Posted on 03/14/2006 11:28:51 AM PST by KevinNuPac
Terri's Day challenges the nation to unify
Kevin Fobbs
March 13, 2006
Terri's Day — A Celebration of the Culture of Life honoring Terri Schiavo with a day of remembrance challenges each and every one of us to stop for a moment and ask ourselves a question, do we respect ourselves, our families, our lives?
And if we are faced with the question of the possible certainty of death, does anyone truly know, or even have the faintest clue about, our wishes? That is the greatest good, the greatest legacy that Terri Schiavo's death and an annual "Terri's Day" can bring to our lives and to the celebration of the Culture of Life.
On March 18th, we as a nation will begin to grieve again, to reach into our hearts and feel with our collective national spirit what the Schindler family felt last year at this time as each moment since Terri was disconnected from the feeding lifeline, the moments crept by like hours and hours like days.
All of us have felt in some way that pain — even if it were only in the privacy of our loved one's home, hospital room, hospice or perhaps talking with an attorney and doctor attempting to make sense out of some fleeting comments made in a conversation perhaps voiced ten, twelve or even two decades earlier — not necessarily an expression of her true feeling about an end-of-life decision but merely an incidental musing in a long-forgotten side conversation.
For at least one million Americans, and quite possibly a whole lot more, this is an opportunity to voice an opinion through a pledge supporting a resolution in each state called "Terri's Day — A Celebration of the Culture of Life." Each and every person who cares that your family, your spouse, your mother, your father, your sister or brother understands with clarity what you wish the end of life for you to be, with dignity and certainty should sign the online pledge at www.kevinfobbs.com and take the additional step to sign a Living Will — or as they call it at www.terrisfight.org, the Will to Live.
Some have asked why Americans should care about an annual Terri's Day. It is quite simple, we tend to keep turning the page on the Culture of Life because we feel it does not affect us. We tend to believe that seemingly universal belief that those who are handicapped, those who are not quite living a "perfect" life or by contemporary notion "ideal" then those lives are possibly disposable, marginal, not relevant, and part of the Culture of Death which embraces a "disposable society."
But life and our values for the Culture of Life are not disposable. Think about the young people today who would rather hurt themselves or even take their own lives rather than feel "imperfect" or the elderly person whose family is told by an insensitive health care professional while the stricken person struggles to cling to life, "she would be better off in another place," — just let her die, disconnect her from life, because her quality of life is not up to "contemporary standards. "
Why does celebrating the Culture of Life in Michigan become so essential for all of us in America? It is important for several reasons. Dr. Jack Kervorkian, also known as "Doctor Death" helped launch first in Michigan and then the nation the notion of the death culture. Secondly, and equally as important, at the May 12 event — just two days before Mother's Day — there will also be a "Mary's Moms" celebration of those women and mothers who have met challenges in standing up for some aspect of the Culture of Life.
This past weekend I sat at my cousin's funeral — or going home celebration, which more accurately describes it — thinking about the dearly departed and how she packed so much caring for others into her life even as she struggled with illness and advancing age. She was a wonderful woman who had lived through many, many challenges in her life, but in her 73 years she had met these challenges with dignity and had conveyed to her family when would be the right time to allow her to pass away.
Her daughter, who is a minister, spoke to the packed church about the times when, with all of her pain and then a stroke, the doctors had informed them that perhaps it was better to let her go. Yet that was three years ago that that occurred, and if the family had listened to the doctors and refused to see how she fought back and not only recovered but went back to volunteering at the church to feed and clothe the homeless. The medical professionals didn't care about an elderly lady who was on dialysis, but the family did and they knew better. Patricia lived three more years — years her extensive extended family considered "a gift from God."
So isn't part of the lesson of Terri's legacy and Terri's Day for families and loved ones to have a meaningful conversation with their family and to have the written document on hand as well that conveys the wishes clearly and concisely? You betcha.
As I sat in the church I thought of all of the families across the nation and the world who were sitting at their loved one's bedsides — or even standing outside of a hospital emergency room — overwhelmed with emotion, torn by what may be days of conflicting anguished decisions. I thought again of how out of death we may have the certainty of life. Terri's death reminded the nation that yes a state can and will starve you to death, and your family may be rendered helpless as you watch your loved one's precious life forces drain slowly away.
By signing the online pledge at www.kevinfobbs.com or going to www.terrisfight.org, you can learn about how to encourage your state legislature to establish March 31st as an official Terri's Day. Hold a Culture of Life Home Party or meet-and-greet to sign pledges, share ideas and support The Terri Schindler Schiavo Foundation as well as Culture of Life activities and events in your community or around the nation. Between now and March 31st you can make a dramatic difference for yourself, your family and for the nation. Stand up for the Culture of Life because one person, one life, one family can and does make a difference in America. Make the difference and be the difference today. America...The countdown for the Culture of Life has begun.
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Kevin Fobbs is President of National Urban Policy Action Council (NuPac), a non-partisan civic and citizen-action organization that focuses on taking the politics out of policy to secure urban America's future one neighborhood, one city, and one person at a time. View NuPac on the web at www.nupac.info. Kevin Fobbs is a regular contributing columnist for the Detroit News. He is also the daily host of The Kevin Fobbs Show on News Talk WDTK - 1400 AM in Detroit. Listen to The Kevin Fobbs Show online at www.wdtkam.com daily 2-3 p.m., and call in toll-free nationwide to make your opinion count at 800-923-WDTK(9385) © Copyright 2006 by Kevin Fobbs http://www.renewamerica.us/columns/fobbs/060313
I would like to thank KU Students For Life for bringing Bobby Schindler to campus last week. Please know that those who were there were affected by what he had to say.
For those of you who were not there, I would like to summarize Schindler’s talk. First, although Terri Schiavo’s case was very much a pro-life issue, it was also very much a disability rights issue. Media coverage tended to focus its attention on the support given by pro-life groups, but failed to give adequate coverage to the more than 25 local and national disability rights groups that also supported Schiavo’s family in their fight to keep Terri’s feeding tube intact. The media also tended to focus on the fact that Terri was considered to be in a persistent vegetative state (PVS), a prognosis that is very subjective and misdiagnosed 43 percent of the time, according to Schindler.
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I seriously doubt that anything too out of the ordinary went on, regardless of the bag. My reason is, people can't keep secrets.
The bag may have been for removing some items from the room.
I call what is happening to Andrea "redlining" because that is what it would be called if the same practice were adopted in any other industry. What if banks had "Futile Loan Committees," which looked at the circumstances of poor people, minorities, and homosexuals, and decided that financially backing the advancement of those out of the mainstream of society was not in the corporate best interest? What if insurance agencies had "Futile Policy Committees," exhibiting the same pattern and mindset? Where our money is concerned, we would never allow such an abuse, but where human life is concerned, it is becoming increasingly commonplace. Can one fail to hear the echo of the voice of the recently-beatified "Lion of Muenster," Clemens von Galen, who once thundered from his pulpit in Nazi-riddled Germany:
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CLEARWATER, FLA--Sixth Circuit Court Judge Crockett Farnell, one of the judges in the contentious guardianship case of Terri Schindler Schiavo, has indicated that he will not seek reelection to another six year term.
An assistant state attorney and an assistant public defender have announced their intentions to seek the Pinellas-Pasco judicial seat. Candidates will be Glenn Martin, a 21-year prosecutor with the state attorney's office of Bernie McCabe, and Christine Helinger who has been an assistant public defender in the circuit for the past 25 years.
Crockett Farnell Hanging Up The Black Robe
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Horse puckeys. Findings of fact by the lower courts are essentially untouchable in our legal system. They are simply rubber stamped without review by courts higher up the chain -- a dreadful fault in the system. Greer knows this. He used it for his own brand of judicial terrorism.
All of this is precisely why Congress authorized the case to be reviewed de novo -- that is, at the fact-finding level, to see if facts were rightly decided. Judge Whittemore and even the Supremes laughed and laughed at this effort to correct false findings by a renegade judge.
One law school dean wrote an outraged essay afterwards saying that every single judge up the chain, including all nine members of the Supreme Court, should have been impeached for this. He made a powerful case.
I seriously doubt that anything too out of the ordinary went on, regardless of the bag. My reason is, people can't keep secrets.
The bag may have been for removing some items from the room.
I am more cynical, remembering the atmosphere of that moment, and fully believed felos and dethnell and company carried out a ritual which may have included some removal of who knows what and secreting it away in a bag for later enjoyment. They did not go through our area, came and went around to the back, mostly out of sight and out of the curiosity of us onlookers. At that time there were only a handful of us and not likely to snoop past the heavily guarded back entrance a distant back.
They would have had little cause to worry about being spotted or noticed, and certainly were not of that mind, flushed with the victory.
Terri was the first innocent and due to all the political back door deals, she was doomed but, the internet helped 1. Mae 2. Baby Charlotte 3. Scott Thomas 4. Haleigh Poutre 5. tried to help Ted Stith 6. Tried to help Jimmy Chambers 7. Andrea Clarke's doing better
Wesley Smith wrote recently that the internet is exposing euthanasia and people are getting the help they need on an individual basis thanks to the internet.
I hope that St. Luke's can refrain from rushing to judgement on patients and that they stop drugging their patients to the point where there's an impression that the person is non-responsive. That's WRONG.
A voice of reason!
Vickie Travis is connected to the Highway 2 Health Organization.
I have read that she now has her own radio show and is trying to inform the public on the poor health care in this country.
Anyone wanting to read the story of what happened to her father Adam Wesley Arnold please try this link
http://www.kaiserpapers.org/mydad.html
NEWS: Louisiana abortion ban bill:
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2006/apr/06042701.html
I believe he had a camera in that bag and videod Terri's death. If the Schindlers had tried to take anything in that hospice they would have been in big trouble but not Felos.
There are other awards. Every time he accepts an award from a special interest, he is violating his oath and a judicial canon. He's CLEARLY in the camp of the death lobby. His decision making is flawed and he always ERRS on the side of death. Wonder why? (because he's a left wing republican with health problems related to his pale optic nerve - why can't Greer be ordered to have a mental competency exam? His brain is dysfunctional and he is like a child getting a present, not like a judge with life and death decisions to make.
Pale optic nerve is progressive and puppetmaster lawyers in the sixth circuit will keep pulling his strings to hurt Pinellas-Pasco County's wards of the state.
There is no other protections for them whatsoever in Florida if innocents end up with the starving judge. FLORIDA IS THE STARVATION STATE.
"Terri should have died sooner." Mikey's forgetting that we already knew his thoughts on the matter through his own words "When's the bitch gonna die?"
Had Jan Govan been allowed to respond every time the St. Pete Times smeared him while Greer was whispering in their ear, Terri'd be alive today.
Terri had many heroes including Jan Govan.
It's hard to run for office when corruption is running rampant on the other side with help from the Judicial Qualifications Commission refusing to investigate allegations of Judge Greer's ILLEGAL CAMPAIGN including his tv commercial which should have gotten him disqualified and fined back in 2004.
Investigating Greer would have been the proper thing to do but there were too many RINOS, corrupt rinos.
Judge Greer is "ill equipped" except in the PAYOLA DEPT.
Greer is a criminal. He should be arrested and then Barry Cohen can try to defend the pos.
I wonder if anyone is keeping a running account, or archive of those innocents we have tried to help. I don't, have been relying on my more or less feeble memory.
It would be nice to have a repository available of videos/audios, images, links and and evidence available to us but not to the detractors.
Haleigh's our northernmost patients.
My typing today needs some work. LOL See you later. Good news re: Andrea. Can we ck on Vo later?
THAT'S A LIE. They didn't see the entire record (50 volumes), only a narrow issue and besides GREER DID NOT LET EVIDENCE IN THAT WOULD BE FAVORABLE TO TERRI. Greer stacked the deck against Terri and Terri's life in the balance WAS RIGGED after she was rescued in 2003.
The covenant to make sure she was killed next time around was made after she got to live in 2003.
The covenant had many members. It will effect 2006 primary and elections.
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