Pro-Life/Pro-Baby ping!
Haleigh Poutre information
Please FReepmail me if you would like to be added to, or removed from, the Pro-Life/Pro-Baby ping list...
Posted on 02/01/2006 7:29:10 AM PST by Ohioan from Florida
In the court (and courts) of life and death, a little 11-year-old Massachusetts girl named Haleigh Poutre could be the next Terri Schiavo. For those who have not heard the tragic story, Haleigh was beaten nearly to death last September, allegedly by her adoptive mother and stepfather. The beating left her unconscious and barely clinging to life.
Within a week or so of the beating, her doctors had written her off. They apparently told Haleigh's court-appointed guardian, Harry Spence, that she was "virtually brain dead." Even though he had never visited her, Spence quickly went to court seeking permission to remove her respirator and feeding tube. The court agreed, a decision affirmed recently by the supreme court of Massachusetts.
And so, no doubt with the best of intentions, a little girl who had already suffered so much was stripped by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts of even the chance to fight to stay alive. If she didn't stop breathing when the respirator was removed, which doctors expected, she would slowly dehydrate to death.
Close Call
Then came the unexpected:
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...
Thanks. :-)
God bless this little kid!
8mm
Never had anyone to love her, cherish her, etc....just people who want to pull the plug as fast as possible. God help us all.
PVS is a shamefully hopeless diagnosis. It is one where the doctor decides there is nothing he can do, and so gives himself permission to give up trying.
I am more encouraged by the doctors who understand that there are stages of consciousness, and that we can be unconscious for a while, then emerge from it, and sometimes retreat back into it, only to (oftentimes) re-emerge.
I detest when they refer to PVS as a permanent condition. Only death is permanent.
| ...Lest anyone think that Haleigh's apparent consciousness protects her from suffering the fate of Terri Schiavo, who was ordered dehydrated by a Florida court based, in part, on a finding that she was unconscious, think again. In most states, exhibiting consciousness is not a defense against dehydration for profoundly impaired patients. Indeed, cognitively disabled people who are conscious are commonly dehydrated throughout the country. So long as no family member objects, the practice is deemed medically routine... |
Sure, you're added to the Pro-Life ping list.
But those with an agenda are never interested in facts.
Thoughtful addition! :-)
I know you're a fan of Smith's, so I thought I should ping you to this thread. Hope you're doing well.
The futile care system is alive and well in our country as it stands today.
The Jihadists can find proof anywhere they want to look. Too bad they don't see their own faults and shortcomings, and are willing to kill others because of their blindness. I guess the same could be said of the euthanasiasts.
Imagine if we sentenced Scott Peterson to such a treatment.
The article in this thread describes the punishment of dehydration.
Defining dehydratable people.
It wasn't always so. It used to be thought of as unthinkable to remove a feeding tube. Then, as bioethicists and others among the medical intelligentsia began to worry about the cost of caring for dependent people and the growing number of our elderly — and as personal autonomy increasingly became a driving force in medical ethics — some looked for a way to shorten the lives of the most marginal people without violating the law or radically distorting traditional medical values. Removing tubes providing food and fluids was seen as the answer. After all, it was argued, use of a feeding tube requires a relatively minor medical procedure. Moreover, the nutrition provided the patient is not steak and potatoes, but a liquid formula prepared under medical auspices so as to ease digestion. There can also be complications such as diarrhea and infection.
Having reached consensus on the matter, the bioethics movement mounted a deliberate and energetic campaign during the 1980s to change the classification of ANH from humane care, which can't be withdrawn, to medical treatment, which can. The first people targeted for potential dehydration were the persistently unconscious or elderly with pronounced morbidity. Thus, bioethics pioneer Daniel Callahan wrote in the October 1983. Hastings Center Report, "Given the increasingly large pool of superannuated, chronically ill, physically marginalized elderly it [a denial of ANH] could well become the non treatment of choice."
And here is just one description of the effects of dehydration:
Saliva becomes thick and foul-tasting; the tongue clings irritatingly to the teeth and the roof of the mouth .... A lump seems to form in the throat ... severe pain is felt in the head and neck. The face feels full due to the shrinking of the skin. Hearing is affected, and many people begin to hallucinate... [then come] the agonies of a mouth that has ceased to generate saliva. The tongue hardens into what McGee describes as "a senseless weight, swinging on the still-soft root and striking foreignly against the teeth." Speech becomes impossible, although sufferers have been known to moan and bellow.
Next is the "blood sweats" phase, involving "a progressive mummification of the initially living body." The tongue swells to such proportions that it squeezes past the jaws. The eyelids crack and the eyeballs begin to weep tears of blood. The throat is so swollen that breathing becomes difficult, creating an incongruous yet terrifying
sense of drowning.
Finally ... there is living death, the state into which Pablo Valencia had entered when McGee discovered him on a desert trail, crawling on his hands and knees: "His lips had disappeared as if amputated, leaving low edges of blackened tissue; his teeth and gums projected like those of a skinned animal, but the flesh was black and dry as a hank of jerky; his nose was withered and shrunken to half its length, and the nostril-lining showing black; his eyes were set in a winkless stare, with surrounding skin so contracted as to expose the conjunctiva, itself as black as the gums...; his skin [had] generally turned a ghastly purplish yet ashen gray, with great livid blotches and streaks; his lower legs and feet ... were torn and scratched by contact with thorns and sharp rocks, yet even the freshest cuts were so many scratches in dry leather, without trace of blood" (Philbrick, 126-128).
Haleigh Poutre information
Please FReepmail me if you would like to be added to, or removed from, the Pro-Life/Pro-Baby ping list...
Of course there's a huge difference, but that doesn't matter to the willfully ignorant or the kookily obsessed.
Ted wanted water. He wanted to live.
Parents should not vacation in Florida with their adult children unless they trust them.
seriously. the medical providers are not healing, they are trafficking human beings straight to hospice.
Amerika, wake up. Ted was only 73 and people recover from strokes every single day!
Please put me on your ping list? Thanks.
Thanks for doing that. :-)
I'm calling Doctor Congressman Dave Weldon, Fl (federal or state investigation would be appropriate. Ted was from out of state but was murdered in Florida by Florida's DEATH CARE SYSTEM for the son.
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