Prayers for terri shivo...

[Rev9Volts]

and the dehydration causes kidney failure so you die of kidney failure... boiy what a wonderful waqy to go!!!!!

[RonOnGuitar]

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the dehydration causes kidney failure so you die of kidney failure

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Yeah, Rev, to my thinking it's the same as locking a two year old in a closet and depriving her of water & food until the little one died.



And that view cuts across religious and political barriers. When you have Rev. Jesse Jackson, Rep. Barney Frank and Ralph Nader also agreeing that it was wrong to starve Terri to death, that should be a sign that something really was terribly, terribly wrong in this case.



Have you read much about "OJ" Schiavo's ghoul lawyer? He's the kind of nutcase that you'd expect to see advising the "Heavan's Gate" cult -

(Cue up the shower scene music from "Psycho")

The Whacky Whacky World of George Felos



Review Of Felio's Book

[HKRockChick]

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At any rate, her brain was functional. At least on a young child-like level she was able to speak and interact with others.

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What rubbish. She was completely out of it.



And to compare her to Hawking who has a brilliant brain in perfect working order, and is using it, is absolute idiocy. His motor-neurons are not working so his brain cannot control his body. Please read some more about this before making silly comparisons.

[Shauna Skye]

Well, the poor woman has died. I've been following it closely on several different news sources for the page I do.



Here are some recent articles of interest...





Terri Schiavo Dies, but Debate Lives On





Terri's Death Called 'Sad Day' for the Nation

[Shauna Skye]

oops, wrong link...

Edited by: Shauna Skye at: 4/1/05 5:24

[HKRockChick]

its your country's legal system that has people's feeding tubes being pulled left right and centre. Terri is not an isolated case. I'm a firm believe in euthanasia. Why couldn't they just administer an overdose of morphine instead of starving someone to death? ugh.



I believe the husband was fulfulling his wife's wishes and that he was in the best position to know, as would most of our spouses, mine certainly. I'm not sure many children have a "when I die" discussion with their parents.

[Rev9Volts]

The story ends, the story begins





By Wesley Pruden

THE WASHINGTON TIMES





Rarely has convenience been held so dear or life so cheap. Rarely has the nation been held in such thrall over tragedy. But we haven't seen anything yet.

Before it ends, Terri Schiavo will seem the footnote to this saga of judges enthroned, Congress challenged, death embraced.

Michael Schiavo, who worked relentlessly over the years to persuade compliant courts to condemn his wife to death by starvation, peeled away a thin veneer of malevolence yesterday to reveal a poverty of spirit and soul within, announcing that he would bury the ashes of his estranged wife in a secret crypt to prevent her broken parents attending whatever services he may arrange to celebrate putting her away at last.















When Terri's death became imminent on her 13th day without food or water, with her eyes pleading and her parched lips cracked as if she had been marooned on a Sahara dune, Terri's in-laws began clearing her hospice room of those who loved her first, last and longest. With his brother as bouncer, Michael evicted Terri's distraught brother and sister.

Michael's mouthpiece, describing the end of the ordeal with the éclat and élan of a drumhead lawyer sniffing at a commission that promises to go on forever, said his client held his dying wife in his arms to the end. This could be the final scene, fanciful or not, in the made-for-television movie no doubt already in the works to make euthanasia a civil right to clamor for. Buzzards have rarely circled a prospective meal with the determination of Michael's circle of opportunists attending the dying Terri Schiavo.

"This isn't over by a long shot," the bouncer brother told reporters as Terri's body was taken to the morgue. "We're going to get our name right."

But despite Michael's good press -- one of the news agencies scorns objectivity to refer to him as "the dedicated husband who fought for a wife's right to die" -- there's growing evidence that the public has finally paid the attention needed to get the "dedicated" husband's number. The president of the United States sent the nation's official condolences to Terri's mother and father, pointedly sending nothing to the dedicated husband. President Bush urged those who tried to save Terri to "continue to work to build a culture of life where all Americans are welcomed and valued and protected, especially those who live at the mercy of others."

The Vatican, which had earlier made a point of saying that Pope John Paul II is clinging to life with a feeding tube supplying food and water, was unequivocal in its condemnation of how Terri was abused as she lay dying. "The circumstances of the death of Ms. Terri Schiavo have rightly disturbed consciences," a spokesman for the pope said. "An existence was interrupted. A death was arbitrarily hastened because nourishing a person can never be considered employing exceptional means."

Perhaps her death will, as some suggest, set off a debate on what health care actually means. What it will do first is to send a lot of people to their lawyers to get a so-called "living will," setting out how and when doctors should stick them with tubes. Such wills are not easily enforced because the dead can't sue. The lawyers and their accomplices on the bench are probably working now to close this loophole. But something on paper is better than hearsay, which is all Michael Schiavo went to a friendly judge with, a conversation he didn't remember until Terri had been ill for seven years and the courts awarded him and Terri $1.2 million for malpractice. Every day that Terri lived after that, as a dedicated husband could easily figure out, would eventually nibble the settlement to nothing.

Congress has a score to settle with the judicial branch of the government, and though it's not yet clear how we can assume that congressional ego will out. It always does. George W. Bush will be inspired to fight harder for his nominations to the federal bench. Sitting judges will feel bracing red-state rage.

Michael is finally free to make an honest woman of his common-law wife and give their infant children their father's name. (No. 2 wife will be wise to pray she never gets sick.) For the Schindlers there's only the wan hope that the passage of time will make life bearable.

Wesley Pruden is editor in chief of The Times.

[PANick11]

you are insane...



get help.

[Rev9Volts]

it takes one to know one....



may i please lock you in a closet for 13 days to do a research project to discern if you go through pain.... we can give you a morphine drip if needed...

[Shauna Skye]

I thought this article was pretty interesting...

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More Than a Culture War



April 05, 2005

Sara Townsley

Terri Schindler-Schiavo's slow-motion execution was not the first time tyrants on the bench have ordered the death of an innocent. But Terri's passing, after 13 days of court-ordered dehydration and starvation, marks a turning point much like Sept. 11.

It is disputed what caused Terri to collapse at age 26, cutting off oxygen to her brain for several minutes. Her estranged husband, Michael, said it was a heart attack brought on by bulemia, although it is typically anorexics who fall victim to heart attacks, not bulemics. Her friends say she was making plans to move out and leave Michael at the time. Her parents say he was abusive and tried to kill her.



It is disputed whether or not Terri was in a persistent vegetative state. How the brain copes with damage is among the most ambiguous fields of medicine; some medical experts said she was, while others said she had possibilities for recovery. What matters, however, is that Terri did not require a ventilator or any intrusive, expensive machinery to stay alive. She required a gastric feeding tube -- food and water -- and that was all. Most significantly, she was not terminally ill.



It is disputed whether Terri, a devout Roman Catholic, would have wanted to live in such a condition. The only evidence suggesting that she did not was her estranged husband's curiously timed hearsay. After a couple of years ensuring tests and rehabilitative care, he suddenly remembered that she had once said she wouldn't want to be kept alive on life support. He says she made this statement after they had watched a movie involving such a situation, though he has never named it, or specified when that took place.



Michael also made this claim right around the time he met his new squeeze. They moved in together a short time later, and he now has two children with her. This also coincided with his success in a medical malpractice lawsuit filed on Terri's behalf after her collapse. A jury awarded $1.4 million to Terri after her gynecologist failed to ask about her medical history while treating her. She also received a $250,000 settlement in a case filed on her behalf against another doctor. Michael, as her guardian, had access to the money, provided it was spent only in her best interests. Most has gone for legal fees, specifically, to his lawyer, George Felos.



Throughout, Michael refused to divorce Terri. All the while, her parents insisted that they loved her, wanted to care for her and would shoulder the entire financial burden. He refused to allow it. A wealthy California businessman, Robert Herring, contacted Michael and Felos, offering $1 million if Michael relinquished his guardianship and turned care over to her parents. Herring's attorney, Gloria Allred, furnished Michael and Felos with proof that the money was in an escrow account, ready to be handed over. Felos called the offer "offensive," and said other offers, including one for $10 million, already had been made and rejected.



Michael's behavior with Terri's parents has been hostile, controlling and characteristic of a wife-beater. His refusal to allow her family to be at her side at the moment of death is perhaps the most heinous. His behavior is also characteristic of a criminal seeking to cover up evidence of his crimes. A Florida Department of Children and Families investigation looked into allegations that Terri had been abused while in hospice; the report concluded that most of them were founded. For example, a nurse who cared for Terri stated that she once entered the room after a visit by Michael to find an empty insulin bottle in the trash and needle marks in obscure places on Terri's body -- an apparent attempt to kill her. Every major disability rights organization in the country filed friend-of-the-court briefs on Terri's behalf.



Despite all this, two dozen courts authorized the murder of a disabled woman on the say-so of a man who had a compelling self-interest in having her dead. The media characterized this as a "right-to-die" case opposed by "Christian conservatives," when it was in fact a "right-to-kill" case opposed by decent people from all across the political spectrum. When Pat Buchanan, Ralph Nader, David Boies and President Bush all agree, something extraordinary is afoot. It's likely that hundreds of Americans are taken off life support every day, after having left clear, written instructions to that effect. This was not Terri's situation, and this was not the target of objection and outrage. We treat animals more humanely, and we give serial killers more due process. Terri committed no crime, she was not terminally ill, it is not definitively known what she wanted and her parents were fully willing to shoulder the burden. But she was ugly, inconvenient and may have been a prosecution witness had she learned to talk again.



If any good came out of this case, it's that millions of people are now talking with their families about their wishes and drafting living wills and medical powers of attorney. It is also likely that many state legislatures will pass laws prohibiting "mercy killings" by starvation and dehydration, or even the withdrawal of any life-saving measure in the absence of the patient's express written consent. But consider: When you have to prepare documents and pass laws to make sure judges can't condemn you to an agonizing death, how long before it's time to start loading the rifles?



There was no reason for Terri to die, or to be killed in such a horrible way. One branch of the most powerful government on the face of the earth condemned an innocent to die; the other two were unwilling or unable to save her. For many, Terri Schiavo's murder is not about religion; it's about echoes of tyranny.

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[Gennious]

"two dozen courts authorized the murder of a disabled woman"



Despite the loaded slant following the verb, this it the key phrase in this article. "two dozen courts". Perhaps the judges know more about this than these canted article writers (who, after all, are more intent on building readerships than on instituting justice).