Battle Over Possible Euthanasia of New York Teenager Gets Pro-Life Attention

Bronx, NY (LifeNews.com) -- The battle over the life and death of a teenage girl in New York has drawn the attention of pro-life advocates in recent days. The fight to save Javona Peters reminds some of the struggle of the Schindler family in Florida to save the life of Terri Schiavo, a beloved daughter and sibling whose former husband eventually took her life.

In this case, Peters' parents are disagreeing on whether or not to remove her feeding tube and take her life.

Peters fell into a coma in October while she had a routine medical procedure at Montefiore Medical Center. Doctors have pegged her as being in a persistent vegetative state, a medical diagnosis pro-life advocates dispute because so many patients have partially or fully recovered.

Peters' parents were never married and are estranged and have considered a medical malpractice suit against the hospital, according to a New York Daily News report.

But Janet Joseph and Leonard Peters are also feuding over Peters' care and have each filed separate requests to be given custody of their daughter. Peters has been opposed to removing the feeding tube but has wavered recently.

Edward Gersowitz, an attorney for Joseph, told the newspaper that "Because of her condition, she cannot make decisions for herself, and the court will have to appoint a guardian to make decisions for her."

As a teen, Peters doesn't have a living will or some other advanced directive providing guidelines for the type of medical treatment, or withdrawal, she favors.

The case has drawn the attention of the Schindler family, which sent out a notice about the case from its foundation, which helps disabled patients receive legal help and appropriate medical care.

Leading bioethics watchdog Wesley J. Smith has also commented on it and he says the PVS diagnosis seems "rushed" to him.

Smith says he sympathizes with the father and the pressure he is under to take Peters' life.

"We know that too often medical teams and social workers pressure and cajole for such outcomes," he said.

Smith draws comparisons to the case of Haleigh Poutre, a Massachusetts girl whom LifeNews.com reported was also declared PVS, but who has recovered from the abuse she suffered.

In that case, state government officials had ordered her feeding tube removed but she recovered from the PVS state shortly beforehand.

Officials in New Jersey sound like they are doing good by trimming futile care. We may recall how the Bush Futile Care law in Texas was geared to trim such unnecessary and noisome care as well. But in Texas, the word, "futile" got changes somewhere on the way to the dictionary and referred instead to patients' lives being futile, not the care. Would New Jersey officials do that?

Top medical officials from around New Jersey plan to meet next month for talks that could profoundly change the way doctors and hospitals in the state treat dying patients. Many New Jerseyans at the end of life receive futile medical care, and studies show extremely high rates of hospitalizations, interventions and physician consultations for such patients even though they do not live longer or suffer less than patients in other states.

Hospitals' medical directors plan to meet Feb. 13 at the New Jersey Hospital Association in Princeton to take on the issue. "We can do a good job of resuscitating people and putting them on ventilators," said Aline Holmes, the NJHA's senior vice president of clinical affairs. "But when we know they can't go home, we have to do a better job of talking to families and patients about what it all means."

Jersey's hospitals reviewing how they treat dying patients

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Coleus pings us to a report of a successful march of pro-lifers into San Francisco. Thread by CounterCounterCulture.

Thousands of abortion protesters marched along San Francisco's waterfront Saturday, hectored by a smaller band of abortion rights supporters, as both sides marked the impending anniversary of the Supreme Court decision that established those rights 35 years ago.

Although passions ran high in both camps, the event - what is becoming an annual trek by the anti-abortion movement into what they consider the heart of abortion rights territory - was peaceful.

At least 10,000 abortion opponents were bused into the city from all over California, and from outside the state, for a morning rally in Justin Herman Plaza............

Thousands march against abortion in S.F.

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Keep in mind she was 13

Because she was 13 is precisely why I suspect abortion as the "routine medical procedure."

Given the "comprehensive sex education" that is taught/preached in most public schools, given the sex-saturated culture we live in, and given that most people believe the lies of Planned Parenthood, et. al, I suspect that she and/or one or both parent(s) believed that the "best" solution to an unintended pregnancy was to get an abortion. I'm NOT saying she WAS pregnant - obviously, I don't know. I'm simply saying that, given our culture and what the girl was taught, directly and indirectly through our culture, it was a real possibility.

Sunlight in Vermont.

Thread by wagglebee.

MONTPELIER, Vt.— Marking the 35th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, some 280 Vermonters marched on the Statehouse yesterday to decry legalized abortion and celebrate the defeat last year of a bill that would have permitted physician-assisted suicide.

“This is not about doing what is easy or accepted; this is about saving lives,” said Lizzie Rinaldi, a 17-year-old junior at Twin Valley Union High School in Wilmington. Speaking in the well of the House, she called abortion “an evil that has slipped into our country disguised as a right to choose.”

Many of those in the crowd had earlier attended a special Mass celebrated by Roman Catholic Bishop Salvatore Matano at St. Augustine’s Church. They then gathered in the parking lot behind City Hall and marched to the Statehouse carrying a wide variety of signs. One said, “You’re lucky to be alive. One-third of our generation has died from abortion.”............

Activists target abortion, euthanasia

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Alveda King Day today??

Abortion rates and their meaning in a thread by rhema. Thanks, narses, for the ping.

For many Americans, the face of abortion is a frightened teenager, nervously choosing to terminate an unexpected pregnancy. The numbers tell a far more complex story in which financial stress often plays a pivotal role.

Half of the roughly 1.2 million U.S. women who have abortions each year are 25 or older. Only about 17 percent are teens. Sixty percent have given birth to at least one child prior to getting an abortion.............

The abortion debate, by the numbers: Data reveal complex story about recipients

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All about Paul Schenck...

Thread by wagglebee.

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

..................While abortion remains one of the country's most polarizing issues, the strategy of some activists, such as Schenck, has changed since the days of abortion-clinic sit-ins and blockades of the 1980s and early '90s.

Schenck still prays and demonstrates outside clinics, including Planned Parenthood in York. But he's left behind some of his more dramatic tactics, like brandishing dead fetuses on the picket lines or getting arrested regularly for civil disobedience.

Now 49 and a recently converted Catholic, the former Anglican pastor heads the National Pro-Life Action Center (NPLAC), an advocacy group in Washington, D.C., where he lobbies the judicial and political elite.

He commutes 100 miles to his Capitol Hill office several times a week from his Manchester Township home, where he and his family moved in 2005 to escape the congestion and cost of living in suburban D.C. In November, Schenck and his twin brother, Rob, also an anti-abortion activist, celebrated 25 years of Christian ministry at a gala with 300 guests, among them Jay Sekulow, a lawyer who's argued cases before the Supreme Court on behalf of the Christian right, and a 60-member black gospel choir from Randallstown, Md. Rob Schenck is an evangelical pastor who heads another advocacy group, Faith and Action. (Paul serves as Faith and Action's chairman.) Aside from abortion, the group's issues of concern include same-sex marriage, support for Israel and the public expression of faith (it has distributed Ten Commandments tablets around the capital).............................

To some, a hero; others, the enemy (Pro-life activist Paul Schenck)

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Reminder of Roe v. Wade by Sub-Driver...

Thanks, narses, for the ping.

Thirty-five years ago on Tuesday the US Supreme Court handed down a decision in the Roe versus Wade case, legalizing abortion and introducing some of the world's least restrictive abortion laws.

On January 22, 1973, the nine Supreme Court justices voted seven to two that a law in Texas that banned abortion, except to save a woman's life, was unconstitutional under the right to personal privacy...................

'Roe vs Wade' legalized abortion in US 35 years ago

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Play Mystical for me.

Mystical? Gotta be kidding!

Some things don't change, same dumb statements we heard twenty years ago about the little mine grenades... Point is, the plastic models work, burn clear through denial filters.

Thread by wagglebee.

RACINE, Wis. -- A right to life group in Racine is under fire after mailing controversial material to 44,000 people.

It included an informational letter, a fundraising envelope and a small plastic fetus.

Mystical Listrom said she was not happy with what she found inside when she opened a letter from Wisconsin Right to Life accompanied by a plastic fetus.

"It's my right to choose to do what I want with my body. I shouldn't have people telling me what I can and can't do with my body," Listrom said............

Right To Life Group Sends Plastic Fetus In Mail

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What's it all about? Sometimes we talk about Terri, sometimes abortion, sometimes communism and its allies. Not often does one come across an article that unifies and binds like this one.

It comes from a fascinating site, News By Us (not news bias...) and these are but excerpts...

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

Decades before the legalization of abortion in the U.S., ex-Communist Whittaker Chambers would explain how the abortion mentality was the communist mentality. “Abortion was a commonplace of party life,” he wrote in his classic 1952 work Witness. “There were Communist doctors who rendered that service for a small fee. Communists who were more choosy knew liberal doctors who would render the same service for a larger fee. Abortion, which now fills me with physical horror, I then regarded, like all Communists, as a mere physical manipulation.”

~Snip~

Meanwhile, the Communists have transformed the “right” to abortion into a requirement in China that women have abortions, for the sake of the one-child policy, even while the regime ratifies a so-called United Nations “Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women.” The communists’ manipulation of the United Nations was one of the things Chambers warned America about. We tolerate this deception at our own peril.

Personally, Chambers was being guided by the invisible hand toward the absolute truth. It was through recognizing the humanity of a child, a “fetus” in today’s jargon, that the influence of communism on his thinking and life was gradually eroded. While Chambers would prevail over Hiss, communism would continue its advance, here and abroad.

The worst is yet to come because the “slippery slope” caused by acceptance of abortion is already here, as evidenced by the much-publicized starvation death of Terri Schiavo, a disabled woman, in 2005. Her mother was forced to stand aside, facing arrest if she provided even a drop of water to her child’s lips. Yet, it has become fashionable, even among some conservatives, to say that Congress overreached when it attempted to give Terri Schiavo the rights of judicial review and due process granted to death row inmates and suspected terrorists. .....................

Abortion and America's Future

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What the candidates think on that word twist, "Right to Die"...

RIGHT-TO-DIE

Democrats

-Hillary Clinton: Unclear.

-John Edwards: Unclear.

-Barack Obama: Opposes government intervention and believes right-to-die decisions should be left to families.

Republicans

-Rudy Giuliani: Supported court involvement in the Terri Schiavo case, noting that dispute within the family needed outside intervention. "My general view is, you should do everything you can to keep somebody alive unless they have expressed a strong interest in not having very, very special things done."

-John McCain: Believes "these types of decisions are best made by the individuals through living wills and by family members."

- Mitt Romney: Believes cases like Terri Schiavo's "should normally be left in the hands of the courts" and not solely left up to families to decide.

-Mike Huckabee: Believes it should be a state matter with "limited" federal involvement. However, also believes "we should always act on the side of life," and noted the federal government became involved in the Terri Schiavo case "to preserve life."

Major presidential candidates' positions on Florida issues

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Further to the linking today of communist thought, abortion, and killing innocents like Terri, this person deals with when abortion could ever be excusable...

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

January 15, 2008 Denver, Colorado Contact: Leslie Hanks 720-394-8946

MARCH FOR LIFE 2008 GUEST SPEAKER TELLS NATIONAL RIGHT TO LIFE: I had every right to live!

Julie Makimaa sat quietly at the National Right to Life conference a few years back, listening to their strategy about

including rape and incest exceptions in any abortion bans that states would promote that year. After hearing all their

arguments and finding herself steaming inside, this bold woman stood up and stated in no uncertain terms that she

disputed their claims.

Julie Makimaa told National Right to Life that they were wrong, that her mother did the wise thing and gave her

up for adoption. She continued that she was very glad she had lived to meet her mother, Lee Ezell, and to be able to tell this

confused organization that they needed to re-think their flawed strategy.

Colorado Right to Life is pleased to present Julie as March for Life 2008 guest speaker January 19, on the West Steps of the

State Capitol at 1:30 P.M. As a woman who agrees with our statement of purpose that abortion is always wrong and that every life is

worthy of protection, from the moment of fertilization, Julie states:

"Many people believe abortion is morally justifiable and medically necessary for women pregnant through rape and incest.

I encourage everyone who holds this position or who has doubts about the best solution for women in these situations, to attend the rally on
January 19th. I guarantee you'll gain a new understanding of the value of every life and the benefits for women who choose life."

"The promotion of abortion for children conceived in rape or incest is society's way of punishing an innocent victim for the crimes of another."

Kristi Burton, sponsor of the Personhood Amendment will speak briefly and Tony Funderburk will sing his song

Personhood.

Colorado Families Against Planned Parenthood founder, Will Duffy, will encourage the crowd to fight efforts to build the

biggest death camp for babies in the nation at PP's new Stapleton location in north Denver.

March for Life - January 19, 2008 - West steps of the State Capitol - 1:30 p.m.

For more information, please call: 303-753-9394

Puffington Host just can't help themselves. As they attack Romney, a flattering thought in itself, they just gotta bring up Terri. Those Puffington Hosters are such wacky jokesters!

Just a snip here.....

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

'visual cortex' a. part of brain that interprets images from retina; b. one part of Terri Schiavo's brain that was destroyed, making her blind, but not preventing radical rightwing Republicans from declaring that she was seeing them when they entered her room.

Now Available: Mitt Romney's, Dictionary of the English Language

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As if we haven't yet our daily fill of revolting topics, NYT leads the charge with more revolting thought, just a little McCain scrutiny here.

But then a great tightening occurred. Conservative institutions and interest groups proliferated in Washington. The definition of who was a true conservative narrowed. It became necessary to pass certain purity tests — on immigration, abortion, taxes and Terri Schiavo.

An oppositional mentality set in: if the liberals worried about global warming, it was necessary to regard it as a hoax. If The New York Times editorial page worried about waterboarding, then the code of conservative correctness required one to think it O.K.

~Snip~

And McCain’s success has raised an astonishing specter: Republicans may actually have a shot at winning this year.

The Voters Revolt

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St. Pete Times today offers some food for thought...

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

Jack Sandler spent most of his career delving into a side of humanity his family never saw in him.

Death camps. Killing fields. Ethnic cleansing. Somalia. Rwanda.

A behavioral psychologist who taught for 38 years at the University of South Florida, Dr. Sandler wrote about humans' capacity to annihilate one another. He co-authored an award-winning, four-part documentary featuring more than 80 scholars and survivors in a history of mass brutality.

~Snip~

He wrote scathing letters to the Times about Abu Ghraib and the FCAT. When Sami Al-Arian was acquitted on eight of his terrorism charges, Dr. Sandler opined: "After months of trying to live down the Terri Schiavo tragedy that turned into a travesty, followed by the actions of a homophobic Hillsborough County Commission, we can, with the outcome of the trial of Sami Al-Arian and his co-defendants, once again claim that we are not completely in the thrall of an extremist majority."...............

He studied human actions that he never understood

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