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.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

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

[BykrBayb]

Need help in NJ with Dr. Kevorkian clones

[BykrBayb]

What's a race horse owner to do when their thoroughbred goes lame?

Head boy's parents to turn off life support

Oh wait, that's not a race horse. It's a rugby player.

[BykrBayb]

ENGLAND: Lords vote against 'right to die' Bill after impassioned debate

By Ben Russell, Political Correspondent
THE INDEPENDENT

May 13, 2006

Peers voted last night to wreck a Bill aimed at giving terminally ill patients the right to die.

They backed an amendment delaying debate on the assisted-dying Bill for six months by 148 to 100, effectively preventing the private member's Bill sponsored by Lord Joffe becoming law in this session of Parliament.

But Lord Joffe told peers he would reintroduce his Bill in the next parliamentary year, raising the prospect of another full-scale debate on the issue.

The symbolic vote came after an impassioned eight-hour debate in which more than 90 peers spoke. Peers, led by the Archbishop of Canterbury, attacked Lord Joffe's Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill Bill which would give doctors the power to prescribe a lethal dose of medication to allow terminally ill people to take their own lives.

The Bill, based on a law in the American state of Oregon, had little chance of becoming law but the debate and vote became a test of public opinion over the first moves towards legal euthanasia in Britain.

Opening the marathon debate, Lord Joffe insisted that his private member's Bill would give patients extra choice over the end of their lives. But critics said the terminally ill would come under pressure to die rather than use expensive pain-relieving care.

Lord Joffe said: "We can move forward on this sensitive matter with confidence, secure in the knowledge that the Bill would not impose anything on anybody and only provides an additional end-of-life option for terminally ill patients which they are free to accept or reject as they and only they decide."

But Lord Carlile of Berriew, the Liberal Democrat peer and proposer of the amendment designed to halt progress of the Bill, warned: "Despite protestations to the contrary, everyone in this House knows that those who are moving this Bill have the clear intention of it leading to voluntary euthanasia."

The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev Rowan Williams, launched an offensive against the Bill in an unprecedented joint letter with the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor.

Dr Williams told peers: "Whether or not you believe that God enters into the consideration, it remains true that to specify even in the fairly broad terms of this Bill conditions under which it would be both reasonable and legal to end your life, is to say that certain kinds of life are not worth living.

"We would also jeopardise the security of the vulnerable by radically changing the relationship between patient and physician."

He was backed by the former archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey of Clifton. Lord Carey warned: "If introduced, assisted suicide might be treated as casually as abortion is today, after a few years."

Lord St John of Fawsley, a Conservative peer and Roman Catholic, said: "The deadly sin of our time is not sexual promiscuity, about which the Church goes on too much. The evil of our time is greed. It goes throughout society and at every level. This Bill would open the way to abuse by the greedy and acquisitive, bringing pressure on those who are at their most vulnerable."

But Baroness Jay of Paddington, the former Labour leader of the Lords, backed the measure. She said: "However much we respect the opposition to this Bill in principle, we live today in a very diverse and predominantly secular society in which the importance of human rights is increasingly valued.

"We have to recognise some terminally ill people would prefer to end their lives in a controlled and dignified manner, rather than receive care until a so-called natural death."

Lord Gilmour of Craigmillar, a Tory, said: "Terminally ill patients are allowed to stop taking life-preserving drugs and thus probably face many days of pain before they die; and doctors are allowed to give pain-killing drugs, even though they know it will speed up the death of the patient."

He added: "This Bill is not a Rubicon and because I think the opponents of this Bill are being illogical and because public opinion is strongly in favour, I strongly support it."

END

[T'wit]

>> what up with Mikey blogging? Didn't he get what he wanted?

It would seem he didn't. He wants the impossible. He wants everyone to pat him on the head and tell him he did the right thing. He wants exoneration.

That's a lot to ask after fifteen years of cruelty to his wife, hatred toward her family, ransacking her estate and putting her to death by torture. Now he says, "Aren't I a good boy?" He is guilt-ridden. He thinks he will find peace by getting people to approve what he did. Wrong, Mikey, wrong.

I wonder how long before his new friends on the Left get sick of his whining. In fact, I wonder if any of them will start to see through his bovine scat and wonder how Terri ended up on the floor, almost lifeless. Healthy young women almost never "collapse." It is almost always an attack by their boy friend or husband.

What really happened that night in 1990? Michael Schiavo knows. His new friends should ask him some hard questions about that.

[T'wit]

Remember when people sang, "There'll always be an England"?

They were wrong.

[8mmMauser]

Still on watch for Simplemines, awaiting update.

Need help in NJ with Dr. Kevorkian clones

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]

Martin Anderson update: Pressure for investigation continues.

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

Probe boot-camp teen's death, and jumpstart real fix for Florida juvenile justice

What must also be ascertained:

• Whether the first autopsy by Bay County Medical Examiner Dr. Charles Siebert was conducted in good faith, or if pressure was exerted on him to downplay the consequences of Martin's beating.

  The Florida Medical Examiners Commission is expected to review Siebert's work. If it finds evidence of incompetence or impropriety in reaching the sickle cell verdict, his license should be revoked.

• Whether ex-Florida Department Law Enforcement director Guy Tunnell compromised the investigation into Anderson's death.

  Tunnell resigned from FDLE in April amid controversy over friendly messages he e-mailed to the Bay County Sheriff. Other e-mails about the case sent by the Bay County State Attorney may have been erased.

  Perhaps no crimes occurred in either case, but the public -- and the family of the dead teen -- have a right to know all the facts.

  What's just as troubling as the possible boot-camp cover-up is the lack of any firm guarantee that mistreatment of inmates in the state's failing juvenile justice system is going to stop.

Find the truth

8mm

[8mmMauser]

Close to home:

The uncle of our very close friend, also a close friend of ours slipped a few days ago while climbing a ladder on the side of a house. Part way up, his foot went through the rung and he fell backwards striking the back of his head on the cement below. He got up dazed but functioning fine. Family called EMT and they transported him to a hospital for observation. (They thought...) They knew a blow like that and concussion could cause serious problems once swelling set in, but held no further worries. Uncle was strong and in good health otherwise and showed no other effects than being stunned by the injury.

Our friends have always held great faith in doctors as if they were gods, a faith we lost many decades ago. They would never question, just would trust. Here is how their trust was rewarded:

Obviously, he needed care and observation, but someone on staff decided he must be sedated and he was put under. Right away, most all body functions shut down, kidneys, etc. Soon they did a tracheostomy. All was to no avail. The hospital staff declared him beyond help and recommended he be taken off life support. They will do that today. Our friends now in sorrow are also in rage at why he was sedated. They have no response from the hospital yet, but finally they suspect their blind trust is betrayed.

We will find more details as the days pass, but so far that is all we know.

Although they are aware of our own attitudes and even about this thread, when pressed they still placed blind total faith in the medical help. No time or place now for "I toldjaso's", just prayer.

So many of us have been conditioned to accept medical authority as power from Heaven. It paves the way for acceptance as if we were sheep. We are thankful our own blind trust shifted to wariness many decades past.

8mm

[Lesforlife]

Prayers for your dear friend.

We really need to help the Schindlers begin founding medical safe houses!!

The pace with which this death train is racing down the track is
frightening.

If we can't fund safe houses yet, we need to put our heads together and
locate hospitals which uphold the Hippocratic Oath so that patients can
be removed from organ harvesting mills and be sent to faith based,
care giving medical facilities.

[8mmMauser]

Thanks, Les. I would guess a great number of us could count similar stories, perhaps ones they glossed over in the past and figured to be just fate.

Looking from that perspective, the death culture hovers all around us in shadows, just awaiting the time to strike.

Indeed, we hope safe houses would be found and established and hope the Schindlers can do something in that direction. One would think the facilities which were Catholic or similar faith would be safe in themselves, like St. Luke's. Well, maybe not.

The friends we mentioned recently promised they would take care of us if anything incapacitated us. Knowing their tendency to blind faith in doctors, we figured they would be swayed by the Kervorkian doctors to pull the plug on us if we fell into those straits.

Now, maybe they would give serious thought first and understand what we have said.

[TheSpottedOwl]

Just damn : (

Prayers sent up for your friends uncle, and your friends. You wouldn't happen to know the medication used to sedate him? Back in '93, my mom had a masectomy, and complained that the nursing staff was screaming at her. They obviously gave her too much anesthetic, but her mind went south soon after that.

Sedation shouldn't shut down your organs. It's too bad they couldn't have gotten a blood sample, but like the rest of us, they trust the hospital : (

[Lesforlife]

FROM ANDREA CLARK'S SISTER
UPDATE ON MS VO:

I was in Austin this weekend and asked Jerri Ward (the lawyer who represented my sister, Andrea Clark, and who is also representing Mrs. Vo) if I could go see Mrs. Vo. She thought it was a good idea and she met me up there Sunday morning. We were escorted to Mrs. Vo's room by her husband, Mr. Tran.

Before I was allowed in the room, a nurse stopped us at the door and demanded to know who I was. I told her I was a friend of the family. She wanted to know what "kind" of friend I was. I told her I was an "important"
friend of the family. She said if I was media she couldn't let me in. This didn't seem right to me, but I didn't argue the point since I wasn't media. I assured her I was not media. We washed and gowned and went in to see Mrs. Vo. The nurse hovered in the room and about the door for most of the visit.

We weren't there five minutes and another hospital official along with a security guard came into the room and handed me a business card. She told me I'd have to call the administrator on the card and identify myself. Is it just
me or is this sounding Gestapo to you too? I asked her if she was telling me I couldn't visit the patient if unless I called this person. She started crabwalking a bit..."I'm just saying you are to call..." I demanded to know if she was telling me I couldn't visit the patient. Then the security guard interrupted and said he thought there was some kind of misunderstanding and he drew the woman back out into the hall to talk in low tones--after a few minutes they disappeared down the hall.

By this time I was fairly livid. I wanted to visit with Mrs. Vo and they kept interrupting. After another five minutes, here comes ANOTHER hospital official to verify that I was not
media. I don't know what's wrong with those people. Are they stupid or something? Are they calling me a liar? How many times do they have to be told I am not media? And even if I were, it's none of their business if the family wants me there! I mean, is Mrs. Vo a patient or a prisoner?

Mr. Tran loves his wife so much. The entire time we were there he rubbed her skin with oil, did range of motion exercises on her, cleaned her mouth, suctioned her mouth and vent. Oh...the nurse was mad about that...she was so rude.

Mrs. Vo is much healthier than Andrea. She's nice and fat and her skin is beautiful--not all broken down like Andrea's. She watches you with her eyes--despite the nurse telling us that "she can't track." Nonsense. She
probably is uncooperative with the hospital because she knows they don't care about her. She was "tracking" her husband, me, and Jerri just fine. The nurse got mad when Mr. Tran swabbed out his wife's mouth. The nurse
said, "I just did that." He ignored her and continued to care for his wife, so the nurse started complaining to us about it. Jerri asked the nurse if it would hurt if he cleaned out his wife's mouth. She hesitated, then she said, "Well, she doesn't like it." Sure enough, Mrs. Vo was making an ugly
face as her husband swabbed her mouth. Well, apparently, the patient has preferences about having her mouth cleaned. To me, this says she is responding to her environment. And even the nurse admitted that.

No one can convince me that Mr. Tran isn't experiencing a feeling of love as he cares for his wife or that Mrs. Vo isn't experiencing the feeling of being loved as he takes care of her. Those are the most exquisite of all human experiences--if Mrs. Vo still has access to the best of all human experiences, how can it be anything other than pure murder for them to remove her life support?

This is all becoming very surreal to me...how is it that hospitals seem to feel a sense of entitlement when it comes to killing off patients? How is it that they have so much resentment towards those who believe in a patient's right to life? Are they so comfortable with the God-like power attributed to them by the law and families that they become apoplectic at the very notion that someone might question their authority?

That kind of power is very dangerous to anyone who could possibly become a patient. Texas isn't the only state with medical futility laws. We all need to be fighting this battle.

Thanks for posting this,
Lanore Dixon

[BykrBayb]

Anyone who can read that with dry eyes needs professional help.

[Wampus SC]

Thanks.

[Wampus SC]

"However, if we choose life for ourselves thoughout the will, they will override it with a bio"ethics" committee, whenever they can.

If I did get an advanced directive, I would download the "Will to Live" which is at www.nrlc.org"

I'm not going to even bother with downloading it, since they can override it anytime they please. I think the crucial thing that lets them get away with this is that they have legal immunity. Remove that, and they'd change overnight.

Or, they can keep legal immunity -- and think long and hard about what distraught family members, out of their heads with grief, might do. And then ask themselves if it's worth the risk.

[Wampus SC]

"Not one bit far fetched. They already had/have the power to kill over 46 million preborn innocent babies."

That they do. They just want to kill as many people in as many ways possible. The difference here is that no one is forced to get an abortion. At least not yet.

[Wampus SC]

Thanks.

[T'wit]

Doctor-patient privacy is closely guarded by law. Medical treatments and records are kept secret. Has the medical profession grown corrupt behind this screen of legal secrecy? Why, indeed, are hospitals so afraid of reporters? (You may recall that Andrea Clarke's family was threatened for naming doctors at St. Luke's.)

It looks as if we need a strong light on the shadowy practices of institutional medicine. We need a sunshine law like FOIA -- a "Freedom of Medical Information" Act. The Death Cult has taken root behind the closed doors. It needs to be exposed.

[Wampus SC]

"I mean, is Mrs. Vo a patient or a prisoner? "

The question was rhetorical.

"Those are the most exquisite of all human experiences--if Mrs. Vo still has access to the best of all human experiences, how can it be anything other than pure murder for them to remove her life support?"

It can't.

"This is all becoming very surreal to me...how is it that hospitals seem to feel a sense of entitlement when it comes to killing off patients? How is it that they have so much resentment towards those who believe in a patient's right to life?"

"A boot trampling a human face, forever...."

"Are they so comfortable with the God-like power attributed to them by the law and families that they become apoplectic at the very notion that someone might question their authority?

In a word, yes.

Damn. The death culture is escalating this fight to the point where we may no longer be able to afford being "nice". They're practicing genocide. It's quiet and in slow motion, but genocide all the same. Some have stated it is their intent. Anything that follows now is self defense.

[Wampus SC]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1632483/posts
Maybe this is off topic - or maybe it isn't for the good dot connectors out there.

At any rate, this is the most important article you'll read all week.

Our Exalted Rulers want 219 MILLION more immigrants in the next 20 years. (That's 2/3 of the current population, folks.)

The king is a fink. Þ

Announcement: I will probably get the Zot on this issue. But like my tagline says...