Bobby Schindler: The President’s Torturous Dilemma

I spent a lot of time watching news coverage of President Obama’s recent speech at Notre Dame. I couldn’t help but be reminded of my sister Terri’s two-week ordeal that took place at the hospice facility where she was killed in March of 2005.

The was so much that was eerily similar—from the amount of media present and the pro-lifers who were there in prayer, to the dozens of people who were arrested for protesting against what was taking place.

Along with so many other Catholics, I found it profoundly disturbing that President Obama was not only invited to speak at a Catholic university but that he was given an honorary Doctor of Laws degree. It was what Vatican official Archbishop Raymond Burke referred to as the “source of the greatest scandal”.

However, just as disturbing to me was watching the Catholic students, parents and faculty praising President Obama by giving him standing ovations for his “can’t we all just get along about abortion” speech.

They seem to have forgotten the president’s extreme pro-abortion record when he was in the Illinois state senate and his already-lengthy actions in favor of abortion as president. His direct assault on the value and dignity of life and human rights runs completely contrary to Catholic teaching.

But that didn’t seem to diminish the red carpet treatment he received from Notre Dame President John Jenkins who invited Obama to speak. It is shocking and disheartening that a Catholic university would show such adoration for a president who has already been categorized as one of the most pro-death politicians to ever be elected to office.

Of course watching and listening to the media’s fawning coverage was just as difficult as listening to Obama himself. Indeed, the media would repeatedly insist that pro-lifers should try and find common ground with Obama’s position on abortion and embryonic stem cell research. It seems that the mainstream media wants to portray conservatives as a group that needs to adhere to the Obama administration’s policies and his vision of “change” or risk becoming extinct. As is frequently the case, they clearly just don’t get it.

Amidst all this media coverage I also reflected on Obama’s position on euthanasia and his offensive remark about Terri during the campaign. Then candidate Obama claimed his biggest “regret” as a senator was trying to stop Terri’s imposed death. This is especially scary because a growing number of health care experts are already warning us that Obama’s new health care plan could potentially open wide the door to euthanasia in our nation.

Make no mistake: President Obama’s position on how we should treat the most vulnerable members of our society is the same for disabled and medically vulnerable people as it is for innocent unborn children. In short, he seems to believe they fall outside the protection our nation offers. This is especially absurd, given his crusade to protect America’s sworn enemies from methods of “torture” (his word) that fall far short of what happens during an abortion or a euthanasia death by dehydration and starvation.

This same man who advocates unlimited abortion throughout all nine months of pregnancy and regrets trying to save the innocent from a horrifying death by dehydration is doing everything is his power to protect the “rights” of the most merciless terrorists in our custody. His administration has even expressed outrage that caterpillars were put in a room with a terrorist as a form of torture. Since the average caterpillar is neither scary nor dangerous, it made me wonder how that would compare to depriving our most vulnerable American citizens—innocent of any crime—of food and water until they dehydrate to death. I find it ironic that he doesn’t seem worried about “regretting” what might happen if any of these terrorists are set free to attack America again.

During all this Notre Dame controversy I also heard more than once from our media that “54 percent of Catholics voted for Obama.” That is a number I never agreed with because I believe that zero percent of true Catholics voted for Obama. If you adhere to the teachings of the Catholic Church, you did not vote for him. “Catholics” who voted for Obama chose the “change” and false “hope” offered by a dynamic candidate over the values of their faith. To my mind, they are not Catholics at all.

It was, however, heartening to read of the hundreds of thousands of Catholics (including nearly 100 cardinals and bishops) who did object to the president speaking at Notre Dame and also to see all of the people who showed up to protest Notre Dame’s decision.

Words have meaning and one can only hope that Obama believes in his own rhetoric about change, because if his position does not change with respect to life—and he remains an advocate for the continued death of our most vulnerable—then Notre Dame will be forever associated with giving such a person not only a platform for his position but a prestigious award for it as well. What a badge of shame for a previously great university.

This is just shows just how evil Tiller really was.

Thread by me.

Recollections of a Taxi Cab Ride with Abortionist George Tiller

June 1, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Joe Scheidler, the founder of Pro-Life Action League and longtime pro-life activist, today issued a statement denouncing the slaying of Kansas late-term abortionist George Tiller. Tiller was shot dead Sunday morning as he was serving as an usher at his church.

In condemning the murder Scheidler also recalled a chance encounter he had with the abortionist, in which he shared a taxi-cab ride with him on the way to a pro-abortion conference.

“We deplore the killing of George Tiller on Sunday morning," said Scheidler.

"It has always been my philosophy that we convert abortionists. As activists committed to saving lives, we vigorously oppose violence."

Scheidler recalled how he once shared a taxi with Dr. Tiller as both were headed from the airport in New Orleans to the National Abortion Federation Convention. Scheidler was attending in order to gather information about the pro-abortion movement.

"Tiller apparently recognized me, but did not recall that I was a pro-life activist. He assumed I was another abortionist attending the conference," said Scheidler. "He enthusiastically extolled the value of the ultrasound in performing abortions, and invited me to visit his clinic in Wichita."

The following day Scheidler attended Tiller's presentation on the use of ultrasound. By then the doctor had realized that Scheidler was a pro-life leader, and refused to proceed with his presentation until Scheidler left the room.

"Having sat and talked with George Tiller, I probably feel a little more connection with him than many other pro-lifers might," said Scheidler. "I am adamantly opposed to what he did for a living. But I believe that anyone can come to the truth. Tiller deserved the chance to turn away from the evil of abortion. I cannot condone the taking of his life."

I have posted a thread on the recent anti-euthanasia symposium where Bobby Schindler, Randy Richardson and a number of others spoke.

Experts at Euthanasia Symposium Stress Unity, Strategy, and the Triumph of Love over Suffering

LANSDOWNE, Virginia, June 2, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Anti-euthanasia advocates from around the globe gathered last weekend at the Second International Symposium on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide to join in a rigorous discussion sketching the past and laying the groundwork for a broad-based coalition against euthanasia across the world.

The symposium took place May 29-30 at the National Conference Center in Lansdowne, Virginia. An audience of 120 listened to information-packed sessions describing the history of the euthanasia movement, analyses of recent success and failure, current dangers, as well as countless personal stories from around the world.

Rita Marker, the executive director of the International Task Force on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide, opened the Friday sessions with a penetrating look at the history of the euthanasia movement and its roots in the Hemlock Society of a quarter century ago. Noting the overall trend of success in defeating assisted suicide laws in America, Marker criticized the notion that the euthanasia legislation passed in Oregon and Washington were "inevitable," and urged activists not to be fooled into complacency after individual bills are defeated.

"Not many - some, but not many - people on our side work until they're so dog tired they can hardly move, but they keep working more," said Marker. "But on the other side, they do, because they're truly dedicated to what they're doing. We need people who are dedicated."

Attorney Margaret Dore, who analyzed the strategy on either side of Washington State's assisted suicide initiative, pointed out that the words of the initiative include no safeguards against involuntary euthanasia - contrary to the claims of its proponents. "It's not about choice. 'Choice' is a lie," said Dore.

Renowned bioethicist Wesley Smith offered his thoughts on what he calls the "coup d'culture" that has turned society towards "an obsessive fear and ... avoidance of not only suffering, but difficulty."

"It is distorting our culture, and it is changing it, and it is mutating it, into something that is not as compassionate as we should be, that is not as caring as we should be," said Smith. "If the point of society is to make sure you don't suffer, that will often be making sure there aren't any sufferers. Which isn't only about making sure the sufferer doesn't suffer, but putting the sufferer out of our misery."

Randy Richardson, father of Lauren Richardson, and Bobby Schindler, the brother of Terri Schiavo and founder of the Terri Schindler Schiavo Foundation, told of the fight to resist pressures to withdraw food and hydration from loved ones incorrectly diagnosed as in a "persistent vegetative state." Lionel Roosemont of Belgium also shared the story of his struggle to raise a child with severe disabilities amid the entrenched euthanasia culture in his country. . .

"We will not be silent.
We are your bad conscience.
The White Rose will give you no rest."

Jill Stanek does a great job explaining how partial-birth abortions will continue unabated even without Tiller the Killer.

Thread by me.

Jill Stanek: Late-term abortion endangered? Hardly

I was shocked and dismayed when learning Kansas abortionist George Tiller had been murdered by a vigilante.

Tiller was a ghastly late-term abortionist, but he should not have been murdered, just as he should not have murdered 60,000 children throughout his years of practice. I pray for Tiller's soul. I pray also for Tiller's wife, four children and 10 grandchildren, not only for their tragic loss but also for the tragic legacy Tiller left behind.

It is falsely claimed Tiller was one of only three late-term abortionists in the U.S., for instance, in the New York Times:

Some described Dr. Tiller as one of about only three doctors in the country who had, under certain circumstances, provided abortions to women in their third trimester of pregnancy, and said his death would mean that women, particularly in the central United States, would have few if any options in such cases.

Apparently, it was Tiller himself who started it. According to The Guardian:

Tiller testified … that he owns one of only three clinics in the U.S. that perform late-term abortions, which are performed on foetuses that could survive outside the mother's womb.

Before I get to my point, I want to make another.

The third trimester begins at 28 weeks of pregnancy, when healthy babies have more than a 90 percent chance of surviving.

(Excerpt) Read more at worldnetdaily.com ...

As the UK moves closer to legalizing euthanasia/assisted suicide, a brave woman with spina bifida explains what really matters.

Two threads by me.

UK Considers Euthanasia Amendment: “Beginning of the Creation of a Death Cult” Says Lord Alton

LONDON, UK, June 5, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Lord Falconer of Thoroton has tabled an amendment to the Coroners and Justice Bill that would make it legal to assist a person to leave the country to commit suicide. Presently, it is illegal for someone to assist another to commit suicide, even if done out of the country. The law, however, is generally not enforced because it “is not in the public interest,” according to Sir Ken Macdonald, former Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP).

Numerous U.K. residents have in recent years travelled to Switzerland, where assisted suicide is legal, to commit suicide with the help of the suicide group Dignitas. While a number of investigations have been initiated against relatives who have travelled with the person who was committing suicide, none have resulted in charges being laid.

Lord Alton of Liverpool, however, said that the bill “marks the beginning of the creation of a death cult. It is not the terminally-ill but the perfectly healthy we are talking about,” referencing the fact that Dignitas is willing to assist the suicide even of those who are merely depressed and not suffering any physical illness. . .

______________________________________________________________

"Love Really Can Make Suffering Bearable": Woman with Spina Bifida

LANSDOWNE, Virginia, June 5, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Amid the euthanasia and assisted suicide debate, the objection is frequently raised: what about those who suffer what can truly be called "unbearable pain"?

Although euthanasia advocates often mount a compelling "right to die" argument for such cases, two U.K. activists intimately familiar with the depth of physical suffering strongly deny that assisted suicide and euthanasia provide an acceptable answer to pain. Instead, they say, a society that considers suicide a legitimate option deprives sufferers of the support they need the most, and implicitly shuns the power of love to overcome suffering.

Colin Harte, director of the U.K. anti-euthanasia group ALERT, addressed the question of suffering head-on at the Second International Symposium on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide at the National Conference Center in Lansdowne, VA last weekend. The symposium was hosted by Canada's Euthanasia Prevention Coalition. Harte is the full-time caretaker of Alison Davis, the leader of the disability rights group No Less Human, who is disabled.

Davis herself spoke first at the symposium, and battled the growing notion that people with profound disabilities - and even those with "unbearable pain" - are "better off dead."

Davis has suffered all her life from spina bifida, hydrocephalus, emphysema, and multiple other disabilities that have confined her permanently to a wheelchair and cause immense suffering. Frequent doses of morphine, she said, only somewhat alleviate her pain. "I think it's important for us to know that some pain can't be relieved. That's the case for me," she said. "When the pain's at its worst, I can't move, I can't think, I can't speak. Doctors have told me that it will definitely get worse."

Davis said that about twenty years ago, when doctors assured her she didn't have long to live, she developed a "settled wish" to die that lasted for ten years. She attempted to kill herself several times. However, she said she regained her desire to live after a 1995 trip to India where she met disabled children whom she had sponsored, and whom she began to love "overwhelmingly and fiercely." Davis later set up Enable (Working in India), a charity for disabled Indian children.

"Had euthanasia or assisted suicide been legal then, and I'd been killed," said Davis, "I would have missed what actually have been the best years of my life, and nobody would ever have known."

Davis says that people often assume that because she is in a wheelchair, she is in favor of euthanasia. However, she said, openness to such an option is not what individuals who are disabled and in pain really need.

"In my experience, when the pain is bad, what I need is not to be told I'm burdensome and it's my choice whether I want to live or die, and that perhaps I would be better off dead," said Davis. "What I need is to be surrounded by people who tell me, yes, my life does have value, and I'm not burdensome ... they can't take the pain away, but sometimes it's not the pain that hurts the most, it's the fear of being abandoned."

Davis' full-time assistant, Colin Harte, criticized the deep fear of both experiencing and witnessing suffering that he says is behind the euthanasia movement. "In many people's minds, the whole of the debate about euthanasia is fixated on the question of suffering," said Harte.

While advanced palliative care usually means the elimination of severe pain, he said sometimes, as in Davis' case, the question of suffering must be faced head-on.

In examining the modern reaction to "unbearable" suffering, Harte questioned why prisoners of Nazi concentration camps rarely committed suicide - although, he noted, firsthand accounts attest that "the thought of suicide was entertained by nearly everyone in the camps, if only for a brief time."

"Suicide was, in fact, an easy option," said Harte. "Yet in spite of contemplating suicide, very, very few went through with it. Why should this be?" Harte concluded that the main deterrent was the "solidarity in suffering" and "mutual sense of encouragement" among prisoners who collectively rejected suicide as a viable option. Amid such encouragement, he said, a "natural human resilience" emerges in spite of great suffering.

However, said Harte, "once suicide is considered a legitimate option, those words of hope lose their power - because death itself is seen as a means of liberation, the means of satisfaction. Death is regarded as the source of hope."

If assisted suicide had been legal while Alison had given up on life, said Harte, "it would have made my job absolutely impossible." "I would have been regarded as being cruel to her to encourage her to live," he said. "Once you have a law allowing the so-called 'compassionate choice' to die, if you want to emphasize another option which is going to involve suffering, you are suddenly becoming the person who is not compassionate, who is inflicting suffering."

"We live in a ... world today where those who give up the fight are called tenacious, and those who abandon their use of free will by killing themselves somehow achieve an independence. It's madness!" said Harte. "We should be able to say plainly: it's mad. It's absurd."

Contrary to the typical assumption, said Harte, death is not the only means of overcoming unstoppable pain: while Davis' physical pain did not improve after her visit to India, and in many ways has become "much worse," Harte said the children had "provided a particularly powerful motivation for her to persevere." "And that motivation has another name, a simple name: love," he said.

Harte quoted Holocaust survivor and psychoanalyst Victor Frankl, who said that, amid his suffering: "I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. ... In a position of utter desolation, when a man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way - an honorable way - in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment."

"That profound insight that resulted from Frankl's own intense suffering, which in all probability would not have been realized without that suffering," said Harte. "Love really can, and does make suffering bearable."

"Even though committed euthanasia advocates may deride the idea that there can be any point in suffering, many people would like to be convinced of its value, said Harte. "They would love to be convinced of its value. And I think we alone can show them this value."

Jill Stanek is definitely starting to get to the left!

Thread by me.

MSNBC's Keith Olbermann Names Pro-Life Advocate Jill Stanek "Worst Person"

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- MSNBC talking head Keith Olbermann has named pro-life nurse and blogger Jill Stanek the "Worst Person in the World" during that segment of his Thursday night broadcast. Stanek is the pro-life nurse who uncovered live birth abortions at a hospital in Chicago that led to a national law prohibiting the practice.

On her blog, Stanek has noted how late-term abortion practitioner LeRoy Carhart of Nebraska is one of the few remaining people to do abortions so late in pregnancy now that George Tiller has been killed.

As LifeNews.com has noted, Stanek posted pictures of Carhart's Belleview-based abortion center, which appears as if it is housed in the back of a junkyard, in order to profile the terrible medical and health conditions for women.

Stanek has been attacked by abortion advocates, who, as Olbermann did on his program, made wild-eyed claims that Stanek is attempting to target Carhart and have him killed.

Olbermann claimed Stanek "did not get the point in the assassination of Dr. George Tiller that you can be complicit in such a crime even though you have never met the man or his assassin.

"Miss Stanek has now posted pictures and addresses of the only two remaining physicians who will provide late-term abortions when the woman's life is in danger," he claimed, even though the abortions are routinely done for nonmedical reasons.

"You'll never understand that in a just world to tell a bunch of crazy people like your readers where they can find somebody and abuse, threaten or kill them, that should be enough of a crime to put you in jail for the rest of your life," Olbermann threatened.

In an attempt to intimidate Stanek, he continued, "So let's try this one out instead, you do realize that by posting online the addresses of these two doctors clinics you've probably enabled some woman seeking their help to now find them and get an abortion. You, Jill Stanek, have just enabled an abortion."

Apart from making absurd claims that Stanek or any other pro-life advocate is responsible for Tiller's death, Stanek says Olbermann has his facts wrong.

"Never mind that I didn't actually post the addresses of LeRoy Carhart and Warren Hern," she said. "Had I done so it would have been akin to posting the address of President Obama and being accused of making him a target for nutcases."

"These guys both advertise on the web. They want people to know where they operate, pardon the pun," Stanek added.

Stanek says Olbermann should nominate Google Maps as its next "worst person" because the popular web site has maps showing the location of the abortion businesses.

Stanek also says Olbermann should target the mainstream media, who have thoroughly interviewed Hern, a Colorado-based abortion practitioner, and Carhart for news stories.

"Carhart and Hern have enjoyed more positive press in the past four days than they've had over the course of their sick and sorry careers, gleefully taking every call from every news organization," she said.

Stanek noted that the Los Angeles Times posted a large picture of Hern and his abortion center on its web site and that the Associated Press posted a large picture of Carhart's abortion center on June 1.

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Meet Tiller's Other Abortionists

Recollections of a Taxi Cab Ride with Abortionist George Tiller

Experts at Euthanasia Symposium Stress Unity, Strategy, and the Triumph of Love over Suffering

Pro-Abortion Senator: Sonia Sotomayor Will Support Roe on Supreme Court

“Obsessional” Fear of Suffering Ushering in Euthanasia Culture: Prominent Bioethicist

Jill Stanek: Late-term abortion endangered? Hardly

UK Considers Euthanasia Amendment: “Beginning of the Creation of a Death Cult” Says Lord Alton

"Love Really Can Make Suffering Bearable": Woman with Spina Bifida

Action Needed to Combat Obama's International Abortion Agenda

MSNBC's Keith Olbermann Names Pro-Life Advocate Jill Stanek "Worst Person"