Terri's Day challenges the nation to unify

Renew America ^ | March 13, 2006 | Kevin Fobbs

[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

[8mmMauser]

Anything we can think of to help Simplemines? Post# 3,094.

[8mmMauser]

"Ouster"? "Disciplinary actions"?

Florida has really tough battery and murder laws, doesn't it? They can put an official letter of reprimand in your file! They can suspend you with or without pay! You might even get fired!

For the really bad cases they use very strong language like "shame on you" in their letter and if it is bad enough, a note to Mom.

[T'wit]

No, the reporter doesn't quite get it. We seldom find one who does, do we? However, Bobby speaks well and we can suppose that the sizeable audience (800) got the message just fine.

[T'wit]

There they go again. Nothing more edifying than Democrats writing about the woes of the Republican Party. Of the Democrats' own woes, we shall hear little in this gutless age. In more spirited times, Will Rogers had something to say about it. "I'm not a member of any organized political party," he said. "I'm a Democrat."

[T'wit]

>> Do you know how to get in touch with Wendy Murphy?

Snail-mail ought to be findable. I don't know of either a phone or e-mail address.

[pickyourpoison]

Someone needs to be held accountable for this boys death. Has anyone even been fired or arrested for this!

[T'wit]

>> BOTTOM LINE: A dubious autopsy leaves it to the Florida Medical Examiners Commission to salvage a profession's reputation.

That's not much of a "bottom line" when one M.E. rules that Martin died of natural causes and that the beating he took had nothing to do with it. For my two cents, that doc put his reputation on the line to cover up the circumstances of Martin's death, and he lost. The other M.E. ruled ruled that it was suffocation from upper respiratory blockage due to ammonia inhalation. Now, that could not be missed by a real autopsy.

Natural causes vs. a highly unnatural death for a teen. One of the docs used an official autopsy report to shield a crime by law enforcement officials. There's your true bottom line.

[8mmMauser]

So far not a lot has happened, but Jeb Bush indicated he would look into it and urged some action. And now we have a federal probe. (my post #3,071)

A federal probe into the death has also been initiated by the U.S. Attorney's office in Tallahassee and the U.S Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division. 5-10-06

[8mmMauser]

Maybe it is just business as usual in those parts.

[T'wit]

>> Doctors who hold such ultimate high esteem in our minds bolstered by decades of reinforcement become omnipotent...

Yes.

Similarly, we still hold teachers and "education" in high esteem though education had been all but totally eradicated by 1900 by the socialist reformers of that era. Education means the transmission of civilized values from one generation to the next. Nowadays, public schools labor mightily to stay "value-free" and good values are usually illegal. If a government school today stumbles into five minutes worth of actual education, it is a complete accident.

All reform movements depend on the moral capital of the very systems they attack. Reformers, knowingly or not, smuggle their values from the religious belief they mock. Western civilization is still held together with Christian morality, though our defenses are thin and tattered, and under constant attack.

If the reformers think civilization is so bad, wait till they experiences the joys of Dark Ages.

[T'wit]

>> a note to Mom.

Oh, no!!

And NO RED STARS OR SMILEY FACES on your performance evaluation sheets for the rest of the week.

[8mmMauser]

They can get a glimpse of Iran and what the mullahs are trying to do to bring Iran back into the Dark Ages.

[T'wit]

>> Maybe it is just business as usual in those parts.

I am particular impressed with law enforcement officers mounting a pack attack on a helpless boy. What a bunch of spineless, gutless piglets.

[8mmMauser]

Some friends of ours right now have a typical problem/case. One had slipped and hit the back of his head. Certainly he needed care and treatment for the possible concussion but that is all that happened.

He needs to be at home, recovering.

Now it is expanded into a multiple ailment crisis.

The hospital and doctors have been going over him like a critter in a science lab. He has been tapped into, jabbed, given a trachiatomy, tons of antibiotics and the prospect looks more grim with each procedure.

Soon he will be a parts supply. We seriously doubt that he will be recovering unless he is removed from that Mengele lab.

Yet our friends cannot see it, trust the doctors blindly and will not listen to our advice. They have been conditioned to believe their fate is in the hands of doctor/gods.

[Lesforlife]

One of my favorite talk show hosts and pastors, Bob Enyart of
Bob Enyart Live, Denver Bible Church and kgov.com likes to say
"It's no longer a justice system; it's just a system!"

[8mmMauser]

From Joseph Farah, World Net Daily...

I don't know much about Jeb Bush, other than the fact that he seemed gutless and weak in standing up for Terri Schiavo as she was murdered in his state by out-of-control judges. But I do know that, as governor of Florida, he has reached the highest executive office he will ever achieve. But it's thanks to his brother, mainly, that his political career has been short-circuited. It's thanks to his brother that the "Bush Dynasty" will soon come to a merciful end. It's thanks to his brother that a generation of Republicans, for the foreseeable future, has become disenchanted with and disfranchised from party politics.

President Bush III?

8mm

(this includes Ohioan from Florida's ping list, update to May 1.)



Terri on the road to recovery before the second stage began.

[8mmMauser]

North Country Gazette's June Maxam on bullies...

Lawyers and jurists in the state of Florida have spent the past year rubbing the public's nose in the robes of George Greer, that short, dictatorial, bald-headed egotist who exerted his power over a disabled woman, not only ordering that her feeding tube be removed but taking the extraordinary, inhumane step of ordering that no efforts could be made of even oral hydration or nutrition. He claimed he was her guardian, looking after her best interest. He never ever once personally visited his ward.

Michael Schiavo loves to condemn Bill Frist and others for deciding that Terri Schiavo wasn't in a persistent vegetative state by watching videos and without having examined her or visited her. Of course Michael controlled who did visit her.

COMMENTARY - Adding Insult to Schiavo Death

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[8mmMauser]

Response to Bobby Schindler talk...

......................

To the editor:

I would like to thank KU Students For Life for bringing Bobby Schindler to Kansas University last month. For those of you who were not there, I would like to summarize some of what Mr. Schindler said.

First, although Terri Schiavo’s case was very much a pro-life issue, it was also very much a disability rights issue. Media coverage tended to focus on the support given by pro-life groups, but failed to give adequate coverage to the more than 25 local and national disability rights groups that also supported Schiavo’s family in its fight to keep Terri’s feeding tube intact.

Despite all the opposition against them, I believe that Bobby Schindler and his family are sincere in their fight against the euthanasia movement. If a society is judged by how it treats its weakest members, then the United States is failing.

As Mr. Schindler stated at his talk on April 26, the majority of Americans may have believed that it was right to remove Terri’s feeding tube, but 100 percent of Terri’s family did not want her to die. All they wanted was to be given the responsibility of caring for her for the rest of her life when it became obvious that her husband would not.

Micah Shilling,

Lawrence

Schiavo support

8mm

[8mmMauser]

More fawning over bullies...

CLEARWATER, Fla., May 12 /PRNewswire/ -- Circuit Judge George W. Greer (Sixth Judicial Circuit) will serve on the faculty of the inaugural "Journalist Law School" at Loyola Law School Los Angeles June 14-17. Judge Greer's participation is being sponsored by the Florida chapters of the American Board of Trial Advocates (FLABOTA).

Judge Greer to Be Featured Speaker at Journalist Law School

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[8mmMauser]

Bobby Schindler spoke Thursday night in Massachusetts...

...............

Last night, the former high school teacher in Tampa, Fla., brought his story to the region, telling a crowd of nearly 800 at a Massachusetts Citizens for Life dinner held at Chez Josef that people need to realize there is a cultural war going on over right-to-life issues.

Schindler, 41, said in many cases, economics has become the driving factor in why people are in favor of euthanasia and letting disabled people like Schiavo, who was in a persistent vegetative state for years, die.

"It's a pre-Holocaust mentality," Schindler said. "Based on someone's disability, we are justifying and rationalizing it (letting people die) because we look at them as being too expensive to care for. That's extremely frightening, troubling and disturbing to me."

For Schindler, speaking before a crowd is no longer unique. Since his sister's death, he said he has traveled the world, visiting places like Italy, Ireland and England to speak on the issue.

Though Schindler said his trip to Western Massachusetts was planned before the case of Haleigh Poutre made headlines, he said he sees similarities between the two cases.

Insights shared on right-to-life

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