Posted on 08/31/2011 4:46:55 PM PDT by wagglebee
LifeNews.com Note: Bobby Schindler is the brother of Terri Schiavo and he and his family now work for Terri’s Life & Hope Network to help disabled and incapacitated patients like her. The anniversary of the death of his father, Robert Schindler, was earlier this week.
The passing of both Terri and my father is what helps inspire my family and the work we do at Terri’s Life & Hope Network to continue fighting for our most vulnerable every day.
My father was a man of incredible strength, and loved his family so much that he essentially gave up his life for Terri, doing everything he could possibly do to try and care of her. He would have done the same for any one of us. With so much attention on Terri’s case, my dad showed the world, with remarkable strength, what it means to love without condition.
What I admired most about my dad was that even following Terri’s horrific death, he had the fortitude to keep fighting for others, dedicating the remainder of his life to help fight for the lives of others, not wanting any family to have to experience what his family experienced with Terri.
As you know, Terri’s Life & Hope Network’s mission, first and foremost, is to provide resources and support to those with cognitive disabilities, the elderly and countless others that are facing life threatening situations due to the threat of not receiving adequate health care and medical treatment. In the six years since we began advocating for others we have been involved in several hundreds of cases.
Specifically, this year we have either supported or have been directly involved in close to a hundred situations with families who needed help to protect a loved one from the threat of an inhumane death by the actions of others.
For example, we just had a case where a daughter was advocating for her mother. The mother was doing very well, living on her own, but dealing with some dementia. Sadly, the daughter’s, sister placed their mother in a nursing home and because of this, her mother began to deteriorate. The daughter, who contacted us, feared that her sister was taking the steps to end her mother’s life in order to make claim of her mother’s estate. After several conversations we were able to use our resources to recommend an attorney for the daughter so she can take the necessary steps to take over the care of her mother, so she would be out of harm’s way.
These situations of our elderly, cognitively disabled, those suffering from Alzheimer’s and others in similar situations where life is constantly at risk of being taken prematurely is only becoming more frequent.
The horror stories we hear reveals just how prevalent imposed death has become in our society. This is why we believe education is so valuable. Educating our youth, our future attorneys and medical professionals, our clergy and even the average person on this threat facing our vulnerable is vitally important.
In fact, since Terri’s Life & Hope Network has been established in 2006, we have spoken in 44 states, over 150 cities, at 29 universities, colleges, and Medical Schools and in 9 countries abroad, which includes addressing members of Parliament in Canada and Australia.
Clearly this is an issue that is only going to get worse. Because of the Terri’s horrible experience, we are fortunate to be put in the position to help others. With God’s graces, we will continue to do that.
Two threads by me.
AMSTERDAM, Netherlands, November 10, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – When a 64-year-old Dutch woman with dementia was killed in March, she was the first to be euthanized without the ability to consent, Dutch media reported Wednesday.
But anti-euthanasia activists are contesting the claim, saying Dutch patients have been killed without their consent for years.
The woman, a long-time euthanasia advocate, had progressed in her illness to the point where she lacked the ability to consent, but a committee of doctors approved the euthanasia nevertheless.
She left a note expressing her wish to be euthanized, and her husband and children supported her decision.
Alex Schadenberg, who heads the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition in Ontario, warned that allowing euthanasia without the ability for the patient to consent is a “whole other track.”
“When a person has dementia, the greater sufferer is the family member who is watching that person suffer,” he said. “So now really what they’re saying is, the family members who are experiencing the person with dementia, that we can have euthanasia to alleviate their suffering.”
“If you can do this to someone with dementia, and they’re also doing this to people with head injuries, well that means we’ve defined cognitive disabilities as a reason to euthanize,” he added.
The Netherlands formally legalized euthanasia in 2002, provided it was requested by a patient experiencing unbearable suffering.
But the law’s interpretation has since broadened to the point where the Royal Dutch Medical Association last month released new guidelines claiming the law allows euthanasia in cases of “mental and psychosocial ailments” such as “loss of function, loneliness and loss of autonomy.”
In reporting their 2010 statistics, for the first time the Dutch government reported instances of euthanasia for dementia patients. In 2010, 21 persons suffering from the early stages of dementia, but who were otherwise in good health, were euthanized.
“Euthanasia is beyond effective control in the Netherlands,” wrote bioethicist Wesley J. Smith on his Secondhand Smoke blog. “Folks, believe me when I tell you that ‘protective guidelines’ are not really meant to protect, but give the false illusion of control.”
“Once you accept killing as an acceptable answer to the problem of human suffering, ‘choice’ has increasingly less to do with it,” he added.
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Reports coming out of the Netherlands add to mounting evidence that physician-assisted suicide, over time, leads to the nonvoluntary euthanizing of patients—patients who neither requested nor authorized their deaths. (www.nationalrighttolifenews.org/news/2011/11/what%e2%80%99s-%e2%80%9cchoice%e2%80%9d-got-to-do-with-dutch-euthanasia; www.nationalrighttolifenews.org/news/2011/10/applauding-suicide-for-the-mentally-ill)
In a recent article appearing in the British publication the Daily Mail, there was a well documented case where the once highly touted “safeguard”–that only competent people currently asking for death will be killed–was willfully abandoned. A 64-year-old woman with severe dementia who was euthanized in the Netherlands–even though she was no longer competent.
The article [www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2059444/Senile-64-year-old-Dutch-woman-euthanised-longer-able-express-wish-die.html?ito=feeds-newsxml] reported,
“The unnamed woman was a long-term supporter of the controversial practice and had made a written statement when she was still well, saying how she wished to die. But the pensioner, who died in March, had been unable to reiterate her instructions as the disease progressed, Volkskrant reported.”
The Daily Mail reported that this practice of killing patients with dementia is on the rise, and is being documented. “A report released earlier this year revealed a total of 21 patients with early-stage dementia, including Alzheimer’s died by lethal injection in Holland in 2010. This is the first time dementia sufferers have been included in the country’s euthanasia statistics.”
Even so, does this pose a threat to those in the United States? After all, assisting suicide is currently legal in only two states–-Oregon and Washington–and may have some legal basis in the state of Montana, due to a 2010 court decision.
However while assisting suicide remains illegal in nearly every jurisdiction in the United States, those who tirelessly promote doctor-prescribed death are on the offensive in New England.
There is a current effort under way in Massachusetts to obtain 70,000 signatures of registered voters before a petition to legalize it can be presented to the legislature. If they get this far, lawmakers could either adopt it as a law or let voters decide send it to a referendum vote in the November 2012 general election.
The other major effort is in Vermont. Thanks to an outpouring of opposition, a bill to legalize doctor-prescribed death was not taken up in 2011, but could gain traction once the 2012 legislative session begins.
So what could happen next if two New England states were to join Oregon and Washington State? The more states that adopt these dangerous laws, the greater is the risk of other states removing protection from vulnerable populations.
Most would be shocked to learn that in the U.S., legalizing assisting suicide can legally mean legalizing nonvoluntary euthanasia. While Compassion and Choices, the group promoting assisted suicide laws in the states, claims to only seek to allow doctor-prescribed death for the competent, such a limitation is often legally impossible.
But state courts have ruled time and again that if competent people have a right, the Equal Protection Clause of the United States Constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment requires that incompetent people be “given” the same “right.”
And it should be noted that in the Netherlands, legalizing voluntary assisted suicide for those with terminal illness has spread to include nonvoluntaryeuthanasia for many who have no terminal illnesses. A 2009 article from the Daily Mail documented that, “Cases of [Dutch] euthanasia in the country have increased from 1,626 in 2003 to 2,331 in 2008.
It is also alleged that there have been thousands of cases of involuntary euthanasia and dozens of killings of disabled newborns.” [www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1234295/Now-Dutch-turn-legalised-mercy-killing.html#ixzz1dJczqGst].This has meant that the problems for which death in now the legal “solution” include such things as mental illness, permanent disability, and even simple old age.
This cautionary tale being told in the Netherlands adds to mounting evidence that once human beings are regarded as disposable in some, initially carefully circumscribed circumstances, those circumstances will steadily expand. “When you put a price on human life, the price goes down.” The threat of this happening in the United States might not be as far off as one might think.
Thread by Morgana.
November 11, 2011 (AbbyJohnson.org) - I am going to be honest, when I first left Planned Parenthood, I hated the idea of the “rescue” movement. I didn’t see the point. I thought it was a black mark against the pro-life movement.
Then I started meeting people who had once rescued. I started to see something that I had not before…these were normal people. Men, women, old, young, White, Black, Hispanic, priests, pastors, laity…so different, but all sharing one goal…to save babies. These people had been convicted to do SOMETHING because nothing was being done. There were no peaceful vigils, very limited sidewalk counseling, not many laws to guide pro-life activity. I started to wonder: what if I had been pro-life during the rescue movement? Would I have been willing to sacrifice my freedom in order to save babies and take a stand against abortion?
When I became director of the Planned Parenthood clinic in Bryan, my life changed. All of a sudden, I was acutely aware of the responsibility that sat on my shoulders. I was now the face of that clinic. If something went wrong, it was now on my head. I worked all the time, usually about 70 hours per week. I was addicted to my job, addicted to the responsibility. I carried heavy burdens…many were self inflicted. I will share with you my heaviest.
Every day I would arrive at work and check the schedule. Not because I had an enormous amount of employees or because I wanted to micromanage and see who was late…nothing like that. I wanted to look and see who was there that day. I wanted to place them in the clinic…where would they usually be?
(Excerpt) Read more at lifesitenews.com ...
Two threads by me.
Signs of consciousness have been detected in three people previously thought to be in a vegetative state, with the help of a cheap, portable device that can be used at the bedside.
"There's a man here who technically meets all the internationally agreed criteria for being in a vegetative state, yet he can generate 200 responses [to direct commands] with his brain," says Adrian Owen of the University of Western Ontario. "Clearly this guy is not in a true vegetative state. He's probably as conscious as you or I are."
In 2005, Owen's team, used functional MRI to show consciousness in a person who was in a persistent vegetative state, also known as wakeful unconsciousness – where the body still functions but the mind is unresponsive – for the first time. However, fMRI is costly and time-consuming, so his team set about searching for simple and cost-effective solutions for making bedside diagnoses of PVS. Now, they have devised a test that uses the relatively inexpensive and widely available electroencephalogram (EEG).
(Excerpt) Read more at newscientist.com ...
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Late last night the prestigious British medical journal “The Lancet” published a very important study online that further demonstrated that patients diagnosed to be in a persistent vegetative state have either often been misdiagnosed or are sometimes consciously aware even if they are in a PVS. Several of you wrote back in response to our analysis (www.nationalrighttolifenews.org/news/2011/11/lancet-study-provides-more-evidence-that-patients-in-so-called-%E2%80%9Cpersistent-vegetative-state%E2%80%9D-may-be-consciously-aware) which is one important reason for this follow-up.
I spent about an hour and a half today reading how media outlets covered the conclusions drawn by “Bedside detection of awareness in the vegetative state: a cohort study.” The New York Times’ two lead paragraphs are absolutely brilliant, touching most of the major points succinctly in only 145 words:
“Three severely brain-injured people thought to be in an irreversible ‘vegetative’ state showed signs of full consciousness when tested with a relatively inexpensive and commonly used method of measuring brain waves, doctors reported Wednesday. Experts said the findings, if replicated, would change standards in treating such patients.
“Scientists have seen meaningful, responsive brain activity in such patients before, using a high-tech magnetic resonance imaging scanner. But the new study, posted online Wednesday by the journal The Lancet, is the first to demonstrate that clear signs of conscious awareness can be detected on an electroencephalogram machine by using an innovative strategy. The EEG is a portable, widely available unit that picks up electrical brain activity through electrodes positioned on a person’s head. Clinics and homes treating people with severe brain injuries are far more likely to have access to an EEG than to an M.R.I. scanner.”
Very, very impressive. And note that last sentence: EEG is so much easier to use and, by the way, much gentler with patients who are physically fragile.
As helpful as the study is there is an important caveat. While the Lancet study shows that EEGs could detect signs of consciousness in patients who had been diagnosed as “vegetative,” it does not follow that such patients are definitely unconscious if EEGs do not detect these signs.
As the study itself notes, the fact that the EEG did not pick up these signs of consciousness in 25% of the healthy and aware patients (the “controls”) “shows unequivocally that a null EEG outcome does not necessarily indicate an absence of awareness.”
Burke J. Balch, director of NRLC’s Powell Center for Medical Ethics, commented, “Many patients, probably thousands, have had their food and fluids cut off and died, based on what we now know may well have been mistaken assumptions that they had lost all capacity for consciousness. The Lancet EEG study, together with earlier functional MRI studies, holds out the hope that we may develop ways to communicate with aware patients who have routinely been diagnosed as ‘vegetative,’ much as today eye movements and blinks are used to communicate with some patients with paraplegia.”
Balch added, “Just as what were once generally accepted mental health diagnoses of ‘idiot’ and ‘moron’ have long been dropped from standard medical vocabulary, it is to be hoped that these studies will help lead to abandonment of the dehumanizing and inaccurate term ‘vegetative’ as an acceptable medical diagnostic term.”
This raises and obvious question which the Washington Post’s Rob Stein wrote about today:
“The research inevitably raises questions about patients such asTerri Schiavo, a Florida woman in a persistent vegetative state whose family’s dispute over whether to discontinue her care ignited a national debate over the right-to-die issue and congressional intervention in 2005. Schiavo’s brother, Bobby Schindler, said the new study highlights the limits of medicine in providing an accurate diagnosis.
“’Regrettably, Terri was never afforded these types of exams,’ Schindler wrote in an e-mail to The Washington Post. ‘Such testing could not have hurt Terri but could have helped her.’
“Schindler and others called for a reconsideration of such diagnoses.
“’These findings only reinforce our family’s contention that the PVS diagnosis needs to be eliminated — particularly given the fact that it not only dehumanizes the cognitively disabled, but it is being used in some instances to decide whether or not a person should live or die, as it was used in Terri’s case. None of us deserves to be deprived of food and water,’ he said.”
Two quick concluding points. To be clear the Schindler family adamantly denied that Terri was in a PVS. It was that diagnosis that made intervention to save their sister/daughter almost impossible.
Second, the Schiavo case, properly understood, was NEVER about the “right to die.” There were bogus assurances given by those who wanted her feeding tube removed that she had expressed a wish not to live if ever she was in a situation like that, assurances her family vociferously disputed.
Rather the case was about the duty to treat–to extend to a fellow human being the absolute minimum: food and fluids–and to extend to Terri’s family the right to take Terri home and care for her there.
"We will not be silent.
We are your bad conscience.
The White Rose will give you no rest."
Thanks for the ping!
Thread by Morgana.
DALLAS, November 6, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - In a jarringly candid statement made to WFAA-TV in Dallas, Texas, late term abortionist and Baptist Minister Dr. Curtis Boyd said that when he performs abortions he is "killing," and he has no issues with it whatsoever.
"Am I killing? Yes, I am. I know that," Boyd said during a video interview with the news station following the opening of the Southwestern Women's Surgery Center abortion facility. By law, Boyd must have a surgery center in order to abort a child more than 16 weeks along.
"We see patients from Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana and across Texas," Boyd said, admitting that he has performed abortions on girls as young as nine years old.
"The hardest ones are the young girls," he said, saying that girls as young as 9 and 10 years of age have been to his center for abortions.
Boyd opened the first abortion facility in Texas in 1973 following the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision and is the only doctor in North Texas who will perform late-term abortions on women up to six months pregnant.
The abortionist said he was a friend of the late Dr. George Tiller, a fellow later-term abortionist in Witchita, Kansas who was gunned down earlier this year. Like Tiller he professes to be a Christian who prays about the abortions he does.
Boyd told WFAA-TV he is an ordained Baptist minister who has now joined the Unitarian church. He said he prays often.
"I'll ask that the spirit of this pregnancy be returned to God with love and understanding," he said.
Karen Garnett, of the Catholic Pro-Life Committee, who regularly witnesses to life outside the abortion centre, noted to WFAA-TV that Boyd's prayers are "vastly different" from the ones offered by the pro-lifers on behalf of the children he has killed and the mothers they are trying to save from undergoing an abortion.
"We're certainly disappointed to hear any unborn child will be killed by abortion," said Garnett. "But, to hear it's a late-term abortion in Dallas, once again, it's particularly devastating."
Two threads by me.
November 16, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The dictionary defines a “doula” as “a woman who assists women during labor and after childbirth.” But there is a new group of men and women calling themselves “doulas” who are challenging that definition in radical ways.
Volunteers with “The Doula Project,” located in New York City, not only help women who give birth to their child, but also accompany them as their unborn child is killed by abortion.
According to a recent article in the New York Observer profiling The Doula Project, volunteers with the organization have provided “doula” services - “counseling, back rubs and reassurance” - to some 4,000 women who have undergone abortions.
Pro-abortion activists can no longer face
the truth: this is what abortion looks like.
But in one of the more startling passages in that article, the co-founder of The Doula Project admits what many pro-abortion activists have furiously disputed for years – that graphic photos of aborted babies used by many pro-life activists are legitimate.
“Those pictures pro-life activists flash are real,” Mary Mahoney told the Observer. “That is what a fetus looks like when its head is crushed.”
Mahoney made the chilling remark while explaining that she is sometimes hesitant to admit pro-choice activists into the abortion doula program, since the reality of abortion can challenge the the pro-choice rhetoric in a powerful way.
“When you see the procedure, you must decide, as a pro-choice person, whether you are in or out,” said Mahoney, adding: “I have never been more in.”
Mahoney’s statement strikes a deathblow against the claims of pro-abortion activists that graphic images of abortions are faked, or simply photos of stillborn babies.
One article on about.com, titled “Top 10 Anti-Abortion Myths,” typifies this pro-abortion attitude. In response to the “myth” that “This is what an abortion looks like,” author Tom Head responds: “Almost always false. Many abortion protest photographs are artist’s renderings or the result of image manipulation, and the bulk of the rest are of very late-term fetuses aborted for emergency medical reasons.”
It isn’t hard to see why abortion supporters might want to write off the images as fake: the graphic images are devastating. Faced with the body of a dead and mutilated baby, you must make a choice.
To her infinite discredit, Mahoney has seen the mangled bodies, and she has made her choice. But many pro-choice activists haven’t – they’ve simply gone along with the crowd and accepted the status quo. They don’t know what abortion really is. They haven’t seen it. And when they do, the experience can shake their pro-choice conviction to its very core.
“The quickest way to change a pro-choicer’s mind is to let them see the procedure,” says Kelly Brunacini of Feminists Choosing Life of New York.
“A lot of the argument is intellectual: ‘My body, my choice’ sounds really good. When you see an abortion or you go through the mourning process with a woman who has aborted, it becomes less intellectualized, and more real.”
Of course, a graphic picture of an abortion isn’t necessarily a 100% foolproof way to back an abortion supporter into a corner. Instead of facing the truth and making a choice for or against, they may simply choose to deny that the truth is the truth: in other words, deny that the picture of the abortion is really a picture of an abortion.
But in the age of the ultrasound and brutally honest abortion activists like Mary Mahoney, who confess themselves perfectly content with crushed heads if that’s what it takes to protect a woman’s “right to choose,” denying the truth of the pictures is becoming an increasingly untenable position to hold.
A major coup for proponents of graphic images came in the form of a 2009 article in the New York Times, which exposed the fact that a large percentage of the photos of aborted babies used by pro-life activists were taken by Monica Miller, director of the Michigan-based Citizens for a Pro-Life Society.
That article, published in one of the most widely read publications in the United States, simply took for granted that the photos by Miller depicted what they purported to depict – aborted babies. And pro-abortion activists have been doing damage control ever since.
But their desperate efforts are doomed to failure. The truth can no longer be denied. And the truth is this: “That is what a fetus looks like when its head is crushed.”
And they wonder why pro-lifers compare abortion to the holocaust.
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When one considers the ethics of manipulation, the question of whether we ought to, or whether we may manipulate an organism or entity depends on the answer to the first and most fundamental question:
In the fields of obstetrical medicine and reproductive medicine the ethical debates have raged for four decades. Enlightened discourse between opposing parties must assume good motives by all involved, and then go about asking the essential questions, following where the truth of science and reason lead.
Many claim that life begins at some point distant from fertilization, always beyond the point at which they propose some manipulation (abortion, embryonic stem cell culturing, etc…). There are always a list of biological functions that are given to define when human life begins: Cognitive capacity, etc.
The simple biological truth of the matter is that the Cell Theory states that all cells arise from pre-existing cells. There is no blackout period between sperm and egg uniting, and then the emergence of ‘life’ at some point distant.
The Carnegie stages of human development indicate that human development begins in the zygotic stage. Then there is the assertion of developmental biologist and leading textbook author in the field, Scott Gilbert. In his text, Gilbert takes us through the life cycle of a dog. His text, Developmental Biology, is arguably the leading text in the field. According to Gilbert:
“Traditional ways of classifying catalog animals according to their adult structure. But, as J. T. Bonner (1965) pointed out, this is a very artificial method, because what we consider an individual is usually just a brief slice of its life cycle. When we consider a dog, for instance, we usually picture an adult. But the dog is a “dog” from the moment of fertilization of a dog egg by a dog sperm. It remains a dog even as a senescent dying hound. Therefore, the dog is actually the entire life cycle of the animal, from fertilization through death.”
First, note how he sets the word dog off in quotes at one point, to communicate the very essence of the organism:
But the dog is a “dog” from the fertilization of a dog egg by a dog sperm…
The same may be said of all vertebrates, including cats, giraffes, chimpanzees, and humans. Substituting the word human for dog in Gilbert’s analysis gets to the heart of the matter. We are human for our entire life cycle. We are whole and complete in form and function at every stage of our development, for that given developmental stage. The prepubescent child is fully human, even though they lack the capacity to execute all human functions, such as abstract reasoning, or reproduction.
In the same way, the early embryo is alive and fully human, though it has not yet executed all human organismal functions.
Thread by me.
The Dutch voluntary euthanasia society is proposing to set up teams of doctors and nurses who can help people to die in their own homes, the AD reports on Wednesday.
The idea of the teams stems from the society's wish to set up a special clinic where people can come to die, which the NVVE announced in January.
'Most people want to die at home,' an NVVE spokesman told the paper. The clinic is still on the cards, but will only have a couple of beds for people who cannot die at home, the spokesman said.
The NVVE says only a third of the 10,000 euthanasia requests made every year are actually honoured. This is because the request procedure is complicated and many doctors are not aware of the finer points of the law, the organisation argues.
The number of reported deaths by euthanasia rose 13% to 2,636 in 2009. Some 80% of people who opt for mercy killing die at home.
Euthanasia is legal in the Netherlands under strict conditions. For example, the patient must be suffering unbearable pain and the doctor must be convinced the patient is making an informed choice. The opinion of a second doctor is also required.
"We will not be silent.
We are your bad conscience.
The White Rose will give you no rest."
Thanks for the ping!
Thread by Morgana.
We already know there is nothing left sacred. Now all there is to report are the deepening degrees of blasphemy.
Here’s one, with some irony thrown in.
Bearing in mind Christmas celebrates the birth of world’s Savior, the British Pregnancy Advisory Service launched a campaign offering free morning-after pills through the month of December to those who end up doing more than kissing under the mistletoe. Click to enlarge…
The website name’s double entendre is gross.
Bpas initially offered to mail the morning-after pill free after a phone “consultation.”
But the campaign has attracted so much attention the sexy Santa has run out of gifts.
The website now states, “Due to the popularity of this service we are unable to provide the morning after pill in advance of need before Christmas.”
The editor of Reproductive Health Matters calls these “jingle pills.” But there’s nothing merry about taking mega-doses of female steroids after having unprotected sex, which, btw, do nothing to stop the sometimes incurable and/or deadly STD(s) that may have been contracted at the same time.
Nevertheless, bpas gives “ho ho ho” new meaning.
Thread by me.
The perils of the social devaluation of people include legal assisted suicide and euthanasia
It is not uncommon to hear people without disabilities and people who have recently acquired a disability say they would rather be dead than disabled.
Although politically incorrect, embedded perceptions that life with disability is full of suffering and indignity promote the idea that it's a death sentence. Able-ist social conditioning equates disability with pain, frailty, incapacity, and poor quality of life. It views persons with disabilities as problems that need to be fixed.
The 'problem' of disability
I would argue the "problem" of disability lies more in external social, physical, attitudinal, and architectural barriers.
I am considered legally blind. If you hand me something in 12 point font, I can't read it. You might say I am disabled because I can't see. However, if you give me a document in large print, I no longer have a problem. An external change resolves a biological "shortcoming."
At times I use a wheelchair. I am "disabled" by the environment around me: stairs, curbs with no access cuts, and doors that don't open automatically. However, when changes are made externally, I become self-reliant.
Negative images devaluing persons with disabilities infiltrate literature, movies, news media, and television. We are portrayed, at best, as having lives no one wants, and at worst, as freaks or deviants. Rarely are we depicted as empowered people with much to contribute to the world around us.
Same rights
Unfortunately, many people who acquire a disability internalize able-ist perspectives. They see themselves as being of less value, rather than as people who have needs which, when accommodated, help them enjoy the same rights and responsibilities as every citizen.
Dignity and wellbeing are mistakenly equated with being able-bodied. Conversely, illness or disability is associated with lack of dignity. Dignity, a key component in actions before the courts that seek to legalize euthanasia, is often defined by the notion that something like incontinence indicates a lack of dignity because it is perceived as a loss of autonomy.
Although most people would not choose to be incontinent, toileting needs can be met through the assistance of another person or a disposable incontinence product. (Please note I'm not calling them diapers; infantilizing the people who use them only reduces their dignity.) Somehow needing help to go to the bathroom is considered to have a greater detrimental impact on dignity than relying on other supports.
Many people use eyeglasses. However wearing spectacles doesn't lessen one's dignity or even one's rightful place in the world. The need to don an invisible incontinence product, on the other hand, seems a good reason to encourage someone to end it all.
Permeating politics
Able-ist attitudes permeate our politics. Canada's current immigration policy restricts persons with disabilities from immigrating to our country. It could deny someone like renowned scientist Stephen Hawking an opportunity to immigrate to Canada.
I admire Hawking. He has not succumbed to the idea that because he has ALS he has nothing left to offer. If a man who has made such significant contributions can't "make the cut," what message does that send? It says we don't really belong because we're not able-bodied.
Medical practitioners are not immune from acquiring these negative perceptions.
Years ago I initiated a conversation with an endocrinologist about the possibility of pregnancy and how it would affect a woman with my disabilities. I wanted to have children, but also wanted to be responsible by getting fair and balanced information from an expert.
My doctor's response was something like, "If people like you stopped having children, we could eliminate this disease from the face of the earth within a few generations."
I don't know if he considered that eliminating "the disease" also meant eliminating people like me. For him, the problem was inside me, and following that logic, I was the undesirable component.
The unworthy are at risk
If we are tacitly acknowledged as unworthy, we are at risk. At times of fiscal restraint, we can experience discrimination when medical budgets are limited.
It's very difficult to access information about how health care resources are allocated, but there is much evidence to support the idea that they are determined by measuring our value using subjective criteria like "quality of life."
If medical practitioners don't have the direct experience of living with disability, and if they don't make extraordinary efforts to explore beyond the bio-medical models available in med student curricula, how can doctors ever have anything but an able-ist evaluation of someone's quality of life?
If our quality of life is viewed as being narrowed, we risk having our health options shrink. If our health options are taken away, or never presented in the first place, our very existence is threatened.
It is especially when we are coming to terms with new conditions, changing conditions, or physical and psychological pain that we need to be reminded that we matter, that we are worth something.
Our dignity is inherent
Our dignity is inherent. We have dignity because we are human. Our dignity is framed within the context of our sense of, contribution to, and interaction with our communities, not about what does or doesn't work in our bodies.
If Hawking can add value to our society, we all can. We are only limited by our able-ist imaginations.
If assisted suicide or euthanasia is legalized, it could be devastating for persons with disabilities. Medical practitioners might never question the desire of someone who has acquired a disability to be euthanized, because they wouldn't consider the possibility that the requester is experiencing difficulty adjusting to a difficult change.
Realistically, acquiring a disability is about living with loss, which often requires profound adjustment and supports, but so does losing a child. Do we hand grieving parents a hypodermic of lethal medicine and say, "This must be unbearable; here's a way to end your suffering"?
Suicide prevention
Canadians seem enthusiastic about promoting suicide prevention, but is that only for able-bodied people? When we face the social message that it's better to be dead than disabled, the option of assisted suicide and euthanasia, rather than providing supports to help us live fully, puts our very lives at risk.
Thread by Brookhaven.
Ron Paul wants to be pro-life but is officially pro-choice state by state, and so contradicts himself and wrongly assumes that states' rights supersede human rights, concluding that a state like California has the right to permit abortion. But the right to life is God-given so there can be no 'right' to decriminalize child killing.
Ron Paul is Pro-Choice state by state with all of these observations fully documented below:
- opposes a national ban on the dismembering of unborn children
- claims the states may decide if they want to permit the killing of children
- has not acknowledged that human rights trump states' rights
- legislates as though rights come from the state and not from our Creator, thus
- believes the states have the right to permit genocide and commit holocaust
- claims that killing children in the womb cannot "conceivably" violate the U.S. Constitution
- believes the state is the ultimate authority, superseding God's enduring command, Do not murder
- defends the killing of any of the very youngest babies including those conceived in rape through his "exceptions"
- is essentially a Libertarian (small godless government) but runs as a Republican for greater visibility
- The Libertarian Party promotes legalized abortion, pornography, adultery, crack cocaine, suicide, euthanasia, and prostitution
- Ron Paul uses Libertarians for financial and political support but doesn't warn them about their party's gross immorality
Paul's SANCTITY OF LIFE ACT Elevates States' Rights Over Human Rights: From the text of Ron Paul's bill, "...the Supreme Court shall not have jurisdiction to review... any case arising out of any statute... on the grounds that such statute... regulates... the performance of abortions..."13 Ron Paul's legislation would violate a fundamental principle of governance by removing the protection of inalienable human rights from the jurisdiction of the courts. By his theory, a state like California has the right from the Constitution to allow the intentional killing of unborn children, but actually those children have a right to life from their Creator. Because the Creator trumps California and the Constitution, and the right to life is inalienable. It is wrong to give aid and comfort to any jurisdiction of government suggesting that they would be free from interference if they permit genocide within their borders. Ron Paul's so-called Sanctity of Life legislation is illegitimate because abortion cannot be a right: neither a woman's, nor parents, nor a states' rights issue.
Paul Defends Killing Kids with Chemical Abortifacients: In his own book, Ron Paul wrote:
"So if we are ever to have fewer abortions, society must change again. The law will not accomplish that. However, that does not mean that the states shouldn’t be allowed to write laws dealing with abortion. Very early pregnancies and victims of rape can be treated with the day after pill, which is nothing more than using birth control pills in a special manner. These very early pregnancies could never be policed, regardless. Such circumstances would be dealt with by each individual making his or her own moral choice." -Ron Paul, Liberty Defined47
Human Rights Supersede States' Rights: At the museum beneath the St. Louis Arch a plaque presents a quote from Stephen A. Douglas. This Democratic politician championed states' rights.9 No state though has sufficient authority to nullify the God-given inalienable rights to life and liberty. His states' rights view led Douglas to claim that the people of a territory should decide the slavery question by themselves.
Those who don't learn from history are destined to repeat it's errors. Like Ron Paul today and abortion, Stephen Douglas believed his Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 would thereby "remove the contentious slavery issue from national politics, lest it threaten to rip the nation apart, but it had exactly the opposite effect."10 The extent of destruction from doing wrong is difficult to fathom.
Ron Paul and Douglas reject the truth that human rights trump states rights. And in 1858 the latter said, "I look forward to a time when each state shall be allowed to do as it pleases. If it chooses to keep slavery forever, it is not my business, but its own; if it chooses to abolish slavery, it is its own business, not mine. I care more for the great principle of self-government, than I do for all the Negroes in Christendom."11 This parallels Paul's claim that, "a federal law banning abortion across all 50 states would be equally invalid" as compared to Roe.12 Ron Paul puts his supporters in the awkward position of siding with Douglas, and wrongly claiming that states' rights supersede the God-given inalienable rights of life and liberty.
If states have the right to permit the systematic killing of children, as in Paul's view, then they would also have the right to deprive any other class of citizen of life and liberty. But as a University of Denver law student argued with a professor during a 2008 American Right To Life event, "If a state has the authority to nullify rights, then rights aren't rights, are they?" Thus states' have no such right, neither to define one class of living human being as nonpersons, nor to decriminalize murder, for human rights supersede states' rights.
Two thread by me.
The “slippery slope” is often derided as a logical fallacy. But when one of the leading advocacy groups for euthanasia in Belgium posts an article entitled “Euthanasie: tijd voor de volgende stap, Euthanasia, time for the next step”, it’s hard not to think that it may not be so illogical after all.
The Humanistisch-Vrijzinnige Vereniging (Humanist-Liberal Association) complains that eligibility for euthanasia is far too restrictive. At the moment, only people with unbearable suffering can be euthanased. This leaves out people in irreversible comas, people with dementia, people with irreversible brain diseases and people who are under 18. This is manifestly unfair, the HVV contends.
However, this is not just a private initiative. In November Wim Distelmans, the chairman of the official Federal Committee on Euthanasia, released an open letter to Prime Minister Elio Di Rupo asking him to re-open a national debate on euthanasia. (At the time, Di Rupo was pulling a government together (this took 589 days) but now he is officially prime minister.) He and eight colleagues, like the HVV, have asked the Belgian government to update its 2002 euthanasia law. The proposed changes include these provisions:
Institut Européen de Bioéthique, Dec 6
______________________________________________________________
Euthanasia is not just a lethal act, but a deadly ideological appetite–one that is never satiated. Once killing is unleashed as a solution to suffering, activists will always want more. Always. As I have written before, they remind me of the man killing plant in Little Shop of Horrors, growing ever larger and constantly yelling, “Feed me!”
Latest of so many cases in point: Belgian activists have a petition out to open euthanasia to minors and to force all doctors to be complicit in killing by creating a duty to refer to a death doctor if they are not willing to personally euthanize. Here is the Google translation of the petition, linked here in, I think, Flemish:
The Right to Euthanasia: Time for the Next Step. Euthanasia possible, even for those not aware, and who is a minor:
Through this petition we want the federal government, federal parliament seats and all democratic parties insist that the euthanasia during the next legislature will be expanded and refined. We ask the following enhancements:
• Since the advance [euthanasia request] is always revocable, is a time limit of five years obsolete. It is desirable to remove the time limit. The municipalities that the declarations of intent to register must already requires the parties to automatically notify the imminent expiration of the deadline.
• If the advance euthanasia was registered, its existence must be included on the chip of the electronic ID card.
• A referral qualify for the duty doctor who refuses euthanasia.
• Assisted suicide should be enrolled in the law on euthanasia.
• It must be ensured that hospitals that work with public money, the application of the legislation is not in the way.Furthermore, we urge the law to expand:
• In people with irreversible brain disease or dementia, who previously wrote a living will.
• To minors within the current law, without prejudice to the definition of ‘euthanasia’ (the explicit and considered the request of the patient), and without an age limit to build.
“The next step,” that is the key. Note, it isn’t the “final” step. That’s because there never is a final step.
Culture of death, Wesley? What culture of death?
Thread by me.
Terri Schiavo of Florida, who's vegetative state
and right to life became a national issue in 2005
The difference between a dead man and a man in a vegetative state used to be a thin line of whether
or not the body was still functioning. But what if the vegetative man is still conscious? That brings
the distinction into a whole new level.
Philosopher Walter Sinnott-Armstrong gave a talk titled “Is he conscious? Does he want to be?” at the Trent Center for Bioethics on Friday, Dec. 9. He discussed clinical studies which have shown that despite the unresponsive display, patients in vegetative state may be still conscious. With assistance from an fMRI or an EEG scan, doctors can tap into the patient’s brain activity and “read their thoughts.”
The scanning study’s control was patients who received severe brain trauma and were confirmed to be in a vegetative state. The studies focused on the specific brain activity when the patient was commanded to “think about tennis” and the brain activity that occurred when the patient was commanded to “imagine anything other than tennis.” The distinctive brain activities were then coupled with a series of yes or no questions. If their answer was yes, the patient was told to think about tennis and if their answer was no, the patient was told to think about navigating through a house. In one case study, the patient answered five out of seven questions right by showing brain activity associated with tennis to questions for which an affirmative was the correct answer. The other two questions showed no response, and the doctors assumed the patient had gone to sleep.
This confirmation of consciousness in some vegetative patients brings up an ethical issue. Those at the bedside can now ask questions, including “do you want to live?” The vegetative patient’s answer to such a question may inform the ethical issue that arises each time we worry about “pulling the plug” on a clearly “living” person.
"We will not be silent.
We are your bad conscience.
The White Rose will give you no rest."
Ron Paul declares himself to be an expert, or even a “scholar,” of the Constitution, and unfortunately, his sycophants agree. They are as bad, or if not, worse than the Obamabots.
States have enumerated powers granted by we the People, only people have rights and powers granted to the states can NEVER supersede our individual right to life except as described in the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments.
Our Founders recognized that man cannot take away rights given to us by God.
FYI on Ron Paul’s SERIOUSLY flawed votes:
“Voted NO on restricting interstate transport of minors to get abortions. (Apr 2005)
Voted NO on making it a crime to harm a fetus during another crime. (Feb 2004)”
http://activote.ontheissues.org/AVA/Ron_Paul.htm
Thread by Fred.
In 1993, Mitt Romney was a successful businessman with an urge to enter public life and a plan to challenge Ted Kennedy for a Senate seat from Massachusetts.
Romney was also a high-ranking official in the Mormon church -- in charge of all church affairs in the Boston area -- with a dilemma over abortion. Romney was personally pro-life, and the church was pro-life, but a majority of the Massachusetts electorate was decidedly pro-choice.
How Romney handled that dilemma is described in a new book, "Mitt Romney: An Inside Look at the Man and His Politics," by Boston journalist Ronald Scott. A Mormon who admires Romney but has had his share of disagreements with him, Scott knew Romney from local church matters in the late 1980s.
Scott had worked for Time Inc., and in the fall of 1993, he says, Romney asked him for advice on how to handle various issues the media might pursue in a Senate campaign. Scott gave his advice in a couple of phone conversations and a memo. In the course of the conversations, Scott says, Romney outlined his views on the abortion problem.
According to Scott, Romney revealed that polling from Richard Wirthlin, Ronald Reagan's former pollster whom Romney had hired for the '94 campaign, showed it would be impossible for a pro-life candidate to win statewide office in Massachusetts. In light of that, Romney decided to run as a pro-choice candidate, pledging to support Roe v. Wade, while remaining personally pro-life.
All lies, all the time: Mitt's greatest hits
Threads by NYer and me.
Those who have implied that the President’s health care law will establish “death panels,” have encountered excessive criticism. Yet, more and more information is being released identifying that rationing of care will in fact occur, and that it will be done by government bureaucracies.
For example, a phone call into The Mark Levin Show on WLS 890 from a Chicago neurosurgeon last month revealed that a Health and Human Services (HHS) document, associated with the Obama Administration’s federal health law, will inhibit patients over the age of 70 from receiving neurological care. Instead of receiving “advanced neurosurgical care,” “units,” (meaning patients), over 70 will receive care to make them “comfortable.” In order to provide the neurosurgical care, a physician would have to appeal to a “ethics committee” made up of administrators, not physicians, to determine if the services can be administered.
This document, not surprisingly, has not been presented to the public.
Listen to the call by clicking the link below:
Obamacare Rationing – A Phone Call From A Neurosurgeon
______________________________________________________________
Dr. Alexander K. Smith is a brave man.
It has taken physicians a very long time to accept the need to level with patients and their families when they have terminal illnesses and death is near — and we know that many times those kinds of honest, exploratory conversations still don’t take place.
Now Dr. Smith, a palliative care specialist at the University of California, San Francisco, who also practices at the San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center, and two co-authors are urging another change, one they acknowledge would “radically alter” the way health care professionals communicate with their very old patients.
In a recent article in The New England Journal of Medicine, they suggested offering to discuss “overall prognosis,” doctorspeak for probable life expectancy and the likelihood of death, with patients who don’t have terminal illnesses. The researchers favor broaching the subject with anyone who has a life expectancy of less than 10 years or has reached age 85.
(Excerpt) Read more at newoldage.blogs.nytimes.com ...
Thread by me.
Detroit — Seven years ago, Bobby Schindler’s life changed as he watched his sister fight for hers.
Terri Schiavo had suffered severe brain damage several years earlier after entering cardiac arrest in her St. Petersburg, Fla., home, but that wasn’t what was threatening to take her life.
According to her brother, the hospitals, courts, state and Schiavo’s husband posed a far greater risk. And on March 18, 2005, Schindler and his parents could only watch helplessly and desperately as Terri Schiavo’s feeding tube, on which she depended for sustenance, was removed. Thirteen days later, she died a slow death of hunger and dehydration.
Since that gut-wrenching moment, Schindler has devoted his life to advocating for families fighting similar life-and-death battles, something he says continues to happen “every day.”
“The struggle was that we couldn’t believe to the extent people were going to end my sister’s life,” said Schindler, who will give a keynote address during the archdiocese’s second annual “Life is a Gift” conference next month. “The mindset has changed among our culture and among the general public that they look at someone like Terri really with a profound prejudice and a cruelty in the way they describe her.
“It’s become part of our vernacular that we just refer to people like my sister as ‘vegetables,’ which is completely dehumanizing,” Schindler said. “If we keep moving in the direction it seems to me we’re moving in, we’re just going to keep making more and more excuses and justifying more and more why people like my sister should die.”
Schindler, whose presentation will focus on what he calls the “bioethicist movement” in the country’s medical schools, cited a “growing problem” in the nation’s attitudes toward the dignity of life, comparing the discussion of euthanasia today to that of abortion decades ago. He says it’s an issue even most Catholics don’t understand.
“Catholic teaching is completely clear on how we’re to care for these individuals, but that’s not being told to our laity,” said Schindler, who is Catholic. “The nation, the general public, needs to be educated to see just how awful, how terrible this issue is.”
Schindler will join speakers including Bishop Michael Byrnes and Dr. Paul Wright, who treated and worked with Blessed Teresa of Calcutta, at the conference at Detroit’s Sacred Heart Major Seminary on Jan. 14. The focus, organizers say, will be on a variety of pro-life issues facing Christians, including poverty and health care reform.
“This year the emphasis is more toward acknowledging the dignity of all people with special needs,” said Socorro Truchan, coordinator of the archdiocesan Marriage, Family and Pro-Life Office. “Last year we emphasized more the unborn, the beginning-of-life concerns.”
Truchan said while the abortion issue is important, it’s vital for Catholics, especially teens, to recognize the entire spectrum of pro-life challenges.
That includes the hot-button topic of homosexuality. Also speaking at the conference will be Dan, a revert to the Catholic faith and a member of Courage, a Catholic apostolate that ministers to those with same-sex attraction.
Dan, who struggles with same-sex attraction and prefers not to reveal his last name, said the Church’s message of freedom and hope is being lost in a sea of secular misinformation on the subject.
“Pope Paul VI said it’s the church that’s an expert in humanity,” Dan said. “So I just want to educate students a little bit about what the church’s teaching is, and then share my own journey of how I found freedom in the truth of the church as someone who’s lived with that in his life from the very beginning.”
Dan said after being raised Catholic and converting to evangelicalism, he became “disillusioned” with his faith after college and decided to live with a boyfriend for a year.
“I expected God to give me a lot of judgment, but He actually just showed me love,” Dan said. “And then while I’m dating this guy and don’t want to ever be attracted to a woman again, I found a woman that I was attracted to, and it brought back up all my desires to be a father and have a family.”
Dan said while his relationship with the woman didn’t last, it caused him to re-evaluate his faith. He said his journey back to the Catholic Church wasn’t “all roses,” but he said the sacraments keep him strong in moments of weakness.
“To those teens who struggle with it, my primary message would be one that first of all says they’re not alone in this, and that there is hope in the journey of embracing chastity,” he said.
The conference costs $35 for adults and $20 for students and includes breakfast and lunch. Bishop Byrnes will celebrate Mass before the conference at 7:30 a.m. A complete schedule, including topics and breakouts, can be found at www.aodonline.org/lifeisagift.
Truchan said the conference offers something for everyone.
“Anything and everything to do with the dignity of life and upholding life we’re gearing this conference for,” she said. “Maybe that’s too general, but I figure let’s just hold out our arms and then the Lord will bring them all in.”
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