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I recommend to Obama — if he wants to make amends — that he consult the disability-rights experts at Not Dead Yet for the facts of the Terri Schiavo case and its acute relevance to many Americans in similar situations.
Not Dead Yet is about 12 miles from Chicago at 7521 Madison St., Forest Park, Ill.
If this presidential contender and former law professor had bothered to do his own research, he would have discovered — as I did in four years of covering this story and interviewing participants, including neurologists, on both sides, that:
The husband of the brain-damaged Terri Schiavo, Michael Schiavo, had stopped testing and rehabilitation for her in 1993, 12 years before her death. Moreover, for years he had been living with another woman, with whom he had two children, and whom he has since married. Michael Schiavo has continually insisted that he finally succeeded in having Terri’s feeding tube removed because he was respecting Terri’s wishes — which she could no longer communicate — that she did not want to be kept alive by artificial means.
But at a January 2000 trial — as reported by Notre Dame law school professor O. Carter Snead in “Constitutional Quarterly” (published by the University of Minnesota Law School) in its winter 2005 issue:
Five witnesses testified on whether Terri would have refused artificial nutrition, including water, in the condition she was in. Her mother and a close friend of Terri testified she had said clearly she would want these essential life needs. The other three witnesses said Terri would have approved the removal of her feeding tube.
These last three were in alliance on what became a death penalty: Michael Schiavo, his brother and his sister-in-law!
It was on the basis of that 3-to-2 vote that Florida state judge George Greer ruled that “clear and convincing evidence” allowed him to remove her from life — and then 19 judges in six courts, including federal courts — agreed. Like the press, those judges did no independent investigations of their own. And those careless judges are now joined by the equally irresponsible robot-like judgment of Sen. Barack Obama. He should be proud of the Senate vote he now recants — and learn a lot more about the disabled...........
Sweet Land of Liberty: Barack Obama vs. Terri Schiavo
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