and only compound their misery which gradually consumes them.
Michael Schiavo does not in any way realize what it is that he has condemned himself to.
I've written on many occaisions that one issue here is that when Terri married Schiavo, they legally and scripturally became one. One family unit. There have been many legal twists and turns regarding the institution of marriage from a legal perspective, but as scritpure is written, while the husband and wife are to live as one, it is the role of the man to be accountable for the household and the woman to support him in it. And yes, the household is to be run in a Godly manner.
I'm not sure why a divorce didn't happen and instituted by the parents, but I'm going to guess. My guess is based on what I've heard repeated by those of the Catholic faith who are in horrible marriages. This doesn't mean it represents the church or church cannon, just what some people of that faith have expressed to me in the past.
As I understand it, there are two scriptural reasons for divorce as explained in one chapter of Corinthians. It states that adultry and a non-believer initiating it against a believer are the two reasons. No other reason is given.
However, many in the Catholic faith believe even when those conditions are met, divorce is felt to be shunned. Many, even after multiple events of adultry feel compelled to remain in the marriage even though the bonds of trust have been broken.
While there has been some talk about the Schindler's asking Michael to initiate a divorce, it appears they wanted the onus and stain of divorce on him and not her. The preceeding may account for that.
In addition, there was something that one of her family or family spokespeople stated. That her death in the manner it was done would not allow her soul to be saved or something to that extent. It caused quite a stir on this forum as well as others and that type of talk was quickly quieted. That would lead me to believe that the family may have had the same concerns regarding them when they could have initiating a divorce on her behalf.
Just my thoughts that could be on the money, have some partial validity or be totally off base.
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