- Part I - Terri Schiavo's Life and Death
Part II - Terri Schiavo and the Culture of Death Movement
Terri Schiavo: Finding the Answers
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Posted on 03/14/2006 11:28:51 AM PST by KevinNuPac
Terri's Day challenges the nation to unify
Kevin Fobbs
March 13, 2006
Terri's Day — A Celebration of the Culture of Life honoring Terri Schiavo with a day of remembrance challenges each and every one of us to stop for a moment and ask ourselves a question, do we respect ourselves, our families, our lives?
And if we are faced with the question of the possible certainty of death, does anyone truly know, or even have the faintest clue about, our wishes? That is the greatest good, the greatest legacy that Terri Schiavo's death and an annual "Terri's Day" can bring to our lives and to the celebration of the Culture of Life.
On March 18th, we as a nation will begin to grieve again, to reach into our hearts and feel with our collective national spirit what the Schindler family felt last year at this time as each moment since Terri was disconnected from the feeding lifeline, the moments crept by like hours and hours like days.
All of us have felt in some way that pain — even if it were only in the privacy of our loved one's home, hospital room, hospice or perhaps talking with an attorney and doctor attempting to make sense out of some fleeting comments made in a conversation perhaps voiced ten, twelve or even two decades earlier — not necessarily an expression of her true feeling about an end-of-life decision but merely an incidental musing in a long-forgotten side conversation.
For at least one million Americans, and quite possibly a whole lot more, this is an opportunity to voice an opinion through a pledge supporting a resolution in each state called "Terri's Day — A Celebration of the Culture of Life." Each and every person who cares that your family, your spouse, your mother, your father, your sister or brother understands with clarity what you wish the end of life for you to be, with dignity and certainty should sign the online pledge at www.kevinfobbs.com and take the additional step to sign a Living Will — or as they call it at www.terrisfight.org, the Will to Live.
Some have asked why Americans should care about an annual Terri's Day. It is quite simple, we tend to keep turning the page on the Culture of Life because we feel it does not affect us. We tend to believe that seemingly universal belief that those who are handicapped, those who are not quite living a "perfect" life or by contemporary notion "ideal" then those lives are possibly disposable, marginal, not relevant, and part of the Culture of Death which embraces a "disposable society."
But life and our values for the Culture of Life are not disposable. Think about the young people today who would rather hurt themselves or even take their own lives rather than feel "imperfect" or the elderly person whose family is told by an insensitive health care professional while the stricken person struggles to cling to life, "she would be better off in another place," — just let her die, disconnect her from life, because her quality of life is not up to "contemporary standards. "
Why does celebrating the Culture of Life in Michigan become so essential for all of us in America? It is important for several reasons. Dr. Jack Kervorkian, also known as "Doctor Death" helped launch first in Michigan and then the nation the notion of the death culture. Secondly, and equally as important, at the May 12 event — just two days before Mother's Day — there will also be a "Mary's Moms" celebration of those women and mothers who have met challenges in standing up for some aspect of the Culture of Life.
This past weekend I sat at my cousin's funeral — or going home celebration, which more accurately describes it — thinking about the dearly departed and how she packed so much caring for others into her life even as she struggled with illness and advancing age. She was a wonderful woman who had lived through many, many challenges in her life, but in her 73 years she had met these challenges with dignity and had conveyed to her family when would be the right time to allow her to pass away.
Her daughter, who is a minister, spoke to the packed church about the times when, with all of her pain and then a stroke, the doctors had informed them that perhaps it was better to let her go. Yet that was three years ago that that occurred, and if the family had listened to the doctors and refused to see how she fought back and not only recovered but went back to volunteering at the church to feed and clothe the homeless. The medical professionals didn't care about an elderly lady who was on dialysis, but the family did and they knew better. Patricia lived three more years — years her extensive extended family considered "a gift from God."
So isn't part of the lesson of Terri's legacy and Terri's Day for families and loved ones to have a meaningful conversation with their family and to have the written document on hand as well that conveys the wishes clearly and concisely? You betcha.
As I sat in the church I thought of all of the families across the nation and the world who were sitting at their loved one's bedsides — or even standing outside of a hospital emergency room — overwhelmed with emotion, torn by what may be days of conflicting anguished decisions. I thought again of how out of death we may have the certainty of life. Terri's death reminded the nation that yes a state can and will starve you to death, and your family may be rendered helpless as you watch your loved one's precious life forces drain slowly away.
By signing the online pledge at www.kevinfobbs.com or going to www.terrisfight.org, you can learn about how to encourage your state legislature to establish March 31st as an official Terri's Day. Hold a Culture of Life Home Party or meet-and-greet to sign pledges, share ideas and support The Terri Schindler Schiavo Foundation as well as Culture of Life activities and events in your community or around the nation. Between now and March 31st you can make a dramatic difference for yourself, your family and for the nation. Stand up for the Culture of Life because one person, one life, one family can and does make a difference in America. Make the difference and be the difference today. America...The countdown for the Culture of Life has begun.
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Kevin Fobbs is President of National Urban Policy Action Council (NuPac), a non-partisan civic and citizen-action organization that focuses on taking the politics out of policy to secure urban America's future one neighborhood, one city, and one person at a time. View NuPac on the web at www.nupac.info. Kevin Fobbs is a regular contributing columnist for the Detroit News. He is also the daily host of The Kevin Fobbs Show on News Talk WDTK - 1400 AM in Detroit. Listen to The Kevin Fobbs Show online at www.wdtkam.com daily 2-3 p.m., and call in toll-free nationwide to make your opinion count at 800-923-WDTK(9385) © Copyright 2006 by Kevin Fobbs http://www.renewamerica.us/columns/fobbs/060313
Besides it contradicts other reports that show a steady rise in concern for living wills. But facts can wait when an agenda needs pushing or a rising tide of public interest needs capping.
They wish...
What is the legacy of the Terri Schiavo case?
Officials at both Doylestown Hospital and the University of Pennsylvania Health System noticed an increase just after her death in the number of people writing living wills. But it has subsided, they say.
The legal impact of the case has waned
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Mentioned before:
Visits to the Internet site for the U.S. Living Will Registry - where advance directives can be stored for quick access by doctors and family members - increased from 500 a day to 50,000 a day when the Schiavo case was in the headlines last year. It has leveled off to about 2,500 day, but the number of registered documents is up to 40,000 from 10,000 a year ago.
Living wills gaining popularity since Schiavo's death
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One year after the death of Terri Schiavo, her family who fought for seven years in court to keep her alive is not giving up its battle against euthanasia.
Parents Robert and Mary Schindler, along with brother Bobby Schindler and sister Suzanne Vitadamo have developed two separate organizations devoted to activism on behalf of the disabled.
Bobby Schindler is running the Terri Schindler Schiavo Center for Health Care Ethics in Washington, D.C., and his parents and sister are in charge of the Terri Schindler Schiavo Foundation.
Terri's family keeps fight alive... Establishing groups against euthanasia after daughter's death
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Part II - Terri Schiavo and the Culture of Death Movement
Terri Schiavo: Finding the Answers
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NRLC Remembers Terri Schiavo--
Urges Americans to Complete Will to Live
-- http://www.nrlc.org/press_releases_new/Release032706.html
And they did not disappoint, using their preferred tool of choice, polling. Today, rather than reflecting popular opinion, most polls merely measure the effectiveness of media propaganda, as demonstrated by an ABC poll widely touted last year which said that 63 percent of those polled supported the removal of Terri's feeding tube.
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On Jeb's Watch
What Terri and all persons with disabilities offer is something invaluable in today's world. They can show us how to love, and thus, how to live.
Weighing in two years before her death, a New York Times editorial philosophized: "True respect for life includes recognizing not just when it exists, but when it ceases to be meaningful." However, anybody who has spent significant time with a person with a disability understands how meaningful their lives can be.
Terri Schiavo: A Legacy of Love
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ACLU killed Terri. Freepers who are anti-Terri are pro-ACLU. ACLU was at Mikey's counsel table. Wake up, sleepy freeps. The ACLU may help kill you someday.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1606359/posts
What he's going now is continuing the "coverup". With friends like Sandra Day O' Connor, the coverup is going very well. The Republican Party is Michael Schiavo's friend. All your calls fell on deaf ears. This is what really is sickening. And, the torture-murders have escalated.
It sounds downright warm and fuzzy, almost patriotic and American-ish
Center for American Progress
Statement on the Anniversary of the Schiavo Case
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What Judge Greer and the judges did amounts to subversive activity, not the rule of law. They are lawless and belong in prison.
Mary and Robert Schindler as well as Suzanne Schindler Vitadamo and Bobby Schindler officially launched the Terri Schindler Schiavo Foundation on March 30, 2006 at 11:00 am outside of the Russell Senate Office Building in Washington DC. Speakers will include the Schindler family, Senator Sam Brownback and others.
The Terri Schindler Schiavo Foundation, Inc., (TSSF) is a non-profit group dedicated to ensuring the rights of disabled, elderly and vulnerable citizens against care rationing, euthanasia and medical killing.
| Posted by plb at March 30, 2006 11:03 AM | Subscribe with Bloglines |
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"After all these years of people vilifying me, hanging me out to dry, I said to myself 'It's my turn,'" he said in an interview with the St. Petersburg Times last week."
NO, MIKEY, YOU HUNG TERRI OUT TO DRY and we KNOW THAT YOU LOVED HER TO DEATH.
Are those cop sirens going to make an arrest I hear?
Darn. It's just more victims being trafficked to Hospice.
Rita Marker, a lawyer out of Steubenville, Ohio, has researched and written extensively about the foundations who fund the right to die groups pushing euthanasia and physician assisted suicide in the United States. Rita states that private foundations are the critical players in promoting societal changes. They also supply the money for the studies used in advancing an ideology. This is fact. Just follow the money trail.
On the other hand, according to Peter Singer, the controversial bioethics professor at Princeton University, the traditional view of the sanctity of human life will collapse under pressure from scientific, technological, and demographic developments.
The Mergers, The Money, The Minds Behind Assisted Suicide
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“Throughout the entire struggle to save Terri’s life and to this very day, the Schindler family has been a profound example of Christian familial love,” stated Stephen G. Peroutka, Esq., chairman of the National Pro-Life Action Center (NPLAC)—the uncompromising voice of pro-life America on Capitol Hill. “After the tragic loss of their daughter, no one would have blamed the Schindler family if they had just wanted to quietly recess into the shadows to mourn. Instead, they continue to be an inspiration to the world by continuing their work on behalf of the disabled and the infirmed, and we thank them for that.”
On the eve of the first anniversary of Terri’s death by dehydration, the Schindler family is officially launching the Terri Schindler-Schiavo Foundation with the release of their book, “A Life That Matters: The Legacy of Terri Schiavo–A Lesson for Us All” (Warner Books, 2006). “We must never forget the horrible, painful and undignified way in which Terri was put to death by order of an activist Florida judge who had clearly been corrupted by a culture-of- death mindset,” observed Paul Chaim Schenck, director of NPLAC. “Every single life does matter. Life is a precious gift with infinite value, and the intrinsic dignity of the human person cannot be negotiated down based on one’s physical or mental health, so- called quality of life, or other false pretense perpetuated by death advocates.”
As part of the launch, NPLAC has purchased 600 copies of “A Life That Matters,” which will be delivered to every member of the United States Senate, the United States House of Representatives and key members of the Bush Administration, including the president and the vice president.
Still Waiting for Justice to be Served
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One year ago today, an operative from Washington, DC demanded that all the anti-Bush and Greer signs come down. The operative didn't get their wish. Free speech rights were not taken away last March 31st but they tried. I think I told the operative "forget it." Amerika, wake up. You missed the U.S. condoning torture and then trying to silence citizens. Terri didn't get amnesty, did she?
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- Pro-life groups are set to remember the one year anniversary of the painful starvation and dehydration euthanasia death Terri Schiavo suffered. Some will participate in a press conference to highlight the work of Terri's family to help disabled people and others will lay hundreds of roses on the steps of the Supreme Court.
Concerned Women for America will join the Terri Schindler Schiavo Foundation in holding a press conference in honor of Terri’s passing.
Pro-Life Groups to Remember Terri Schiavo on Anniversary of Her Death
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"As part of the launch, NPLAC has purchased 600 copies of “A Life That Matters,” which will be delivered to every member of the United States Senate, the United States House of Representatives and key members of the Bush Administration, including the president and the vice president."
Our leaders must read the above book to learn why their poll ratings have tanked, republicans and democrats abandoned Terri.
Ralph Nader was on Terri's side, Mel Gibson, Patricia Heaton and many other heavies were on Terri's side. EVEN Al Gore's election fight attorney David Boies was on Terri's side. The list goes on and on.
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