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Posted on 05/03/2007 3:17:03 AM PDT by 8mmMauser
Unfortunately, both sides rely on half truths or lies pushed on us all by the media. This review points to some air-clearing truths. Perhaps it may provide some grist for more reasoned choices.
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Ping
"We will not be silent. We are your bad conscience. The White Rose will give you no rest."
As for the debate, these 10 Republicans have a lot of explaining to do when it comes to the party's identity crisis. Are they the party of small government? (If so, then defend the creation of the Dept. of Homeland Security - which came without the disbanding of another agency.) Are they the party of national security? (If so, then defend why the public has lost confidence in the current Republican president in regards to Iraq.) Are they the party that defends America's culture of playing by the rules to get ahead? (If so, defend the president's stance on illegal immigrants as well as whether this global economy is good for so-called American Exceptionalism). Are they the party that stays out of your daily lives? (If so, then defend the Terri Schiavo intervention.)
Republican identity crisis... California debate could define what ‘conservative’ means
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The drawn-out fight by Terri Schiavo's family to save her life is something that countless millions of people witnessed through the news media.
Bobby Schindler, brother of the Florida woman who died March 31, 2005, after her life-sustaining feeding tube was removed by a court order, believes many other people will face a similar fight in the future.
Since dealing with this issue, Schindler said new U.S. laws are being created, making it easier to terminate peoples' lives.
He shared his message of concern as guest speaker during the Right to Life Kent's annual banquet Tuesday.
Schindler sees money as a prime motivation for this effort, noting if it costs too much to keep a person alive, their life should be ended.
"I believe that's what's happening, not just with people like my sister, but the elderly and other people who are disabled," he said. Travelling across the U.S. and to other countries as spokesman for the Terri Schindler-Schiavo Foundation, he believes the attitude of the medical community is changing.
"I'm hearing more and more from people where doctors are consulting with families and, in many cases, are deciding it would be best to take steps to end a life," he said.
A misconception about his sister portrayed in the media was that she had no quality of life, Schindler said. He noted she was responsive and the only thing she needed to stay alive was her feeding tube.
The laws have pretty much changed in every state where feeding tubes are now considered medical treatment and an artificial means of life support, instead of being basic care, Schindler said.
Schiavo's brother says money behind new laws
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I’ll ask Mrs Don-o to order this book. Thanks for the post
But the Gipper can't save them. Bush's signature failures - the war in Iraq, Katrina, Enron and the corporate scandals, failed tax and trade policies, the attempt to privatize Social Security, the posturing around Schiavo and stem cells - can be traced back not simply to the conservative ideology and ideologues that sired them -- but to the core conservative doctrine that Reagan championed. The Gipper can't lead Republican candidates out of the wilderness because, to paraphrase him, his conservatism is not the solution to their problem; his conservatism is the problem.
The Gipper Can't Pull This One Out
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;-)
Promoters call it the Freedom of Choice Act, which is actually true. If passed, it would retroactively and forever free the abortion industry to infinity and beyond from every "federal, state and local statute, ordinance, regulation, administrative order, decision, policy [and] practice," encumbering abortion in any way whatsoever.
Pro-aborts reintroduced FOCA immediately following the Supreme Court's April 18 decision upholding the Partial Birth Abortion Ban with expressions of financial panic not seen since the stock market crashed in 1929.
Pro-lifers have aborted FOCA several times since the 1980s, but terrified pro-abortion politicians and abortion-industry thugs fearing for their deathlihood seized on the Supreme partial-birth abortion decision to attempt a do-over.
Jill Stanek: The Forced Abortion Act
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The media and the left (what’s the difference?) wanted Terri to die because they are for forced murder of the elderly and the sick.
They lied about her suffering. They lied, saying that she was in no pain, that she was in euphoria. The same leftists raise a fuss over condemned criminals feeling pain from lethal injection.
They would find death by thirteen days of dehydration to be cruel and unusual for condemned killers or stray dogs.
ping to buy the book
We have a responsibility to tell the truth, too. This thread will help to do that.
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To our readers: Last week, a 42-year-old father of three young children wrote us about his 39-year-old wife who is unable to move from the waist down. He can no longer provide for her care at home, go to work and also take care of their children. At the same time, the family can't afford the $6,000-plus per month it costs for a nursing facility. And there is no long-term care insurance because who could imagine a 39-year-old finding himself/herself in this condition? Medicaid won't help, penalizing this young family for being frugal and saving their money. And, without proper planning, any inheritance will go to pay nursing home expenses, not to educate their children.
He and his wife are torn because their options are limited. They have considered divorce in order to allow her to qualify for Medicaid assistance that would provide for her care while allowing him to raise and educate their children.
~Snip~
So long as the institutionalized person has sufficient capacity, he or she should sign new durable financial and health care powers of attorney by which they can still name their former spouses to make their decisions for them should they be unable to do so. But a caveat here to prevent the Terri Schiavo situation: Make sure these documents include language strong enough to disqualify a former spouse who becomes involved in a relationship with another person in order to avoid conflicts of interest.
While the decision may be difficult, the additional planning requires expertise that resides in the hands of lawyers who understand all of these issues. This is not an exercise for the inexperienced.
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We have been following the plight of little Emilio and the Texas Futile Care law that threatens the Emilio's of the world. Here is a sample of the commentary from Wesley J. Smith for National Review Online...
What if hospitals could put a sign over their doors stating, “We reserve the right to refuse life-sustaining care?” People would be outraged. Yet that is precisely what Texas law explicitly grants to hospitals — namely, to say no to wanted life-sustaining treatment, on the basis of subjective judgments about the quality of the patient’s life. It is an example of a bioethical concept known as Futile Care Theory, a.k.a. medical futility.
A Not-So-Divine Intervention... Texas Catholic bishops fail to protect unwanted patients.
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Current Texas law allows a physician to decide to withdraw life-sustaining treatment, including food and water, from a patient despite the patient's directive or expressed wishes. Once the physician’s decision is validated by the hospital’s ethics committee, the patient and/or family have 10 days to find a transfer to another facility. If the doctor and hospital go through this procedure, they are immune from any lawsuit involving withholding care.
~Snip~
According to a statement by Texas Right to Life, Ms. Gonzalez holds no unrealistic expectations and recognizes that Emilio is quite ill and that he is unlikely to see his second birthday. Instead she wants him to die naturally, not by a direct act of euthanasia at the hands of his doctors.
Emilio is suspected to have Leigh's disease, a disorder of the central nervous system that causes deterioration in motor skills. He is currently breathing with the help of a ventilator and is receiving nutrition through a nasogastric feeding tube.
"I know there's no cure. I know my son is going to die," said Catarina. "But I want him to die when God calls him, not when someone pulls the plug."
Texas law falls firmly on the side of the hospital. "You have control over nothing," Gonzales's attorney Jerri Ward told the press. "The hospital has total control over your body, records, and decisions."
According to the current law, passed in 1999 by then-Governor George Bush, if doctors determine that life-sustaining treatment requested by a patient's family is futile, the case is then considered by the hospital ethics committee. If the committee agrees with the doctors, the family has 10 days to find another facility and move the patient, or treatment will end. The law was the product of two years of negotiations prompted by Bush's veto of a measure that would have afforded no notice to patients and families.
~Snip~
In recent testimony before the Texas Senate, Painter played a voicemail recording (read transcript) left for one of his clients, in November 2006, from a Houston-area hospital administrator. The patient involved needed dialysis in order to live, but his family lacked the resources to pay. The administrator said that the corporate headquarters and hospital administration wanted the patient out of their hospital, because the family could not pay, and that if the family did not act, they would resort to the courts and get approval to send the patient “on to glory.”
(Spero News has confirmed the identity of the patient and hospital and the family wishes to remain anonymous.)
The patient is still alive and stable five months later.
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