Posted on 03/28/2005 9:34:26 PM PST by Former Military Chick
President Bush, his brother Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and congressional leaders have all but abandoned their efforts to keep Terri Schiavo alive. But not Mary Porta and her giant spoon.
When she heard on Sunday that religious activists planned to stage a protest in Washington on Monday, the Florida woman left the vigil outside Schiavo's hospice and checked herself -- and her five-foot-high Styrofoam spoon that says "Jeb, Please Feed Terri" -- onto a flight to the capital. The utensil was still wrapped in United Airlines plastic and tagged with a security seal from the Department of Homeland Security when Porta carried it into a rain-soaked Lafayette Square yesterday to demand action to save Schiavo.
"I'm wanting the government officials in D.C. to come in, even if there's force involved," Porta said, using some of the wrap that covered the spoon as a makeshift poncho.
Fellow demonstrator Bob Hunt heard Porta's idea and seconded it. "The government should declare martial law for the whole county, arrest the judge, arrest the sheriff," said Hunt, who identified himself as a government subcontractor.
The battle over Schiavo is well into its denouement. The Franciscan monk who serves as a spokesman for her parents said as much yesterday. But a small, hardy band of about three dozen demonstrators would not concede: They assembled for a prayer and a news conference across from the White House at noon, braving a downpour that caused softer souls to shut down the annual Easter Egg Roll on the South Lawn.
"Terri has not given up hope," the Rev. Patrick Mahoney, director of the Christian Defense Coalition and organizer of the rally, said into a dozen microphones.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
I was gonna guess it was you with the spoon. LOL
They starve her only because they haven't enough courage of their convictions nor respect for her to simply shoot her and end it.
I'm confused. Why did she take a spoon addressing Jeb to D.C.? She should have gone to Tallahassee.
It proves it is not the same at all as a do not resucitate request or "pulling the plug".
If they "pull the plug" in a case like this, the person may not die.
In this case pulling the plug is removing her feeding tube.
If she can eat with a spoon (she can) she would not die.
Yet the order is to not feed her in any manner.
That's murder straight out.
That's like taking someone off a respirator and then smothering them for good measure if they coninue to breathe.
There must be intellectual honesty in that this is overt euthanasia, not allowing nature to take its course in a terminal illness or machine assisted organ function.
If one still for it, then fine. Just say it honestly without the lies and euphemisms.
Like I always say, people can smell evil. They just know somethings not right.
"That's like taking someone off a respirator and then smothering them for good measure if they coninue to breathe."
Exactly.
They deliberately blur the line between terminally ill people who don't want to it, and a healthy woman, who is being murdered by withholding food and water from her.
An article made these very points:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/1368190/posts
An accurate discussion of this sensitive issue requires the making of proper and nuanced distinctions about the consequences of removing nourishment from incapacitated patients. This generally becomes an issue in one of the following two diametrically differing circumstances:
1. Depriving food and water from profoundly cognitively disabled persons like Terri who are not otherwise dying, a process that causes death by dehydration over a period of 10-14 days. As I will illustrate below, this may cause great suffering.
2. Not forcing food and water upon patients who have stopped eating and drinking as part of the natural dying process. This typically occurs, for example, at the end stages of cancer when patients often refuse nourishment because the disease has distorted their senses of hunger and thirst. In these situations, being deprived of unwanted food and water when the body is already shutting down does not cause a painful death.
Advocates who argue that it is appropriate to dehydrate cognitively disabled people often sow confusion about the suffering such patients may experience by inadvertently, or perhaps intentionally, blurring the difference between these two distinct situations.
What a sweet thought, but, nope I am more a fork gal.
I wonder if she had to buy a seat for the spoon. :)
What would I know?
I envisioned something like the movie Airplane where she's whacking everybody on the head as she makes her way down the aisle.
Demonstrators Mary Porta, kneeling, and others pray for Terri Schiavo, Easter Sunday, March 27, 2005, outside the hospice, where Terri resides, in Pinellas Park, Fla. Under increased security and with fading hopes, Terri Schiavo's parents asked supporters to return home to spend Easter Sunday with their families as the couple's severely brain-damaged daughter went a ninth day without food or water. (AP Photo/Steve Nesius)
I was just remembering your comment about this article and thinking whether to go back and find it.
When I was in school, there was a classmate who had a brain tumor and they did surgery and she ended up in a coma (worse than Terri sounds). They brought her home from the hospital, never calling her a vegetable, articles in the paper about her from time to time, and the family lived in a very humble little house.
Her father built her a special bed so they could take care of her more easily (no medical specialty companies here then or they couldn't afford it) and they finally moved to California where she died in Los Angeles in 1957, about six years later. When I think of that family and their devotion, I want to weep.
If anybody would ever have suggested not feeding her and letting her starve and dehydrate to death (somebody fed her somehow, they probably had feeding tubes in the 50's), people would have been shocked beyond belief. Nobody ever expected her to recover, and I don't ever remember any prayers because nobody I knew had any faith that prayer helped people although almost everybody went to church back in those days. She was such a sweet, quiet, pretty girl and had a dignity beyond her years.
Plus, I'm getting older and have mental health issues, my son's wife's whole family has Huntington's so that means my grandson may end up with it and his mother, the grandmother already has serious symptoms and they throw her out of bars because they think she is drunk, and my daughter was in a bad accident and can't keep a job but gets turned down for social security. She has trouble with her memory, and some brain damage along with hardware in her body still. She has to work at minimum wage jobs because the mental health people will not sign off so she can do what she was trained to do, and she has a Masters Degree.
I wonder which one of us will be next if 70 percent of the American people think some people aren't worthy to live now in March 2005. I think her memory and my family is what drives me in this case to fight as best I can for Terri. The best I can do now is have my own little silent vigil like some of the rest of you are doing, resigned to the inevitable.
It may not be inevitable. Rush mentioned he thought there was a turn the other way. I was surprised, I don't see it.
But, we can sure fight it.
save to respond later when more alert.
I don't know what can be done, but I ain't going to forget this for the rest of my life, unless of course, my brain goes haywire from something.
Good grief. And I bitch about being overweight. God bless you and yours!
Please let it load -- it's 11 mb.
Have headphones or sound on.
special thanks to lafroste for generous technical and web assistance.
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