Remembering Terri Schiavo: A Five-Year Anniversary Marked By Cruel Bigotry

March 31st will mark the five-year anniversary of the needless death of my sister, Terri Schiavo.

It is difficult to believe this much time has passed since that horrible event which will be forever seared into my memory.

I wish I could say things have changed for the better since my sister’s death or that people with cognitive disabilities are now better protected in response to the horror she had to endure.

Tragically, however, it seems the rights of the brain-injured, elderly and others are still being violated.

All one has to do is look at what happened just last week. On March 21st, Fox aired an episode of The Family Guy that featured a "sketch" called "Terri Schiavo: The Musical." I was astonished at the producer’s cruel bigotry directed towards my sister and all cognitively disabled people.

Sadly, although more offensive than what my family has seen in the past from the media since Terri died, the bald-faced ignorance expressed in that episode of The Family Guy was nothing new. In fact, all signs indicate that we have embarked on a very disturbing path.

There is no disputing that Terri’s life – and death – had an astonishing impact on our nation. Our family still receives letters, emails and phone calls almost every day from people who tell us how Terri’s story touched them in profound ways, particularly when they come to know the facts.

Indeed, it was because of my family’s experience trying to protect Terri that we realized how all persons with similar cognitive disabilities are completely vulnerable to state laws that currently make it “legal” to deny them the most basic care – food and water.

This horrifying realization was why we established Terri’s Foundation. In Terri’s name, my family now works to protect tens of thousands of people with similar brain-injuries from having their fundamental freedoms taken away by an aggressive anti-life movement hell-bent on portraying severely disabled and otherwise vulnerable human beings as nothing more than “useless eaters”.

If the amount of phone calls we receive is any indication, what happened to Terri has become common. I think most people have no idea how our individual rights to make decisions about basic care like food and water, antibiotics, etc., have been so dramatically eroded. This not only includes family members advocating for loved ones but also protecting oneself by medical directive.

We recently heard from a woman whose mother was being cared for at a hospice facility. The daughter was powerless to effectively advocate for her mother because she had no power of attorney.

Even though she was her mother’s next-of-kin, and despite the fact her mother was begging her for food, the daughter was not allowed to feed her. It had been determined the mother was no longer able to swallow. But the daughter said her mother was eating safely just prior to being sent to hospice and questioned whether she still could. The mother was not given a feeding tube, and died just a short time later.

Perhaps the “Death Panels” Sarah Palin spoke of sounded like bombastic language. Yet when Palin added this term into our nation’s debate on health care, I believe she did not realize that many hospitals and facilities already have something frighteningly similar. Ethics committees are making many life and death decisions about patients, including whether to withhold simple provisions.

In a seemingly clandestine way, these ethics committees – comprised of medical and legal professionals – are empowering facilities to make life and death decisions independent of the family or a person’s own wishes.

The chilling stories we receive make it clear few citizens have any idea how vulnerable they are when it comes to judgments left in the hands of these ethics committees and facilities. And with the federal government now controlling our health care, there is no reason not to believe that these types of committees won’t become nationalized. Particularly when a health care system has been sabotaged by cost factors and quality of life judgments.

When our office receives phone calls from people fighting for their loved ones, I cannot help but look back and reflect on the courage of many individuals and groups who advocated on behalf of my sister.

As time has passed, however, many of those people, organizations and politicians – even many of our own friends – have fallen silent. Many who once ardently supported Terri’s life no longer actively educate or advocate for vulnerable patients.

With each troubling phone call from a frantic family, I am reminded there are countless other Terris in desperate need of our voice. Terri’s Foundation has been successful helping to save some, but sadly so many others have fallen victim.

I understand our nation faces many challenges today that may threaten our very existence. But how can we claim to be a just and honorable society, deserving of any blessing at all, if we richly reward hateful bigots while refusing to protect our weakest citizens?

Moreover, how did the tremendous courage and kindness we saw when we were fighting for Terri’s life have faded? How can any of us abandon this issue when all signs are that things are getting worse?

There are still many who support our efforts, who recognize the erosion of the value and dignity of the medically weak and who believe in protecting the life and liberty of all human beings.

The problem is their voices are often drowned out by the din of the pro-death lobby that claims death is the only dignified answer to a complicated problem.

Meanwhile the pro-death movement has not fallen silent. Rather, it has grown more vocal. The issue for them did not die with Terri. Indeed, their success in killing her seems to have only bolstered their determination to gain wider acceptance among the American people.

There will always be people with needs, there will always be others who work tirelessly to help them, and there will always be those who turn the other way; or worse – sit behind their drawing tables, disseminating cruel bigotry and hatred toward the disabled and vulnerable.

Until we all recognize that our inherit worth doesn’t change because of life’s circumstances, illness, disability or other events, we will continue to rob our most vulnerable of their right to fairness, justice and the ability to guide their own course in life.

I saw part of this monster's CNN interview, he is a blight on humanity.

Thread by me.

Kevorkian: “The Single Worst Moment of my Life … Was the Moment I Was Born”

June 15, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) -- "The single worst moment of my life . . . was the moment I was born." So says Dr. Jack Kevorkian in a recent interview with CNN.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta, the journalist conducting the interview, confessed that the remark left him speechless – especially since Kevorkian offered the strange and macabre confession without any provocation or lead-up question.

Gutpa writes that, “Throughout the two-and-a-half hour interview, [Kevorkian] fluctuated wildly between being downright combative and hostile to being sweet and fatherly.”

The journalist also mentioned Kevorkian’s “crazed rants,” “often about the Ninth Amendment to the Constitution, complete with a defense of James Madison and trashing of Thomas Jefferson.”

The interview is part of the lead-up to Kevorkian’s Thursday interview at 9 PM EST on Larry King Live.

Kevorkian or "Dr. Death" has helped approximately 130 people kill themselves. He also spent 8 years in prison for the second-degree murder of Thomas Youk, who was in the final stages of Amytrophic Lateral Scelerosis at the time of his death. Kevorkian had given Youk the lethal injection himself, and, in a videotape of Youk's death, dared authorities to try to convict him.

Kevorkian told Gutpa that he believes his case should have been heard by the Supreme Court, because the issue of assisted suicide is a constitutional issue. Everyone, says Kevorkian, should have the right to kill him or her self.

"They just don't get it in Oregon, " he says. "Or in Washington state or Montana, the other states," where assisted suicide is currently legal. Assisted suicide is only legal in these states if someone has a terminal illness.

"What difference does it make if someone is terminal?" he says. "We are all terminal."

Five of Kevorkian's victims were found to be healthy after autopsies were performed.

However, when it comes to himself, Kevorkian says that he is not ready to die. "I have purpose in my life and three missions," he said.

The first mission is to warn the human race of its “impending doom,” due to what Gunta labels a “culture of overabundance” that will lead to the “extinction” of the human race.

The second mission is to educate people about assisted suicide, or what Kevorkian calls “patholysis” – the destruction of suffering.

The third mission is “to convince the American public that their rights are infringed upon each and every day - and that the Ninth Amendment is not being upheld.”

The controversial physician’s strange ideas about freedom and the Ninth Amendment are nothing new. In a speech at the University of Florida in 2008, Kevorkian spoke of his desire for anyone to be allowed to do anything at all, denouncing every law as "an infraction of liberty. Every law!"

In that speech he had also said people had a right to smoke marijuana or carry cocaine if they wished.

I guess this is some of the "transparency" that Zero promised.

Thread by NYer.

Biden Promises Kenya 'Money to Flow' if Pro-Abort Constitution Passes

NAIROBI, Kenya, June 18, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) - U.S. Vice President Joe Biden travelled to Kenya to personally urge the country to pass a new constitution that would legalize abortion - and to assure Kenyans that such a change would "allow money to flow" from foreign aid treasuries.

At the same time, a federal probe is attempting to determine whether the Obama Administration is violating federal law by using taxpayer money to lobby for the constitution, deeply controversial in Kenya in large part because of its abortion provisions.

"We are hopeful, Barack Obama is hopeful, I am hopeful that you will carry out these reforms to allow money to flow," Biden told a crowd of Kenyans, among whom President Obama is extremely popular and touted as a native son of their country.

A clause in the proposed constitution has received heavy criticism from religious leaders in Kenya for allowing abortion when a mother's "health" is endangered - a term that, as abortion advocates admitted at the Women Deliver conference in Washington, D.C. last week, "can be broadly interpreted when need be."

Asked about the abortion issue, Biden told Rev. Timothy Njoya not to “confuse that with the position of the US President, US Vice President and US Government," according to Kenya's Daily Nation.

Yet some are not so sure that such a line can be drawn. Last month, 3 U.S. congressmen with legal oversight jurisdiction over federal international funds launched a probe into whether the Obama administration is violating federal law by promoting the controversial constitution.

“The Obama Administration’s advocacy in support of Kenya’s proposed constitution may constitute a serious violation of the Siljander Amendment and, as such, may be subject to civil and criminal penalties under the Antideficiency Act," wrote Reps. Chris Smith (R-NJ), Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) in a May 6 letter to Inspectors General of the U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Agency for International Development.

The Siljander Amendment of the State, Foreign Operations Appropriations Act, reads: “None of the funds made available under this Act may be used to lobby for or against abortion."

The lawmakers pointed out that the abortion issue is prominent in the public debate over the proposed document, and that the chairman of Kenya’s Committee of Experts on Constitutional Review identified abortion as "one of the four most contentious issues in the proposed constitution.”

Rep. Smith said that as much as $10 million in taxpayer funds may have been spent in support of the pro-abortion constitution as of May.

Wesley J. Smith has said that this isn't really euthanasia and is the patient's right, but I disagree.

Thread by me.

German Court Legalizes Euthanasia

BERLIN, June 25, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – In a surprise move, the Federal Court of Justice of Germany has legalized direct euthanasia, ruling that an attempted direct euthanasia of a comatose woman was not unlawful since she had given consent.

“The expressed wishes of the patient ... justified not only the end of treatment via the withholding of further nourishment but also the active step of ending or preventing the treatment she no longer wanted,” the court said.

The ruling in the case of “Erika K” overturns a previous conviction for manslaughter of a lawyer who advised the daughter of a comatose woman in her 70s to cut her mother’s feeding tube with a pair of scissors, after nursing home staff had refused to remove it.

A lower court acquitted the daughter of killing her mother because she had “mistakenly” followed her lawyer's advice. The lawyer, Wolfgang Putz, was convicted and given a nine month suspended sentence. The government prosecutor was asking the court for a stronger sentence.

Putz’s lawyer had argued that the use of a gastric tube is “forced treatment” that the daughter had a right to terminate according to the known will of her mother.

Although Chancellor Angela Merkel has previously stated that she opposes any form of assisted suicide, the decision was welcomed by her government. Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger said, “In a difficult phase of life, wills by patients provide safety for patients, relatives, doctors and nurses.”

“The will freely formulated by a human being must be respected in all circumstances of life.”

In countries that have already legalized euthanasia, such “safeguards” as living wills are often cited by euthanasia campaigners as means of avoiding abuse of power by doctors and nurses. Nevertheless, reports from Belgium and the Netherlands are increasingly showing that patients are regularly being killed without any form of consent being given.

In May this year, a report published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal found that over 30 per cent of reported euthanasia cases in one region in Belgium were carried out without the consent of the patient.

In 2003, the Netherlands became the first country in the world after the downfall of the Nazi regime to legalize euthanasia. In the last two years, euthanasia cases there have seen a sudden rise, with an increase of 13 per cent in the last year following a sudden jump of 10 per cent in 2008. In 2005, one study estimated that cases of involuntary euthanasia, in which doctors do not follow the legal procedure to gain consent of the patient or family, account for about 550 deaths in the Netherlands each year.

Dr. Els Borst, the former Dutch health minister and deputy prime minister who guided the country’s euthanasia law through parliament, has lamented the increase in euthanasia cases and said that it has effectively destroyed the country’s palliative care system.

The issue of direct euthanasia of disabled patients is particularly sensitive in Germany, whose National Socialist regime carried out mass killings of patients in the years building up to the Second World War. In the so-called Aktion T-4 program, the government sanctioned the killing of thousands of orphans, mentally ill and disabled patients in the care of the state who were considered “life unworthy of life.” In the case of many of the children, the deaths were by starvation.

Michael Moriarty nails it here!

Thread by 2ndDivisionVet.

Michael Moriarty: The Obama Omelette: Euthanasia, Abortion, Obamanomics… Death is Death

I must say, writing for Big Hollywood has made me face the most belligerently intelligent among my readers, many of whom refuse to believe that murder is murder.

Even those who are willing to admit that abortion does end a human life, defend Roe V. Wade by saying that abortion, like alcoholism, cannot be stopped by Prohibition.

Hmmm …

Alcoholism is only terminal for the alcoholic, therefore, having experienced it myself, it is suicidal.

A law against suicide is utterly unenforceable for the obvious reasons, mainly that, in the case of suicide, “too late is too late.”

Alcoholism, though a disturbing disease, is not as unrelentingly homicidal as abortion.

Abortion, on the other hand, takes the life of an innocent human being and is therefore, both per se and ipso facto, murder.

Let us not, despite the verbal circumlocutions of the Supreme Court, deny that.

A trimester division of gestation is no more convincing than the racist diatribes of Hitler’s most devoted scientists.

They are both rationalizations for mass murder.

To call such a charge “preposterous” is as blind or criminally negligent as were the citizens of the Third Reich.

Now, however, that we are in the most mature years of William Clinton’s Third Way, it is not genocide we are talking about but the infanticide of legalized abortion.

The Third Way and Roe v Wade contain fine distinctions about murder that only Ivy League lawyers and their justices on the Supreme Court can justify.

We, of the rude multitude, must simply obey their judgments.

No wonder we have the arrogance of Harvard’s Barack Obama for President.

The Clintons paved the way and played John The Baptist for Barack Obama or BO, the Big One.

(Excerpt) Read more at bighollywood.breitbart.com ...

It's murder for hire and nothing more.

Threads by iowamark and me.

Dignitas founder now multi-millionaire despite claiming he would not profit from the suicide group'

The founder of controversial Swiss suicide firm Dignitas has become a millionaire since setting up the group, it has been claimed.

Ludwig Minelli was virtually penniless when he founded Dignitas 12 years ago.

But, according to a new probe into the organisation, by 2007 he was worth more than £1million.

Although assisted suicide is legal in Switzerland, it is against the law to profit financially from someone’s death.

The investigation by respected Swiss magazine Beobachter says Mr Minelli is 'skating on thin ice'.

The report, headlined ‘Unexplained Wealth’, poses the question: 'How could a 77-year-old pensioner amass so much wealth?'

It says the former journalist, who is also a qualified lawyer, had no assets in 1998 but is now worth a fortune and owns a large house near Zurich.

Accounting records obtained by the magazine claim to show Mr Minelli’s personal wealth reached almost two million Swiss francs (£1.2 million) by 2007.

His taxable income was 162,000 Swiss francs (£97,800) and his taxable assets were 1,998,000 Swiss francs (£1.2 million)...

One nurse who assisted 30 deaths during her two and a half years at the clinic said she was so disturbed by its activities that she quit her job.

Soraya Wernli, who left Dignitas in 2005, has spoken to police about her concerns, saying she is convinced Dignitas is a money-making machine.

She said: 'I joined because I believed it was a good organisation which helped the terminally ill end their suffering but I came to realise it was really something different. It was all done for money...

Dignitas is often at the centre of controversy. Last month details emerged of a patient suffering from paranoid schizophrenia who was given drugs to end his life...

(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...

__________________________________________________

Dignitas founder, Ludwig Minelli, is making millions

Who says euthansia and assisted suicide are about compassion and choices?

Ludwig Minelli has become a millionaire in the ten years since he set up his Dignitas suicide clinic in Switzerland.

An article that was published in the Telegraph examined the real motivation for the Dignitas founder, Ludwig Minelli. They reported that he has become wealthy by selling memberships, assisting suicides and getting donations from his vulnerable clients.

The Telegraph newspaper reported:

A newspaper investigation has raised new questions about Dignitas and whether Ludwig Minelli, its founder and director, makes profit from his “mercy killings”.

Previously a human rights lawyer and an attorney at the Zurich bar, Mr Minelli had no taxable personal fortune registered when he set up his suicide clinic in 1998.

A decade later, the Beobachter investigation found, he had an annual taxable income of £98,000 and a personal fortune of over £1.2 million, wealth that includes a luxury villa.

Mr Minelli, who said he would take no salary from Dignitas when opening the clinic 12 years ago, has insisted that his wealth comes from an inheritance, left by his mother.

But the cost of a simple suicide at Dignitas has risen from £1,800 in 2005 to £4,500, fuelling suspicions that the clinic may not be sticking to Swiss laws that are supposed to prevent people “selfishly” profiting from assisted suicide.

The cost of the clinic’s full service, including funerals, medical costs and official fees, is as high as £7,000.

Andreas Brunner, a Swiss prosecutor, has accused Mr Minelli, and Dignitas, of hiding behind Swiss privacy laws to refuse publication of their accounts for the last five years.

”We have never had a good look at their book-keeping but in order to demand that we need a good reason and a concrete example that there is something suspicious to investigate,” he said. “He has promised for years to make the accounts public but it has never happened.”

Dignitas has faced criticism for accepting donations from suicide clients, one patient is said to have signed over more than £60,000.

Soraya Wernli, a nurse employed by Dignitas between 2003 and 2005, has accused the organisation of being a “production line of death concerned only with profits”.

In April this year, police divers found over 60 cremation urns dumped in Lake Zurich. Each of the urns bore the logo of the Nordheim crematorium used by Dignitas.

Mr Minelli, in an interview in March, insisted that Dignitas did not make profits for personal gain but claimed that Swiss law did not prevent money being made from euthanasia.

”If you are helping and abetting without selfish motives, this is quite legal,” he told the American PBS broadcaster.

”If you would take a lot of money for this service, then it might be selfish. But if somebody would do it for normal profit, it would even still be legal. But Dignitas is not working for profit. We are an association, and the association does not make profit. If we make profit, we will take this profit in order to have a higher quality of our services.”

At the same time Stuart Weisberg, a psychiatrist, announced plans to open a Dignitas style suicide clinic in Oregon, where assisted suicide is legal. The Oregon Medical Board has temporarily stopped Weisberg by suspending his license to practise medicine in Oregon. Nonetheless, the law in Oregon does not prevent doctors from competing with Compassion & Choices by setting up lucrative suicide clinics.

At the same time Compassion & Choices has also been able to turn assisted suicide into a lucrative fund raising business with reported income from donations and services in the millions.

When people play god the end result is always evil.

Two threads by me.

Wesley J. Smith: Wrong IVF Embryos Implanted Leads to End of Once Wanted Life

This just makes my head explode. A woman was implanted with the wrong embryos, and rather than honor another woman’s children and let them live, immediately terminated the pregnancy process. From the story:

A woman who sought help from a prominent Connecticut fertility center last year received embryos, but they belonged to another woman with the same last name. The mistake happened in April 2009 at the Center for Advanced Reproductive Services at the University of Connecticut Health Center, which will pay a $3,000 fine. A lab technician only checked the last name on the container with the embryos and pulled the wrong ones from frozen storage, according to the state Department of Public Health. Procedure is to check the medical record number and last four digits of the Social Security number. That patient who received the embryos was informed of the error within an hour and decided to take the “morning after” pill to prevent the pregnancy, according to state records.

IVF has proven to have many casualties, most particularly embryos treated as a mere thing–but also sometimes, as here, would-be birth and biological parents who become embroiled in terrible, heart wrenching circumstances. And that doesn’t even get into the culture of entitlement that IVF has helped foster (hello, Octomom!).

Still, what a contrast from the last time this happened. When the mistake was discovered in that case, the birth mother and her husband chose life for someone else’s baby. Which choice reflects unconditional love?

__________________________________________________

Woman Kills Wrongly-Implanted Embryos with Morning-After Pill

HARTFORD, Connecticut, June 29, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – In a disastrous chain of events, a set of “wanted” embryos quickly became “unwanted” after an artificially impregnated women was informed by her fertility clinic that they had accidentally implanted the embryos of another woman by the same name.

The woman’s solution was to take the morning-after pill (which, ironically, pro-abortion forces insist is simply a form of contraception and cannot cause an abortion) and abort the nascent life within her.

The Associated Press reports that the Center for Advanced Reproductive Services at the University of Connecticut Health Center has agreed to pay a $ 3,000 fine over the incident, which took place last April, according to state health records.

Apparently, a lab technician had removed a batch of human embryos from the storage freezer without following proper procedure. She only matched the last name, but forgot to crosscheck with the last four digits of the woman’s social security number and the medical record number.

The lab technician discovered the error a day later – but by then it was too late. The woman had already been implanted with another client’s embryos, which had been on ice for approximately four years.

After being told about the error one hour after having the embryos implanted within her, the woman then decided she did not want to carry someone else’s baby, and took the morning-after pill.

Bioethicist Wesley J. Smith commented on his blog about the event, saying it illustrates not only how children have come to be treated as a commodity through in vitro fertilization, but also how this process can sometimes snare “would-be birth and biological parents … in terrible, heart wrenching circumstances.”

The center has insisted that the mix-up is the first ever in their 24-year history, calling it “important and emotionally difficult for patients and center alike.”

Smith, however, pointed out that mix-ups have happened before at IVF clinics – although in at least one extraordinary case the birth mother made a painful, but life-affirming choice. Sean and Carolyn Savage of Ohio found out last year that their IVF clinic had transferred the wrong embryos. The Savages, however, refused to abort on account of their pro-life religious beliefs, and arranged to hand over the baby to his biological parents shortly after the birth.

“When the mistake was discovered in that case, the birth mother and her husband chose life for someone else’s baby,” remarked Smith. “Which choice reflects unconditional love?”

Carolyn Savage told Meredith Vieira of the TODAY Show back in September that the hardest experience would be the delivery of the child, where she would only have a chance to say “hello” and “goodbye.”

“Of course, we will wonder about this child every day for the rest of our lives,” she added. “We just want to know he’s healthy and happy.”

A follow-up with the TODAY Show in May, revealed that the baby Carolyn Savage carried to term was born Logan Morell, now approximately 8 months old. The Savages and the Morells have become friends through the painful experience. However the Savages declined to appear on the TODAY Show, saying that the months following Logan’s birth have been much more difficult for them to deal with than they expected, but they hope to write about their experiences in a book for 2011.

This woman is disgustingly evil.

Thread by me.

Pro-Abort Catholic: Women Should Feel 'Guilty' if They Don't Abort Inconvenient Child

WASHINGTON, D.C., June 30, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Proponents of feminism within a religious tradition play a crucial role in subverting "religious fundamentalism" in Catholicism, according to a member of the pro-abortion group Catholics for the Right to Decide.

Elfriede Harth, Secretariat of European Parliament Study Group on Religion and Secularity and a Spanish member of Catholics for the Right to Decide (whose U.S. partner is Catholics for Choice), made the remarks at this month's Women Deliver conference in Washington, D.C.

The conference was largely a push for population control in developing countries worldwide through contraception and abortion funding.

Harth named the orthodox Catholic movement Opus Dei as a formidable opponent to Catholics attempting to promote liberal doctrines within the Church, and said that religious feminists should work to "analyze and demystify religious fundamentalism."

"Religious feminist(s) play a crucial role in organizing resistance to religious fundamentalism," said Harth.

But perhaps more revealing were Harth's subsequent comments during a discussion with audience members following the breakout session. There, Harth discussed her group's conflict with the Church hierarchy over the use of the name "Catholic," admitting that "they don't like us at all."

"They're always trying to say we're not real Catholics, which is wrong, because the criterion to say you're Catholic is that you're baptized. That's all," she said. "And I don't accept that other people pretend that they define what is Catholicism. You know? The way the Vatican presents Catholicism is incomplete." She went on to claim that the Church suppresses discussion of "freedom of conscience" because the hierarchy is "so afraid that the institution breaks down."

On the topic of abortion, Harth called it "not true" that legislators who vote for abortion laws are excommunicated from the Church. "'Oh, legislators who vote for abortion laws they are excommunicated,' [according to some bishops,] but then when you go and tell them that's not true, then they have to retract. 'Oh yeah, you're right,'" she said.

According to Catholic moral teaching, substantial material cooperation in an intrinsic evil merits the punishment accorded to the deed itself; in addition, Section 915 of the Catholic Church's Canon Law states that those persisting in manifest grave sin are not to be admitted to Holy Communion. Because of this rule, Archbishop Raymond Burke, the head of the Vatican's highest court, has repeatedly admonished bishops that pro-abortion politicians must be denied Communion.

Ultimately, said Harth, a woman has a right to abort because she "has a right to have a good life" and she does not have "the right to ruin it." "And if a pregnancy is going to ruin her life in any way, she has a right to get the abortion. She has the right. She has an obligation to protect her life from being ruined. ... Because you owe this respect to yourself because you're a child of God. You should feel guilty if you don't," she said.

Asked about the unborn child's rights, she answered that the issue was "important" to the choice to abort. "If you have an abortion, there is a fetus that will be killed. No way. This is true. But ... for us, death is not the end of the story," said Harth. "And this unborn child or fetus or whatever you want to call it is ... well, we do not know what God is going to do with this creature. God has a lot of mercy, maybe...we don't know."

Afterwards, one audience member told LifeSiteNews.com that, as a practicing Catholic, she had felt "guilty" about promoting abortion but was reconsidering the matter thanks to Harth's justifications.

American Life League president Judie Brown called the statements "ridiculous," and said Harth's outrageous statements about Church teaching reveal the deficiency of many Catholic bishops in failing firmly to teach the Catholic stance on life issues.

"I think what she's actually telling us as schooled Catholics is that the Church has done a very bad job in teaching precisely what the Church does and does not teach," Brown told LifeSiteNews.com. "There is no people - period - who define what Catholicism is, it's set forth in the Creed, it's set forth in the Catechism, it's set forth by Christ himself."

"And when you choose to disagree with a basic fundamental teaching of the Church, you're not Catholic - no matter what you say you are," she added.

"In essence this woman, Harth, is either totally uncatechized, either that or she's staying within the Church with the expressed purpose of destroying it from within," said Brown, who expressed dismay over the massive scandal given by Harth and other dissident Catholics who convince others to abandon genuine Church teaching.

"In their confusion, they're guiding these souls to Hell - that's exactly what they're doing," she said.

Some in Hollywood are beginning to understand.

Thread by NYer.

Chosen Child

My mother did not, to my knowledge, abort any of her children. I do, however, distinctly recall a miscarriage she suffered when I was twelve years old, which caused her great emotional and physical pain. I understood, from my adolescent perspective, that what was lost was somehow precious to her. As another of her children, I felt deeply valued by her grief: Loss of an unborn child, I observed, was a sad and mournful event imbued with a full and unconditioned love.

Not so today, we must realize. As I prayed with 40 Days for Life in front of a San Francisco abortion clinic, a young woman positioned herself aggressively in front of me and said, "Don't you want to talk to me?" I looked up from my rosary, met her belligerent gaze, and said, "Frankly, no. I don't."

But she refused to leave, and I was trapped listening to a monologue about her mother: her mother's abortion, and her mother's opinions about abortion, and her mother's right to choose whether to birth or abort any pregnancy. Her angry, righteous defense of her mother's behavior and opinion was true torture for me; mercy and compassion were not quick to come in the absence of reason and dialogue. But I did learn something I had little appreciated: I learned that loss of an unborn child is no longer communicated as a sad or mournful event, and that the chosen children -- those that a mother chooses to bear -- struggle to reconcile their existence with the elimination of unwanted siblings.

A choice to abort a child is never the quick-fix, isolated, personal decision radical feminists and the lucrative abortion industry assert. It affects the pregnant woman, the father, and often the parents of the pregnant woman. It kills the nascent life. But a decision to abort an unwanted child drops the proverbial pebble into a still pond that ripples with effect to the shores of death. One brief, allegedly personal decision by a mother to unburden herself by killing an inconvenient child in utero will resonate throughout life. (We Catholics, of course, believe it resonates beyond just mortal life, a subject for another day.) Sadly, prevailing manners of political correctness stifle discussion and meaningful assessment of this perfectly predictable consequence of violence in the womb.

The regret many women suffer for the rest of their lives after an abortion has become so commonplace that it's nothing short of delusion that allows radical feminists to continue denying the phenomenon. That defenders of abortion attribute what regret exists to the induction of guilt by religious opposition is a purposefully unfounded, manipulative refusal to respect experiences that challenge the abortion mythology.

Consider the curious case of Ellen Burstyn -- neither a religious woman nor a pro-life advocate. The well-known 77-year-old actress (The Last Picture Show, The Exorcist, Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore) shocked the secular world when she labeled her 18-year-old decision to abort "wrong, young, and dumb." That choice, she said, was "the lowest moment in her life." Understandably curious how a decision made more than 55 years ago could still deeply trouble Burstyn, an antsy male interviewer then asked, "Do you ever get over that?"

"No," Burstyn flatly replied, elegantly explaining that the choice to abort has "ramifications for the rest of our lives": It becomes a "dark thread" in our tapestry. Burstyn's clear, precise statement is the sort of breach of PC etiquette that renews pro-abortion feminists' commitment to radical denial of reality.

The "choice" rhetoric so effectively manipulated by the abortion industry has created a hauntingly painful breach between mothers and children, hinted at by my agitated sidewalk companion and similarly ignored by abortion advocates. Another example gives voice to the fear that surely squeezed the heart of that young woman on the sidewalk.

I went with a friend to what should have been a lovely lunch out to "catch up." Partway through our meal, after much talk about our female friends working professional jobs, my companion blurted out, "If I had only aborted my eldest, I could have stayed in school and had a profession, too."

Shocked into sudden silence, I finally managed, "Do you really think that? Do you regret not having an abortion?"

My question provoked a lengthy, emotional rationale for why her life would have been better had she only had the presence of mind to abort her eldest -- a son, now happily married and father to my friend's dear little grandchildren. I listened in grotesque wonder, imagining how her son -- the only of her five children she apparently regretted -- absorbed her remorse for not having aborted him. More, I wondered: How does this young man deal with his mother's characterization of his life as an excuse and disappointment in place of the accomplishments she'd rather have attained?

Reasonably, this grown child might fear that his own shortcomings, needs, and development provoked, at least in some measure, my friend's regret. Voicing regret for not having aborted, is, after all, simply an expression of having made the wrong choice, as assessed with the benefit of subsequent consequences. For the mother who regrets a choice for life, those subsequent consequences are none other than the child himself.

In this way, being a "chosen child" has taken on a new meaning in the post-Roe v. Wade paradigm, a cultural construct based on the delusion that intentional termination of an unborn child is a private, personal matter and fueled by a commercial industry anxious to cash in on a wide range of abortion services and products. "Chosen" -- a term once richly imbued by Judeo-Christian history as that brand of unconditional love by God for each of His children (1 Jn 4:7, 16) -- has flattened and darkened to signify those children a mother opts to bear rather than abort.

Gone is the notion of a child being loved just because he or she has been conceived, without expectation or condition. In its stead, the "chosen" child lives aware of his own mother's reasons for having him, aware that only the mother's sentiments differentiate the living child from the terminated child, aware that his own being might cause such burden or disappointment that his mother -- like my friend -- regrets his very existence.

The impact of this redefinition of "chosen" -- from a deeply religious term that conveyed unconditioned love to one replete with expectations, demands, and potential regret -- must concern New Feminists. The realities lived by my angry sidewalk interlocutor, the mother who regrets not aborting one of her grown children, and the children haunted by terminated unborn siblings they will never know will be denied, ridiculed, shamed, and lied about by the pro-abortion interests. The pro-choice interests have deeply invested in a delusion that abortion has, at worst, temporal, limited consequences -- and they will undoubtedly refuse to consider even sound science that could challenge that investment.

The work of understanding and publicizing the impact of abortion belongs uniquely to New Feminists, because it is precisely this sort of insipid, ignored cultural shift that has led and will continue leading to "a gradual loss of sensitivity for man, that is, for what is essentially human," as Pope John Paul II so clearly foresaw (Mulieris Dignitatem, 30). As even many non-religious women have recognized, women must "refuse to choose" (Feminists for Life), not only in deference to their own feminine design, but, as importantly, in concern for the whole of humanity to "ensure sensitivity for human beings in every circumstance: because they are human! -- and because 'the greatest of these is love' [cf. 1 Cor 13:13]." Women must not be robbed of their authentic femininity -- which, after all, concerns even the chosen children.

People like Terri are murdered every day purely for greed.

Thread by me.

Withholding Care from Vegetative Patients: Financial Savings and Social Costs

In a recent column in the Huffington Post, Jacob M. Appel argues for “rational rationing” of health care resources by withholding and withdrawing life-sustaining medical treatment from patients in a permanent vegetative state. He considers the case of Ruben Betancourt, which will soon be decided by the New Jersey Superior Court in Betancourt v. Trinitas Regional Medical Hospital.

Mr. Betancourt was a patient at Trinitas Regional Medical Hospital in Elizabeth, N.J., where he had successful surgery for a malignant thymoma in January 2008. But Mr. Betancourt suffered oxygen deprivation, resulting in severe brain damage, after accidental extubation of his breathing tube following the surgery. He lapsed into unconsciousness and was subsequently moved to various health care facilities, including a nursing home, where he was sustained on a feeding tube and dialysis.

When Mr. Betancourt was readmitted to Trinitas in July 2008 with renal failure, doctors balked at providing dialysis, artificial nutrition and hydration, and artificial ventilation, claiming that the patient was in an irreversible vegetative state, was actively dying, and that further treatment was medically and ethically inappropriate and inhumane. The hospital sought to remove him from life support. Mr. Betancourt’s daughter objected, saying that she thought her father was aware and reacted to his family, and that he was responding to treatment. Although he left no advance directive, his family believed that he would have wanted treatment continued. A legal battle ensued between the family and the hospital.

Mr. Betancourt died in May 2009, but his legal case remains on appeal. The court’s decision could have important implications for legal debates about medical futility, patient autonomy, and questions about when and under what circumstances doctors and hospitals can refuse to provide life-sustaining care to patients.

Appel argues that physicians and hospitals should withhold or withdraw care from permanently vegetative patients, because such care is costly and diverts money and medical resources from more worthwhile patients and endeavors:

Money spent on vegetative patients is money not spent on preventive care, such as flu shots and mammograms. Each night in an ICU bed for such patients is a night that another patient with a genuine prognosis for recovery is denied such high-end care. Every dollar exhausted on patients who will never wake up again is a dollar not devoted to finding a cure for cancer. While the visible victims may draw the headlines and attract indignant protests from so-called "pro-life" organizations, the invisible victims are people like you and me who will suffer from diseases that are never cured because funds are being poured down a healthcare sieve in order to maintain permanently-unconscious bodies on complex and costly forms of life support.

Appel does not mince words: “Let us make no mistake about what this would mean: It would mean declaring that the lives of PVS patients are worth less than those of others.”

Put in such terms, Appel’s case sounds simple. If we would just stop spending precious medical and financial resources prolonging the lives of permanently vegetative patients, we could use those resources where they can do more good, like for finding a cure for cancer. If only it were that simple.

Mr. Betancourt’s condition was indeed very grave, and his chances of recovering were slim. He suffered from chronic infections, sepsis, and hospital-acquired bedsores, in addition to his other maladies. Nonetheless, he lived for several months after doctors at Trinitas declared that he was “actively dying.” To generalize from one patient’s extremely poor prognosis to the condition of other vegetative patients, however, is unsupportable for several reasons.

First, and most importantly, there is a widely acknowledged problem of misdiagnosis in disorders of consciousness, which include the vegetative state. It is estimated that more than 40 percent of patients currently diagnosed in a permanent vegetative state are instead in a minimally conscious state – that is, they may be conscious, albeit to a limited degree. Clinicians and researchers are working to improve diagnosis, but at present it remains extraordinarily difficult, even for experienced neurologists, to distinguish between the vegetative and minimally conscious states.

Given the uncertainty, we should not be so quick to jump to conclusions about the irreversibility of a vegetative state. How quick would we be to terminate life support for patients with other conditions if there was a four in ten chance that they had been misdiagnosed? Regardless of the decision of the Betancourt court, any legal guidelines on withholding and withdrawing treatment from permanently vegetative patients will be meaningless – and potentially unjust – absent the ability to accurately and with medical and legal confidence diagnose patients.

Secondly, we do not know very much about the subjective lives of patients with disorders of consciousness. Vegetative and minimally conscious patients cannot, by definition, communicate meaningfully,and, therefore, effective measures of their quality of life are at present lacking.

There is evidence from neuroimaging studies that minimally conscious patients can experience pain, that their brains respond emotionally to the voices of loved ones, and that they may be capable of cognition at a level that is not evident from their behavior. The evidence is not dispositive, but it nonetheless provides reason for concern about the quality of life experienced by these patients. Their lives may be worth living, or these persons may be even worse off than vegetative patients. We need to know much more, however, before we can draw any conclusions about what their lives are worth to them, or to their families.

Many patients with disorders of consciousness suffered traumatic brain injuries as a result of accidents, and many of them were quite young at the time of their injuries. They did not have advance directives, and, as with Mr. Betancourt, it was left to their families to make life-or-death decisions for them. We should respect the expressed wishes of patients when they are applicable, but when patients can no longer decide for themselves, or when they have not left instructions for their future care, the best way to protect their interests is to allow those who know them best to make decisions for them. Such decisions cannot come from a court in a one-size-fits-all statement about the value of a class of patients.

Finally, Appel’s argument implies a straightforward financial benefit to taking resources away from vegetative patients, as if solving the problem of runaway health care costs is as simple as shifting money from column A to column B on some national medical spreadsheet. That’s an extremely simplistic view of the economics of health care, but even if it were credible, the picture Appel paints of vegetative patients taking resources from more worthwhile patients is not accurate.

It is unknown how many patients there are with chronic disorders of consciousness, in part because most of them are not in acute care facilities like Trinitas, but rather in long-term custodial care facilities. Many of these patients get very little care beyond artificial nutrition and hydration, although they can live for decades. Indeed, one of the tragedies for these patients is that they are neglected both clinically and socially.

Clinical neglect is one of the factors responsible for the misdiagnosis of these patients – once institutionalized, they do not receive follow-up diagnostic tests that might detect a change in their neurological status. Neither do they receive rehabilitative care that might enhance recovery. A diagnosis of permanent vegetative state requires being vegetative for 12 months in the case of patients who suffer traumatic brain injuries, and six months for patients who suffer anoxic/hypoxic brain insults, such as Mr. Betancourt. During that time, very few of these patients would be taking up intensive care beds or resources. Mr. Betancourt himself was in a nursing facility for several months before his readmission to Trinitas.

The bottom line – and we are talking about the bottom line here – is that patients with chronic disorders of consciousness do not typically receive the kind of expensive technological interventions and intensive care that Mr. Betancourt received in his last days of life. These patients are not taking intensive care beds away from other acutely ill patients.

While there may be some savings to be reaped from terminating the lives of patients with chronic disorders of consciousness, it will not be the substantial windfall that Appel imagines. Neither can it be assumed that “every dollar” will be diverted, as Appel suggests, to preventive care, or finding a cure for cancer. Public money saved could well be redirected to priorities outside health care.

There are substantial social costs to declaring an entire class of patients “worthless.” Allowing health care providers, including institutions like acute care hospitals, to unilaterally decide, against the wishes of patients or their legal guardians, to withhold life-sustaining medical treatment invites abuse and diminishes transparency and due process.

In a society that values patient autonomy and decisional authority, taking decisional power away from vulnerable patients or their surrogates would amount to abandoning them and leaving their fates to others who may or may not be motivated by patient welfare. It would change the culture of medicine – at least for these patients, if not for others – from one that is patient-centered to one that is beholden to the bottom line. In weighing the possible financial savings against the social costs of declaring these patients “worthless,” it is not at all obvious that ending treatment for all permanently vegetative patients will result in a net benefit.

"We will not be silent.
We are your bad conscience.
The White Rose will give you no rest."

This demonstrates the true mindset of the abortion movement.

Thread by me.

Women 'Must Be Prepared to Kill' Unborn Children to Protect Autonomy: Times Writer

LONDON, U.K., July 6, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) - After contemplating the immense mysteries of human life and sacrificial love in comparison to a woman's "right to fertility control," a writer for the Times of London concludes that attempts by pro-aborts to dismiss the life of an unborn child are a "convenient lie" hiding the fact that, "Yes, abortion is killing.”

“But,” she concludes, “it's the lesser evil."

Columnist Antonia Senior in a June 30 column (available by subscription only) says that, despite the fact that the abortion debate hinges upon whether the unborn child is a unique life or not, women who wish to assert the cause of their freedom from male domination "must be prepared to kill for it."

Senior begins by linking the cause of abortion to that of religious martyrs.

“Cradle Tower at the Tower of London is an interactive display that asks visitors to vote on whether they would die for a cause,” she says. "Standing where religious martyrs were held and tortured in Britain’s turbulent reformation, I could think of one cause I would stake my life on: a woman’s right to be educated, to have a life beyond the home and to be allowed by law and custom to order her own life as she chooses.

"And that includes complete control over her own fertility."

However, she admits that her "absolutist position” has been “under siege" since she gave birth to her own child.

She notes how "having a baby paints the world an entirely different hue" by revealing the underlying selfishness in what at first appears to be courageous self-affirmation.

Senior gives the example of Leo Tolstoy’s adulterous heroine Anna Karenina in the book by the same title, writing: “If you read the book as a teenager, you back her choices with all the passion of youth. Love over convention, go Anna! Then you have children and realise that Anna abandons her son to shack up with a pretty soldier, and then her daughter when she jumps under a train. She becomes a selfish witch.”

Senior then launches into discussing abortion, which she says "hinges on the notion of life," no matter what other arguments or tactics are employed. "Either a foetus is a life from conception, or it is not,” she notes.

Senior then admits that: "What seems increasingly clear to me is that, in the absence of an objective definition, a foetus is a life by any subjective measure. My daughter was formed at conception, and all the barely understood alchemy that turned the happy accident of that particular sperm meeting that particular egg into my darling, personality-packed toddler took place at that moment. She is so unmistakably herself, her own person — forged in my womb, not by my mothering.

"Any other conclusion is a convenient lie that we on the pro-choice side of the debate tell ourselves to make us feel better about the action of taking a life.

"That little seahorse shape floating in a willing womb is a growing miracle of life. In a resentful womb it is not a life, but a foetus — and thus killable."

This fact, she says, leaves feminism with a "problem," to which she attributes the "groundswell" of young pro-life feminists.

But, she insists, "you cannot separate women’s rights from their right to fertility control."

"The single biggest factor in women’s liberation was our newly found ability to impose our will on our biology."

She concludes therefore that, "As ever, when an issue we thought was black and white becomes more nuanced, the answer lies in choosing the lesser evil” – in this case in choosing "the expectation of a life unburdened by misogyny," which she suggests can only be achieved through abortion.

Hence, she says, "The nearly 200,000 aborted babies in the UK each year are the lesser evil, no matter how you define life, or death, for that matter. If you are willing to die for a cause, you must be prepared to kill for it, too."

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Chosen Child

Withholding Care from Vegetative Patients: Financial Savings and Social Costs

Women 'Must Be Prepared to Kill' Unborn Children to Protect Autonomy: Times Writer