I have approached this by trying to read everything I can get my hands on in the past few days, and emailing people who were involved in those previous high profile cases, to see what they had to say.
After three long days of reading, I have come to the conclusion that Terri's life is now in the hands of God and the court system.
It was the Michigan Supreme Court, of all of them, which showed the greatest reluctance to accept the PVS diagnosis and actually gave a rip about the functional ability of the patient ( Michael Martin).
In my new book Forced Exit, a must read if you want to learn more about all of this...a neurologist who is prolife tells the story of a man who was admitted unconscious and the family was told he was PVS and to kill him.
But the family liked him and got a consult from this neuro, who did testing and found the cause of the problem to be a brain seizure. A week later the man walked out of the hospital with all of his mental functions and back to his previous state.
What this neuro is saying is that people everywhere are doing the "PVS thing", it's like a fad now. They're all PVS and just go ahead and kill them.
In a frightening writing I just downloaded from the library about the Busalacchi case, the head of the St. Louis U neuro dept tells of killing his own daughter who had respiratory complications from AIDS, and how happy he was to do it. In the same story he mentions at least 2 patients he allowed to be starved with the collaboration of the family, talking about how secret they kept it to keep the state out of it. He makes a broad insinuation that he is doing this a lot more than the media knows about, because no family members are fighting it in those cases.
And, IMO, he is extending an open invitation in the article to families who wish to contact him for the same "quiet" killings they may desire.
We're really fighting a very established and uphill battle here.
Yes, like a fad, in that it's the "latest" thing going on. I hope, too, that like a fad, it will be replaced...by the moral thing to do.
Excerpts: The Rooker-Feldman doctrine is the result of two Supreme Court cases. At its core, the doctrine is a recognition of the principle that the inferior federal courts "generally" do not have the power to exercise appellate review over state court decisions. The Rooker-Feldman doctrine precludes federal review of lower state court decisions, just as it precludes review of the decisions of a state's highest court.
In order to determine the applicability of the Rooker-Feldman doctrine, the fundamental and appropriate question is whether the injury alleged by the federal plaintiff resulted from the state court judgment itself or is distinct from that judgment. Stated otherwise, is the plaintiff seeking to set aside a state court judgment or is he presenting an independent claim? If the injury alleged resulted from the state court judgment itself, Rooker-Feldman directs that the lower federal courts lack jurisdiction even if the alleged injury resulted from a state court action which was unconstitutional or erroneous and even if the plaintiff failed to raise their federal constitutional claims in a state court.
....It is thus obvious that the injury of which plaintiff complains resulted from an order of the state court and the relief which he seeks is the setting aside of that order and the entry of one more to his liking. It is precisely this type of case which the Rooker-Feldman doctrine prohibits the federal courts from hearing. As we do not have this jurisdiction to hear this action, it must be dismissed with prejudice.
Judge Lazz...whatshisname, I've lost my copy - in essence, directed the Schindlers & their attorney, and I think that was kinda nice of him. Perhaps they could use the U.S. Constitution, that of protection under law.
Typos are mine. 'nite