Terri Schiavo's Family Calls for Observance of Terri's Day to Honor Disabled Woman

Life News ^ | 3/31/08 | Steven Ertelt

[wagglebee]

St. Petersburg, FL (LifeNews.com) -- Terri Schiavo's family and a leading pro-life group are calling on people to honor the disabled woman whose husband took her life in a painful euthanasia death. Together with Priests for Life, the Schindler family has established the observance of “Terri’s Day” each March 31.

That's the day Terri succumbed to a 13-day starvation and dehydration death at the hand of Michael Schiavo, her former husband who won a court order to take her life.

“This third anniversary should be an occasion for all of us to both remember the injustice done to Terri, and reach out to others with prayer and concrete action when they need the kind of help Terri needed," Terri's brother Bobby Schindler told LifeNews.com on Monday.

Suzanne Vitadamo, Terri’s sister, added that Terri's Day is also a way for her family to encourage others to take better care of the elderly and disabled.

“Our family continues to be consoled and uplifted by the many ways in which people honor my sister, learn from her story, and grow in compassion for all the disabled," she said.

During the days leading up to Terri's death, Father Frank Pavone of Priests for Life brought comfort and peace to the Schindler family.

Father Pavone was present for the final prayer Terri participated in before her death. He also saw the manipulative ways Michael tried to prevent the Schindler family from caring for her or being present with her during the starvation and dehydration.

“Terri’s death was not the end of her fight," he told LifeNews.com. "It was the beginning of a new chapter in the pro-life movement."

"I call upon all those who were moved by Terri’s death to continue their courageous activism in the cause of life, and never to be silent," he said.

Together, Priests for Life and the Terri Schindler-Schiavo Foundation encourage churches, families, organizations and individuals to observe Terri’s Day with prayers, memorial services, educational activities and community outreach.

Related web sites:
Terri Schindler-Schiavo Foundation - http://www.terrisfight.org
Priests for Life - http://www.priestsforlife.org

[wagglebee]

I remember growing up when the Olympics was a peaceful extension of the Cold War and it was great. I remember being nine during the 76 Olympics and McDonalds had some game going where if the US won you got free fries or whatever and it was great. That all seems lost now. The entire idea of amateur athletes has been abandoned and basketball players will now go to whatever country pays the most.

But I've been thinking about the the Beijing Olympics and I couldn't help but realize that the Olympics have been hosted by evil regimes on two other occasions, Berlin in 1936 and Moscow in 1980 (the Winter Olympics were in Sarajevo in 1984 but Yugoslavia was always more a powder keg than a military power) and BOTH times the evil regime had collapsed within about a decade.

When Carter kept America out of the Moscow Olympics in 1980, two things happened:
1. We allowed the Soviets to claim "victory" by saying that the Americans knew they would lose so they stayed home.
2. An untold number of American athletes had their dreams shattered because an impotent president preferred this to standing up to communism. Many of these athletes compete in sports where there is only one chance to be the best (gymnastics is the main one, but also swimming and track and field events), most of them had trained their entire lives for this opportunity (and in many cases their families had made incredible sacrifices) and Carter took it away.

[floriduh voter]

So, mademoiselle big eye refused medical treatment. I KNEW it. I watch the Discovery Channel. I can’t RIP mademoiselle cuz if she committed suicide, resting in peace is not an option?

[floriduh voter]

Ten minutes of My Name is Earl?

[wagglebee]

The batteries on the remote were bad and I didn’t feel like getting up, after ten minutes I couldn’t take any more.

[floriduh voter]

My Name is Earl is better than NBC news. They are the Obama news network. In Memphis, OBAMA was a no show for the MLK event. NBC did a voiceover McCain’s speech. Brian Williams made an apologee and said it wasn’t intentional. (I’m no McCain person by any stretch of the imagination, but NBC makes CNN look fair and balanced).

[wagglebee]

The only show I really like is Prison Break.

[floriduh voter]

Prison Break? I thought it was called American Idol. I’d love to be on AI and get sent home. The losers end up doing better anyway. Prison Break is AI without the singing but they BOTH HAVE JUDGES.

[wagglebee]

Have you ever watched Prison Break? It’s great!

American Idol is just a remake of the Gong Show but they charge money to vote and send the money to leftists.

[8mmMauser]

But Chuck Barris had other talents as well! He was good at the BIG ZOT or so I heard.

[8mmMauser]

Haleigh Poutre and others in similar straits...

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April 7, 2008 - It’s more common than you might think: people who were thought to be dead and now are healthy. Do we dare make the judgment on who lives and who dies?

In the Declaration of Independence, "life" is listed as a right--and is listed first. But some have attempted to change the meaning of this word, to suit their own purposes and agendas. Nobody told them the Declaration couldn’t be changed, but many hospitals, lawyers, legislators, and even clergy not only believe it can be changed, but have changed its meaning for their own purposes.

Sometimes people are told they will never recover from a serious injury, or their life is no longer worth living. Others are in constant pain. Still others may be thought to be in a 'comatose' or 'permanent vegetative state'. Faced with these circumstances some in authority believe it is not only okay, but prudent, to put an end to life when confronted with these circumstances. Have you ever noticed that patients are only told this when they can’t respond? And their closest relatives are complicit with the urge to put them "down"?

Here are a just a few of the recent cases in the news about people though to be beyond hope and targets of euthanasia.

1) From June of 2007 - Jan Grzewski was a Polish railway worker who was hospitalized after an injury at work and remained in a coma; doctors found cancer in his brain and predicted he would not recover; after 19 years he spontaneously woke up and talked about memories of when he was in a coma.

2) From September of 2007 – A Venezualian named Carlos Camejo was declared dead after a highway accident, and was sent to a morgue; he woke up in excruciating pain while medical examiners started their autopsy; examiners determined something was amiss when the body started bleeding.

3) From October of 2007 - Jesse Ramirez, from Phoenix, AZ, was considered fatally injured when his SUV crashed into a pottery store; his wife made the decision to pull his feeding tube out and Jesse went 6 days without food or water; all had prepared for his aforementioned death; shortly after hospice officials reported that Jesse was indeed awake and alert; he was transferred to a rehab center and put into recovery.

4) From February of 2008 – The relatives of a 65 year old Minnesota woman named Raleane Kupferschmidt, were told by doctors she was brain dead with no brain activity, and that she would not recover; a CT scan revealed she had suffered a massive cerebral hemorrhage a month earlier; doctors had removed her breathing tube and were waiting for her to die; but she began sucking on an ice cube and began to mouth words; later she exclaimed "God’s not done with me yet."

5) In March of 2008 - A girl named Haleigh Poutre from Boston, MA was so brutally beaten 2 years ago by her adoptive parents she was left in a coma not expected to revive; a CAT scan revealed a subdural hematoma (blood on surface of brain); as a ward of the Massachusetts Department of Social Services, Haleigh was to have all life support removed after only 6 days; the court decided to euthanize her, and shortly thereafter she began breathing on her own; her feeding tube was left in and she has recovered most of her cognitive abilities.

If you do a little bit of digging you will find that these five cases are actually only tips of the iceberg of people coming back from an assumed death over the past few months. They are only a partial list of those considered dead for all practical purposes. How many more were there like these five that were actually euthanized that really weren’t dead. How many each month… each year? Did their loved ones not hear their cries for life? Was their feeding tube removed without knowing what would really happen in several years, months, or days? Were they even given a feeding tube?

Pope Benedict XVI recently stated that euthanasia "appears as one of the more alarming symptoms of the culture of death..." Don’t we remember Pope John Paul II taking sustenance through a feeding tube as he waved to onlookers through his upper window at the Vatican days before his death?

It’s easy to make the judgment that the existing life is not worth living, and opt for the death. One knows that many, who are not able to communicate in any way, are silently pleading to their killers to be kept alive. Life was started by God. It’s not ours to take. One only need to look to the Netherlands to know that this mentality, this ideology, of "playing God" will come back to bite us. And the bite may not only be physical, but could have spiritual consequences.

The Euthanasia Temptation: Those Who were Thought Dead might be Alive

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[8mmMauser]

Sam Golubchuk...

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George Bernard Shaw hated doctors, and by avoiding them managed to live a vibrant and productive life until his death at age 95.

He summed up one of his major complaints against doctors in the brilliant prelude to his play The Doctor's Dilemma: "It may be necessary to hang a man or pull down a house. But we take good care not to make the hangman and the housebreaker the judges of that. If we did, then no neck would be safe and no house stable."

What Shaw is saying is that, in medicine, there are areas in which conflict of interest is a major factor in decision-making.

In Manitoba recently, this came to the fore in the case of 84-year-old Samuel Golubchuk, who had been diagnosed by his physicians as having no chance for recovery. His doctors ordered the Orthodox Jew to be removed from a ventilator and feeding tube but Golubchuk's children objected, in part because their father's religious beliefs would be violated if doctors pulled the plug. They took it to the Manitoba courts and a judge ruled he would remain on life support until a trial's determination.

The doctors' now-stalled decision was supported by a recent directive from the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Manitoba. The family must be informed and given four days' notice, but the life-or-death decision rests solely with the doctors.

I would like to view this case in the context of conflict of interest. Not in the sense that Shaw meant. Clearly, the doctors would earn more money keeping Golubchuk alive than allowing him to die.

No, here the conflict is more subtle – but also more relevant for all of us who use health care. Put bluntly: the cost of care is being borne by those who will not receive any benefit from it. Mr. Golubchuk and/or his children are receiving what has been deemed to be unnecessary health care, solely because they demanded it.

In Canada, there is a finite amount of health-care money available. And 40 to 50 per cent of all the money spent on health care for someone will be spent in the last few months of their life – and of that, more than half in the last week or so.

Clearly, this is not money well spent in terms of years of life – or health – per dollar. Obviously we should spend to care for all who are sick. But toward the end of a life, the amount spent rises sharply and some argue that we are really just extending the dying process.

In this case it can be argued that for every day Golubchuk continues on extremely expensive life support, there is less money available for other medical needs.

One of the biggest issues in health care in Canada is how to decide where to spend our health-care dollars. These priorities will become more and more important.

We should not leave these decisions to the courts, since we run the risk of excluding those who should be making the decisions – you and I, the people who use, fund and, yes, work in the system.

Dr. Murray Waldman has been a family doctor, coroner and administrator.

Who pulls the plug?

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[8mmMauser]

From The Mountain Press a letter to the Editor...

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Terri's family, attorneys and numerous elected leaders (including President Bush) used heroic efforts to try to save her life. Terri's food and water were stopped by court order until she died. She was the first American ever ordered to die by a court without being convicted of a capital crime or even being a criminal.
The moral outrage of this act caused a righteous reaction by millions around the world and was completely ignored by a court that saw no value in Terri's life. Her death has been termed "the longest public execution in American history."
Christians are commanded by the Lord Jesus Christ to care for "the least of these" who can give nothing in return. Included among the "least" are the physically and mentally disabled, the elderly who can no longer care for themselves and those who cannot speak for themselves whether in the womb or in a nursing home at the end of life.
Terri Schiavo's legacy compels us to remember that God's word - the Bible - is clear about these issues. God is the giver of all life; He allows disabilities; and God is the sole being who should decide when life ends.
It is my prayer that God's people care as He does in caring for "the least of these," and pray earnestly and act energetically in the legal and political arena to stop society from playing "god" with other people's lives.
Robert E. Settle
Seymour

Never forget Terri Schiavo's death

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[8mmMauser]

The human disorder called liberalism illustrated...

You have to hand it to the Democrats. Anytime there’s a chance to talk about faith as it relates to the social justice issues (poverty, Darfur, AIDS, human rights) they are ready to go and willing to talk about how the Bible speaks to those issues. Good for them.

On the flip side, just wondering but where’s the talk about the life and marriage issues? Where’s the talk in these forums about embryonic stem cell research or Terri Schiavo and other very important issues to faith voters? I’ll tell you exactly where they are: remember the Value Voters debate in the fall of last year? That debate addressed those issues. Guess what? Only the most die-hard social conservatives showed up. (Alan Keyes, Mike Huckabee, Sam Brownback, etc) No McCain, no Romney, definitely no Giuliani...........

Democrats Engage in Faith Talk, Make Inroads

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[8mmMauser]

Living wills and stuff like that...

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Morenz and her mother had talked many times about end-of-life decisions after Morenz's father suffered a stroke in 2000 and moved to a nursing home in Connecticut.

"My mom would say, `I don't want this for myself.' She begged me never to put her in a nursing home. She wanted what she considered to be a good quality of life."

Morenz also helped her mother execute a living will that expressed those wishes. "You're not asking for euthanasia," Morenz said. "You're asking that nothing be done to try to keep you living in a condition that's unacceptable to you."

The value of discussing and documenting end-of-life wishes before a crisis became dramatically clear in 2005 through the case of Terri Schiavo, a Florida woman whose husband and parents disagreed over whether to withdraw her feeding tube.

Schiavo, who had suffered brain damage and was unable to speak or care for herself, did not have a living will, and the debate over treatment reached Congress, the president and the federal courts.

Fortunately for Morenz, both her mother, who died in February, and her father, who died in October, had living wills. She felt she understood what they wanted, and she had been legally designated to make health care decisions for them...........

Planning for a happier ending

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[8mmMauser]

These days, a campus must be like a blender, spinning tender brains into a puree of liberal mush. Note the bias in this article, by reading more than the excerpt...

..................................

Along with the first robins, tulips and term papers, spring at U of T is marked by the arrival of anti-abortion activists. Around this time each year, U of T Students for Life and their off-campus allies break out a set of posters from the U.S. group Genocide Awareness Project and protest on campus.

~Snip~

Connell claimed repeatedly that women who choose abortion are psychologically damaged by the experience. With adoption, she argued, “There isn’t that terrible, terrible regret, for the rest of her life.”

She also covered issues from capital punishment to the Terri Schiavo case.

“Terri Schiavo could smile, could communicate, the media didn’t want you to know that because we live in a very anti-life society,” she said.

The mood at the counter-protest was upbeat, with cheers greeting a call of “20 years of reproductive choice in this country!” Chantal Sundaram, a CUPE 3902 staff rep, said the counter-protesters were well-received by passing students............

Students rally to abort ‘genocide’ demonstration

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[8mmMauser]

....as we keep watch and listen...

[8mmMauser]

Even way back in the olden days, we found the primary use of the Register-Guard ideal for starting the kindling in the fireplace, if for nothing else. Back then, I heard Gus Hall (head of the Communist Party, USA) speak, but now the place has gone further to the left. Hillary just loves Oregon to death.

Thread by wagglebee.

EUGENE, Oregon, April 7, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton gave an interview with the editor of Eugene's Register-Guard paper, Jack Wilson, on April 6, in which she praised Oregon's assisted suicide laws.

Clinton, who spoke in Eugene on the same day as leading conservative bioethicist Wesley J. Smith, commended Oregon for providing the "right" to assisted suicide........

Hillary Clinton on Oregon's Assisted Suicide Law: "I Commend Oregon on this Count"

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[8mmMauser]

Alamo-Girl's niece needs our prayers.

Alamo-Girl: urgent prayer request for my niece, she needs a liver

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[syriacus]

Thanks for posting this, 8mmMauser.

[wagglebee]

Christians are commanded by the Lord Jesus Christ to care for "the least of these" who can give nothing in return. Included among the "least" are the physically and mentally disabled, the elderly who can no longer care for themselves and those who cannot speak for themselves whether in the womb or in a nursing home at the end of life.

Terri Schiavo's legacy compels us to remember that God's word - the Bible - is clear about these issues. God is the giver of all life; He allows disabilities; and God is the sole being who should decide when life ends.

However, despite their numerous protestations to the contrary, adherents to the culture of death fall into one of two categories:

1. They are atheists and therefore do not care about God's Commandments.
or
2. They are truly satanic and believe in God, but work to destroy Him and his Word.