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
Terri
Sophie
White Rose
Deo gratias
Persevere
He writes that euthanasia advocate Felos told him “and it was about who has the right to make decisions between a husband and wife”, never mind that the husband was severely conflicted, a suspect in the abuse, neglect and exploitation of the ward and that her death verdict had been based on self-serving hearsay testimony.
EXCLUSIVE - Schiavo Attorney Felos Perpetuated His Wish, Not Terri's
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Homily from Terri Schiavo Memorial Mass
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Terri Schiavo would be alive today if the Founding Fathers had only thought to add to the Constitution "Food and Water" to the basic inalienable rights of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. There would be no need of an official Terri's Day. The Founding Fathers did not consider hydration and nutrition because it appeared no civilized nation at the time had deprived their citizens, not even their convicted criminals of that basic right, so therefore the thinking had to be, why include the obvious? Perhaps as Thomas Jefferson was at his desk laboring over crafting the correct wording for historic passages which would become the framework for our Constitution... food and water...just slipped his mind.
Constitutional amendment would have protected Terri Schiavo from starvation death
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This was lifted from the St. Pete Times and printed in the Plain Dealer.
The right-to-die case of Terri Schiavo was defined as much by its bitterness as by its length, and a new book by husband Michael Schiavo is not intended to calm the harsh feelings.
In his book, "Terri: The Truth," Michael Schiavo says his wife's illness stemmed from an eating disorder that he believes her father helped cause by tormenting her for years about her excess weight.
Schiavo's book no olive branch
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“There’s a powerful and strong death movement occurring in our country,” said Mr. Schindler.
“We are removing feeding tubes from people every single day, and killing them, but nobody seems to care – it doesn’t seem to disturb anybody, that we’re starving and de-hydrating people to death.”
He said such killing is possible because there is a belief among those who advocate it that the disabled are worthless and have no value.
Terri Schiavo’s Brother Says Disabled Regularly Killed by Withholding Food, Water
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This is an excerpt. There is more.
Father Jonathan,
If medical personnel had not intervened with the big machines and let God have his way, Terry would have died many years ago. It is my opinion that, thanks to Michael, God finally had his way.
— Jim
RESPOSE: Dear Jim, I chose to post your e-mail because it speaks for several others I received. Using terms like “big machines,” while I understand where you are coming from, is too vague. Applying a defribillator (larger than a feeding tube) to a young man suffering a heart attack on the basketball court, would go unquestioned. The better principle, in my opinion, is whether the proposed treatment is worthwhile or futile for the patient. If inserting a feeding tube is only going to increase and prolong the suffering of a dying person, I think it could be refused by the patient or relatives. This was not the case of Terri. She was not dying. She died because she was not fed.
Growing Old With John Paul II by Father Jonathan Morris for FOX Fan Central
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Michael goes on reciting the bulls -- uh, bulimia tale that Dr. Baden stated was far-fetched when Terri was alive and that the Medical Examiner scoffed at in his autopsy report. Mikey has to keep repeating it. It's a lie -- a lie invented years later by a slip-and-fall lawyer -- but it is his only alibi.
Dear Jim: did you stop to consider that it might have been a strangler getting his way against God's commandment not to murder?
Strangler, Sanger, Singer, all sound the same.
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The REAL ISSUE is that Florida has law stating that withholding nutrition and hydration from a disabled person is a felony. They added another law that says nutrition and hydration is medical treatment.
The second law is UNCONSTITUTIONAL. Terri was murdered because of the unconstitutional law but gee, the judges and leaders overlooked the law about the FELONY to withhold nutrition and hydration.
TERRI'S MURDER WAS UNCONSTITUTIONAL. Trying to save her was not. The cowards who stopped saving her halfway there know who they are.
Terri was killed from all directions - she was ambushed by government intrusion. Conservatives who say saving her would have been interference would be shocked at how much govt intrusion it took to kill poor Terri.
Make-up is a wonderfull thing
The second Faithmouse drawing is chock full of symbolism. The swirling winds imo represent the media spinning Terri's story to fit their agenda.
Post 1531. Everyone should read it. Wackenhut Security helped guard Hospice Woodside while Terri was being tortured to death inside. They ran out of real law enforcement so they hired a private company to guard the brick fence. That's how crucial it was for the death care system to make sure that Terri didn't come out alive.
Thanks to Dianna Lynne of World Net Daily too.
1542. Blame felos' mind control. They are all to blame, Mikey and the murderers. It took a whole lot of people to kill one innocent woman. There is no statute of limitations on murder.
Michael Schiavo at any time could have said "I REALIZE NOW THAT THIS IS WRONG. FELOS, YOU'RE FIRED!"
When Terri had her autopsy, Cyril Wecht was forbidden from attending the autopsy for the Schindlers. Only Throgmartin and his lackeys were at Terri's autopsy.
Shortly after Cyril Wecht's name surfaced in re: Terri Schiavo, charges were brought against him in his home state. Coincidence? Nothing re: Terri is a coincidence.
Same thing with Tom Delay. He's innocent but he spoke out against Judge Greer and J. Whittemore so they found a Texas democrat to go after him.
There are no parties left, just politics.
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