Posted on 07/30/2011 1:36:30 PM PDT by wagglebee
he death of Terri Schindler Schiavo in 2005 is a distant memory for most Americans. But for the family that spent seven years fighting Terri's estranged husband and the court system to stop the starvation of their daughter and sister, recollections of the 13 days Terri lingered without food or water before finally succumbing to death remain vivid and painful. And the knowledge that other brain-damaged patients could suffer a similar fate has propelled this once-ordinary family into around-the-clock activism.
"It was almost like there really wasn't an option," said Terri's sister, Suzanne Schindler-Vitadamo, when I interviewed her last weekend in Kansas City, Kan., at an end-of-life ethics conference sponsored by the St. Gianna Physician's Guild.
Along with her mother, Mary Schindler, and brother, Bobby Schindler Jr., Schindler-Vitadamo now works full time for the Terri Schiavo Life & Hope Network, a non-profit group that advocates for disabled patients threatened by health-care rationing and euthanasia.
"I used to be a stockbroker; Bobby used to be a high school teacher," Schindler-Vitadamo said. Yet, after witnessing how her brain-damaged sister died on the orders of judges and medical professionals who regarded Terri's life unworthy of even the basic care of food and water, she said, "none of us could ever imagine going back."
Before his death in 2009, Terri's father, Robert Schindler, also dedicated himself to raising awareness about the dangers posed by a culture that increasingly judges the right to life on a sliding scale, a scale on which lives like Terri's count for little.
(Excerpt) Read more at stltoday.com ...
This is exactly what is going to happen.
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The moment the Jeb prototype of the Bush series stood aside and did nothing was the moment, for me, when the “compassionate conservatism” of this potential President shone through in all its glory.
Same here; and it was when I was done the Republican Party. I became Constitutional Conservative Independent, first....done with the faux ones with the “R” after their name.
I cannot and will not support someone who won't do everything in their power to save an innocent person from being murdered.
Exactly. I’ve posted it a few times, but Medicare pays $28 billion a year for dialysis for 500K people, regardless of age. The weaker or “less valuable” ones could be a huge target.
Me, too. I always believed that if one of them went to see her to find out for himself her condition, nothing would have happened to Terri. I mean, if Bush as president at that time would have gone to the hospice where Terri was dying, who would have stopped HIM??? I later found out that Jeb Bush was the cause of Terri's death. HE signed into law that it was ok to remove food and water from a "vegetative" person. So, HE was going to do nothing to stop it. I will NEVER get over her death - murdered by the State! In the United States of America! Unbelievable.
One of W’s last acts as governor was to sign a law that said that in TX anyone in Terry’s condition who was receiving state aid to pay their medical bills could be denied food and water/or disconnected from life support if a commitee of doctors and hospital deemed their case hopeless.
And you know what? In my opinion that is a correct law.
IF you are a believer, you know that this life is the most temporary part of your existence and that it will end sooner or later. If you are a conservative you know the government cannot spend unlimited funds and that we have to have priorities. Too many hospitals spend millions of dollars (most of it paid for by the state) to prolong people’s live for weeks or even days when they are clearly dying. Moreover the “life” they provide is a half-life of agonizing pain and semi-consciousness. In Terry’s case, the evidence is crystal clear, her “life” was no life at all, there was nothing left of the critical parts of her brain where thinking and cognition take place. The most horrifying thing I have seen my life is when I volunteered at a hospital where there was a woman who kept her anacephalic (Born without a brain-only a brain stem) baby alive (at a cost of millions of dollars) for nearly a decade because she was convinced, despite the medical impossibility of it, that her baby would “wake up” any day and be perfectly okay.
Only those who fear what lies beyond should spend so much time and energy clinging to this life; not us
Me too. They could have helped, easily.
They are all phonies when it comes to the Pro-Life cause.
You sound like one of those Nazis who wrote the treatise on “Life Devoid of Value” back in 1929.
Quis - you're wrong - she was NOT brain dead - she was interacting with her father just before she died. I saw a video of her laughing with her father - WITH her father, when he was reminding her about something she used to do to tease her mother. She was very much alert, and to slowly starve her because she could not talk is the ultimate atrocity. We have NO right to take another's life, especially if they're just disabled, and in THAT way. You wouldn't even do to a criminal, or even an animal, what they did to Terri. Atrocious and obscene!!! And evil! And, another thing, the parents were willing to care for her at THEIR expense, not the taxpayers'. Her "husband" would not let her go - fought like hell to get her murdered.
Listen newbie, since you have only been here a month there are a few things you might not be aware of:
1. Free Republic is a PRO-LIFE forum, not some place for you to spew your pro-death utilitarian crap.
2. This is the Terri Dailies thread. Many people who participate in these threads were at the hospice where Terri was murdered. They heard her scream when she was told she was about to be murdered. They know that she understood what was happening.
3. If you believe in God (as you loosely claim) you would realize that He alone decides when it ends, not us. People like you claim to believe, but what you really want to do is impose your will in place of His.
ObamaCare is about them coming after the weak with their death panels.
If I don’t protest, then who will protest when they come for me. (with a nod to Martin Niemoller)
Let me know when he’s zotted.
It’s so sickening that people come here and lie like the death loving liars that they are.
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