Terri Schiavo's Family Continues Effort to Block Jack Kevorkian UF Speech

Life News ^ | 9/3/07 | Steven Ertelt

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Gainesville, FL (LifeNews.com) -- The family of Terri Schiavo is continuing its efforts to block a speech by Jack Kevorkian scheduled for the middle of next month. The speech would be the first for the former assisted suicide crusader following his release from prison for killing a disabled man and showing the death on national television.

Kevorkian would speak to students at the University of Florida on October 11 and receive $50,000 for the talk, as long as his parole officers approve the trip.

The family of Terri Schiavo has been leading an effort to stop the speech by gathering petitions from concerned citizens so Kevorkian doesn't get a platform in their home state.

They don't want the former pathologist telling students that people with disabilities should be killed, like their sister, rather than receiving appropriate medical treatment or rehabilitative care.

Bobby Schindler, Terri's brother, told LifeNews.com, "We have collected thousands of petitions (and they are still coming in) to deliver to the Office of the President of the University of Florida."

"We're demanding the University rescind its offer to pay $50,000 for Kevorkian to address the students," he added.

"Despite the ongoing message of death spreading through our society and those, like Jack Kevorkian, who attempt to justify killing the most vulnerable among us, we are committed to fight against this death-obsessed culture and spread Terri's legacy of life, hope and love," Schindler explained.

He said there is still time for pro-life people and others worried about Kevorkian's pro-assisted suicide message to sign a petition asking the University of Florida to cancel the speech.

The petition can be found at the Terri Schindler Schiavo Foundation web site.

ACTION: You can also contact the University of Florida President J. Bernard Machen at 352-392-1311 or president@ufl.edu.

[Sun]

FYI, in case you missed this story:

“Republican Presidential hopeful Fred Thompson, addressing some Florida-specific questions for a Tampa Bay-area cable program, says he doesn’t have an opinion about a national catastrophic insurance fund or the 2005 congressional intervention in the Terri Schiavo case.

“I don’t know enough about it yet…I’ll give it serious consideration,” Thompson said of the national cat fund after being asked about it by Adam Smith of The St. Petersburg Times during a taping of the Bay News 9 “Political Connections” show.

Thompson also said he didn’t have an opinion on the Schiavo case.

“I don’t know the facts surrounding that case…That’s going back in history. I don’t remember the details of it,” Thompson said. In 2005, in an attempt to keep the brain-damaged Schiavo alive against the wishes of her husband and rulings by Florida courts, Congress voted to have federal courts review the case. Federal courts ultimately declined to intervene and Schiavo died a few weeks after the vote.”

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/blogs/content/shared-blogs/palmbeach/floridapolitics/entries/2007/09/13/fred_not_sure_about_national_c.html

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This is about Fred Thompson and Terri.

Thanks to Eternal Vigilance and Sun for bringing this to our attention.

One thing we as pro-life people have learned throughout this episode of the last few years is that Terri's Legacy has been a watershed. It has neatly split opinion into two distinct and opposing camps. One is for the saving of her innocent life or one is for having it killed. There is little room for being in between. If anything, Terri's Legacy has illustrated as few other events have, the conflict between good and evil. As this becomes a study of absolutes, one is either for good for evil, and it is quite difficult to take a middle ground. Can one be for sort of good and sort of evil? It seems to me that sitting on this thin fence is tantamount to sitting on the edge of a razor blade, (for those who remember razor blades...) Say it ain't so, Fred Thompson. Say you choose good over evil in this case. I am baffled that you are not informed, as a candidate for the highest office, especially since you played a character on tv in a Terri scenario! The other candidates were aware of this important issue and candidates like Duncan Hunter said it loud and clear in a debate. Wasn't that an issue important enough for you?

Please tell us, so that we won't think of you as just a preselected and anointed choice of the elites and globalists.

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Former Tennessee Senator and presidential candidate Fred Thompson ventured into hazardous terrain Thursday in Florida, where he suggested Congress overstepped its bounds by involving itself in the Terri Schiavo case.

Coverage of his remarks, made to a local cable television station, prompted his campaign to request a correction from at least one media outlet as to how its reports characterized his response. And it prompted some political observers to note that Thompson, a former actor who played District Attorney Arthur Branch on NBC's "Law & Order," prosecuted a similar, fictional, version of the Schiavo case in that television drama. 

Thompson directly refrained from sharing his opinion on the issue, which pitted Schiavo's husband Michael, who wanted to remove the feeding tube of his long brain-dead wife, against her parents, brother, and many religious conservatives, who insisted despite the overwhelming medical evidence that she had some cognition. Florida courts repeatedly sided with Michael Schiavo, but the case exploded to become a national obsession and Congress intervened in March 2005 to prevent her tube from being removed. Ultimately federal courts refused to intervene and Schiavo died on March 31, 2005.

"Local matters, generally speaking, should be left to the locals," Thompson said Thursday in what seemed a gentle way of suggesting Congress over-stepped its bounds. "I think Congress has got an awful lot to keep up with."

Thompson also made sure not to impugn the motives of any of the religious conservatives whose support he now needs for his presidential campaign. "I know that good people were doing what they thought was best," he said. 

The Associated Press originally characterized Thompson as having said he had no opinion, since Thompson said "I don't remember the details of the case." But the Thompson campaign successfully convinced the wire service to change its language to suggest he didn't share his opinion -- not that he didn't have one.

"Not being part of the situation, not being in the Senate at that point, he did not want to pass judgment," said Thompson campaign press secretary Jeff Sadosky. "He feels some decisions need to be made by families under state and local government." 

As gruff-but-lovable conservative D.A. Arthur Branch, Thompson didn't weigh in on the fictional "Karen Burrows" case, from a typical "ripped-from-the-headlines" episode of the cops and lawyers drama. Karen Burrows was a stand-in for Terri Schiavo on an episode entitled "Age of Innocence" that aired on October 12, 2005.

But Thompson's character did support the prosecution of those who murdered Robert Barrows, the Michael Schiavo character who was trying to have the feeding tube of his brain dead wife removed. 

In what may prove to be a case of life imitating art, this prompted criticism from conservatives.

"Arthur Branche – closet liberal," said a conservative radio talk show host on the episode. "I always suspected."................................................

Thompson Suggests Congress Overreached in Schiavo Case... Republican Presidential Candidate Says Right-to-Die Cases Should be 'Left to Locals'

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This from the New York Daily News...

GOP presidential hopeful Fred Thompson said he doesn't remember much about the Terri Schiavo case that commanded the nation's attention in 2005 - though he appeared in a "Law & Order" episode ripped from those headlines.

Thompson's campaign rollout has hit some early potholes, and his nonanswer to a question about the wrenching feeding-tube case seemed to underscore his lack of preparation.

"I can't pass judgment on it. I know that good people were doing what they thought was best," Thompson said in Florida when asked about the case. "That's going back in history. I don't remember the details of it."

Fred Thompson unprepared to answer on Terri Schiavo case

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And from the St. Pete Times...

Thompson also was vague on whether Congress was right to intervene in the Terri Schiavo case in 2005: "Local matters generally speaking should be left to the locals. ... I don't know all the facts surrounding that case, I can't pass judgment on it. I know that good people were doing what they thought was best."

Thompson courts Florida vote

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Kimberly Cornwell...

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Kimberly did make it, but the family still faced a decision.

"They said she would be in a vegetative state for the rest of her life. They said she would never breathe on her own."

One night in the hospital, they got what they took to be a sign.

Justin was speaking to his daughter. He whispered, "If you want to go, you can go."

According to Julie, "She literally raised her hand up in the air ... and we said we can't let her go."

They knew the downside.

"We did not want our child to live with this the rest of her life, but when she gave us that hand, that 'don't let me go' type thing, we said we can't do that, we'll do what it takes.

"We don't feel that God is done with her."

~Snip~

From Karen Ann Quinlan to Terri Schiavo, from statehouses to the U.S. Supreme Court, this country has had a continual public debate over the ethics of continuing life support in dire situations.

To the family, it's strictly personal.

"Terri Schiavo wasn't 2 when that happened to her," Julie said. "Doctors have told us the brain can still develop.

A fragile life

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More about Fred Thompson...

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Mr. Thompson didn't make any news in his stump speech or the Q&A here. But he did in an interview with the St. Petersburg Times, whose reporter asked him about the Terri Schiavo case. The man who was shepherding Chief Justice Roberts through the Senate during the controversy said he didn't know enough about the case to offer an opinion.

"Local matters generally speaking should be left to the locals," he told the Times. "I think Congress has got an awful lot to keep up with. ... I don't know all the facts surrounding that case, I can't pass judgment on it. I know that good people were doing what they thought was best. ... That's going back in history. I don't remember the details of it."

By "history," Mr. Thompson apparently means "two years ago."

Mr. Sunshine State

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My, my, someone could get the impression that the NYT favored the lefties.

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The New York Times in the past has rejected "advocacy" ads from Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, as well as from the National Right to Life Committee, despite the fact that both would have qualified for the same "special advocacy, stand by" rates that the radical, left-wing organization MoveOn.org was given for its smear ad of Gen. David Petraeus.

MoveOn, which is largely financed by billionaire George Soros, as well as other major financial donors to the Democratic National Committee, was given a $100,000 discount for the ad which called the U.S. commander of armed forces in Iraq a traitor. According to a MoveOn organizer in Washington, D.C., the organization has raised more than twice that amount since the full-page ad appeared in the Times earlier this week. "It was a great fundraising opportunity for us." The source added that the group was looking to perhaps turn the ad into a poster that they could further fundraise off of.

The Times claimed that MoveOn was given no special treatment, but several organizations that sought to place ads in a similar manner in past years have been turned away or were told that the ads were bumped for higher paying ads.

According to a former New York Times ad sales staffer, a coalition of pro-life groups attempted to take out a full-page ad in the Times during the Terri Schiavo debate in Congress, but were turned away. "I think that such a group would have qualified for our advocacy discount, but perhaps the policies changed in the past couple of years," says the ad rep.

The New York Times MovesOn

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This just in...

VATICAN CITY - The Vatican issued a ruling today that patients in permanent comas should be given food and water, in a reference to the Terri Schiavo case that sparked bitter debate in the United States two years ago.

The Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith made the deliberation at the request of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, which was seeking guidance for similar future cases.

Schiavo, who had been in a coma for 15 years, died at age 41 after her feeding tube was removed on the order of a Florida court.

At the time the Vatican accused the court of "arbitrarily" bringing forward the moment of her death.

Comatose patients must be fed, Vatican says

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Great news!

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The Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith made the deliberation at the request of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, which was seeking guidance for similar future cases.

The fact that American bishops would even wonder about this is a little troubling.

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Typically the LA Times as other leftist organs just has to include Terri in its mantra cluster.

Support for the GOP among centrist voters collapsed in 2006. Exit polls showed that independents preferred Democrats by 57% to 39% in House races nationwide and by crushing margins in almost all of the most competitive Senate races. But despite those results, virtually no major Republican leader suggested the center rebelled because Bush and the Congress had tilted too far to the right — for instance by intervening in the case of Terri Schiavo, seeking to carve out individual investment accounts from Social Security or, above all, resisting any rollback of the American military commitment in Iraq.

Republicans run right

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Lots of news items today, that one good, but I, too, am puzzled about our American Bishops. Hmmmm, good versus evil, which should I choose? Sounds like some candidates.

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The fog that is DU...

How can anyone reason with a leftie who is unable to "get it"?

I’ve said a lot about the economic and militaristic aspects of the American conservative movement, but relatively little about its Christianity component. That’s because I believe that the leaders of the conservative movement include the Christianity component mainly as a cynical means of getting votes. Whereas the economic and militaristic components are of crucial importance to them in their drive for wealth and power, the Christianity component is just for show. I just don’t believe that they have any concern for the well being of fetal stem cells or Terri Schiavo, for example, nor do I believe that they really care whether homosexual couples marry.

A few words about the Christianity component of the American conservative movement

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How can anyone reason with a leftie who is unable to "get it"?

The better question is why even bother.

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Rhetorical, purely rhetorical. LOL

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This graphic tale summerizes much of our battle against the death enthusiasts. The story comes from Fr. Frank Pavone. Thanks, Salvation.

Some years ago, a phone call came into a Milwaukee police department. Children were throwing stones off of a bridge, the officer was told. When police arrived at the scene, they asked the children what they were throwing. The reply came, "Little people."

These children had discovered small grey containers that held the remains of aborted children. The containers had been thrown in the trash of a nearby abortion mill. "Little people" had become playthings, because the law taught the slightly older children well. What is disposable, after all, can also be used for play. Yet the children had not lost their straightforward honesty, and ability to call things by their names. These aborted babies were people.

Dumpsters, Bridges, and Children [Abortion]

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A glimmer for some..

Thread by wagglebee.

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- Members of Congress will likely be embroiled in a debate again soon over the bill to fund the SCHIP program. Last month, Congress voted against a Bush administration policy that allows states to provide funding for poor pregnant women that could help them avoid abortions.

In 2002, President Bush authorized a change in the SCHIP program that allowed states to cover poor pregnant women and their unborn babies under the medical insurance program.

Congressional Debate Over SCHIP Bill and Tax-Funded Abortions Returns

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More from Fr. Pavone in this thread by wagglebee...

STATEN ISLAND, Ny., Sept. 13 /Christian Newswire/ -- Commenting on the New Jersey Supreme Court's decision in Acuna v. Turkish, Fr. Frank Pavone, National Director of Priests for Life, stated, "This court has placed itself embarrassingly behind the times by failing to hold doctors accountable for telling patients what grade school children already know about when a human life begins. Moreover, abortionists are tearing arms and legs off of children in the womb, not destroying some unidentified mass of tissue whose species scientists don’t know how to figure out."

Fr. Pavone on New Jersey Abortion Decision: Judges are Behind the Times

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On the pill...Take two and call in the morning.

Thread by wagglebeeBRITAIN, September 13, 2007, (LifeSiteNews.com) - A new study conducted by individuals at the University of Aberdeen and recently published in the British Medical Journal claims to reassure women that taking oral contraceptives will, in fact, reduce their risk of getting cancer. News services throughout the world are touting the 'medical breakthrough' that supposedly shows that "the cancer benefits of oral contraception outweigh the risks."

In reality, the true facts of the study portray a very different result for the millions of women worldwide who use oral birth control. According to the TimesOnline, the British study reportedly found that, depending on the dataset, the overall risk of cancer was anywhere from 3 to 12% lower for women who "took the Pill for less than eight years." However, for women who took the pill for over 8 years - the increased risk of cancer rose by 22%.

Massive Study Finds the Pill Significantly Increases Cancer Risk if Used more than Eight Years

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New perspectives in this thread by wagglebee...

Oliver Barbier grew up outside Boston and attended the University of Chicago, where he earned a political science degree. In both urban settings, Barbier managed to stand out from the mostly liberal culture that dominated the college crowd — he is opposed to abortion rights, a position that he says made him few friends along the way. But this summer, he found his niche.

Barbier, along with four other students, participated in the inaugural class of the National Right to Life Academy, an intensive six-week program that teaches students “all the critical information they need to effectively argue and defend the life issues on campuses and in the workplace, as well as the skills needed to organize and conduct pro-life groups.”

New academy teaches anti-abortion advocacy

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