"Congress Steps in on Schiavo Case" --Fundies to introduce

legislation.

Is nobody bothered by this? This isn't just some gossip court case like M. Jackson or what's-her-name the household diva, guys.

It's about life and death, literally, and it's about the rights we have at the ends of our lives.

See this (Family Research Council):

Congress Steps in on Terri Schiavo Case

Congressman David Weldon (R-FL), a medical doctor, plans to introduce legislation titled the Incapacitated Person's Legal Protection Act (Terri's Law), which will hopefully help save Terri Schiavo's life. The legislation would give Terri and others in similar situations the same constitutional protection of due process as death row inmates. Already this week, attorneys for Terri's parents have filed six different motions to help save their daughter, all of which are now on appeal. Dr. Weldon's legislation would allow Terri to have her own counsel who can argue her case, a right given to any criminal in the United States. Terri is, of course, not a criminal but a woman fighting for her life. As Terri's fight intensifies, I cannot be more frank on the fate of this poor woman if her husband has his way. If Terri's feeding tubes are removed, she will face a slow death through starvation, which can take anywhere from 7 to 30 days. Terri's parents, as do Congressman Weldon and I, truly believe Terri is alive and deserves to continue living. Please call, e-mail, AND fax your U.S. representative to support Terri's Law -- truly life-saving legislation. Time is of the essence.
Additional Resources
Contact Your Elected Officials




Also see this (National Right to Life):

URGE CONGRESS TO ACT TO HELP
SAVE TERRI SCHINDLER-SCHIAVO

URGENTLY ask your U.S. Senators and Representative to support the “Federal Terri’s Law”, the Incapacitated Person's Legal Protection Act, to give the Schindler family access to a federal court to argue for the life of their daughter, Terri Schindler Schiavo.

Representative Dave Weldon, M.D. (R-Fl-15) announced March 3 that he intends to introduce this bill on March 8.

Time is precious! Do not wait for the actual introduction of the bill to urge your Senators and Representatives to save Terri! Only a massive outpouring from their constituents will move Members of Congress to act quickly enough on this vital bill to give Terri her chance at life.

For contact information for your U.S. Senators and Representatives, click here.

For more information on the Federal Terri’s Law, click here.

http://www.nrlc.org/euthanasia/Terri/Alert022505withWeldon.html



And please consider that the US Supreme Court is now involving itself with an Oregon state decision regarding the right to die.

THIS IS NO DIVERSION.

even though the spirit is long gone and has no place to 'sit' in the shell left on earth.

It is truly repulsive.

realize how completely and zealously they're devoted to that idea. The fact that this effort is now going to be introduced as a bill in Congress is a bit disconcerting. How many people even realize this?

I'd be looking for immortality at any cost, too, if I believed that stuff.

I can think of no worse fate than to be in her place..forced to exist by feeding tubes and trapped in a body that no longer functions..so many years forced to remain as a living dead person..and even worse if she is aware at all...it must be like being buried alive...but you just keep living. that poor woman.

It will be us and our families!

our bodies! Next they will be after our souls.

that this is a "fundies vs. the rest of us" case. As I understand the history of the Terri Schiavo case, she became incapacited without having an "Advance Directive," meaning that she established NO directive that her husband or parents or anyone had the right to pull the plug if they felt her vegitative state were permanent. In which case, doctors are obligated to keep her alive if they can. Her husband, now with another woman, attempted to circumvent the lack of Advance Directive by saying he "knew" or that she verbally said she would want the plug pulled. Terri's parents did not want her to be allowed to die, apparently deriving some comfort in being able to see and touch her--perhaps not surprising. Therein is the tug of war going on. IMO Terri's parents are just as, if not more, important to the process as Terri's husband. And in the case of no Advance Directive, why not allow their wishes to stand? IMO this is just an
individual case of family's emotions, and nothing to do with the political "Right to life" issues going on, even though some politicians may by trying to make it that way. Perhaps we sould keep this case on a personal basis and think about how we might feel if it were about a parent or child of ours, and we desperately wanted that parent or child with us.

And her expressed wishes were corroborated by witnesses.

Her parents, on the other hand, have admitted they would not remove life support EVEN IF THEY KNEW it was what she'd asked for.

And I don't think you should assume her parents are as or more important than her husband. This is about HER, not THEM, and ther are many parents who don't respect the wishes of their adult children. Remember, you don't choose your parents but you do choose your spouse.

this. Federal legislation is about to be introduced.

Florida law stipulates that the spouse is the next of kin and makes decisions in cases like these. Terri made her wishes known to her spouse and a couple of others. Those wishes have been ignored. Three to four years after her collapse, after her husband did everything possible to try and rehabilitate her, she was diagnosed as being PVS--her cerebral cortex was gone.

So your opinions as to whether or not her parents are important are not the issue here. Florida law is the issue, and it has been abused for years by the Schindlers, their attorneys, and by the radical religious right who has been funding the whole process.

Here is some more information:

Meanwhile, U.S. Rep. Dave Weldon, R-Palm Bay, said a bill he plans to file on Terri Schiavo's behalf next week is picking up bipartisan support in Congress.

The bill, nicknamed Terri's Law, would allow federal courts to intervene, and Weldon contends it is written narrowly enough to pass Congress.

Under the terms of the bill, a person like Schiavo could be awarded legal representation in federal court only if the case meets four conditions: The patient must be incapacitated; the patient must have left no written medical directive; there must be a state court order to withhold food and water; and there must be dispute, as there is in Schiavo's case. A federal court could then determine if the patient's rights had been properly considered.

In an interview Friday, Weldon said he has promises from several Republicans and Democrats in the House to sign it, and two U.S. senators he declined to name are considering sponsoring it in that chamber.

http://www.sptimes.com/2005/03/05/Tampabay/Attorney__Claims_of_S.shtml

Not according to the Bible, which is the book of their "faith", they really have no say.

Here are some examples:

Ephesians:
5:22 Wives submit yourselves unto your husbands, as unto the Lord
5:23 For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church.



Now these are just two verses, and there are more. What I'm trying to say is that once Terri and her husband were married they became
"one flesh". They became a family, seperate from both of their parrents, with that seperation the parents no longer had any say in their lives.

So why hasn't anyone questioned the parents about their "faith".

Terri is not on life support. If she were brain dead and existing on life support, that would be entirely different. This case is about witholding food and water from someone who can breathe on her own, and it presents very complex issues.

I'm not an attorney, and I have some questions about this law.

http://www.nrlc.org/euthanasia/Terri/FedLaw.html

What is "medical treatment"? Does the inclusion of "witholding medical treatment" mean that the family would lose the right to make the decision as to when to stop using extraordinary means to prolong the life of someone who will never recover? If so, who would make that decision? Would every medical decision made for an incapacitated person be subject to review? I cannot even imagine what this law means or what it could mean if it were applied.

It's not withholding food - it's withholding a feeding machine, which is as much life support as a respirator that feeds air.

The feeding tube, legally AND medically, is LIFE SUPPORT.

I don't see how a tube is necessarily any more artificial than a straw is.

How is a respirator different from a straw?

Should it be illegal to remove any life support because it can be compared to a straw?

The feeding tube delivers food the patient cannot take in independently, just as a respirator delivers air.

Both function absolutely independent of the patient.

involve a different level of brain function from gastrointestinal functions. For instance, you might see a healthy premature infant who requires tube feeding or even a disabled functional adult who does. So I see this as a different concept that we are considering here. That's why I can understand the parents' perceptions of the feeding tube.

She's not otherwise healthy.

Are you kidding? Do you know that it requires surgery every time that tube is inserted or removed?

Without it, Terri Schiavo would die, because she has no cerbral cortex--she cannot feed herself, swallow, or think. It is life support and is rightfully defined so in Florida law.

It takes seconds and does not require surgery.

surgical preparation involved, before or after the tube is initially inserted or removed.

It should not involve surgery to insert or remove that type of tube.

http://www.terrisfight.org/documents/022805EmMotionNotRemovePort.pdf

Her parents want it left intact and clamped should feeding be discontinued. They don't want another surgery.

I looked this up very quickly with Google and not carefully enough. Still you do see functional patients who feed themselves this way. Again, all I am saying is that I can understand how the family might feel and that this case is complex.

A lot of patients are treated with a lot of things, based on their circumstances. For Terri, this is life support.

I understand your point though.

Doesn't anything else require surgery?

intact should feeding be discontinued. Maybe they're hoping for another last-minute intervention by Jeb.

long-term feeding to have an ng tube.

but I was wrong about Schiavo. She has a gastrostomy. Here is a link to the Florida cases:

http://www.dickinson.edu/endoflife/LawFL.html

with a page on the same site about various methods of hydration and nutrition:

http://www.dickinson.edu/endoflife/MedicineTubes.html

Good Web site.

I also imagined I had seen an article where the parents said that Terri could eat, but it took too long so she was being fed with a tube. I could swear I remember seeing this, but apparently that has not been the case. I can't find any such article now when I looked for it.

Instead I found an article about Judge Greer. Odd bit of trivia: Judge Greer was Jim Morrison's college roommate.

there's no way she can eat safely.

and in effect you have just proved my point in citing something from them as evidence.

But Florida law does define a feeding tube as life support. This is doubly true in Terri's case; that device is the only thing keeping her "alive."

These cases are fortunately rare and I've never seen one face to face, but a feeding tube seems very different to me from a respirator, for example. That's just how I think of it.

brain stem in functioning capacity. And the brain stem is basically all she has left.

All I am saying is that I understand how a family might see it and that the circumstances of this case make it very complicated.

terri schiavo's husband has NOT divorced her in all these years because he truly believes she did not want to 'live' this way and he has been trying to see that her wishes are carried out. he could have divorced her years ago and re-married. i would not want to spend as many years as she has in her current state. even if she 'recovers' she will have no quality of life.

ellen fl

I don't think this will go anywhere. Passage of this bill would piss off the medical community, average people who wouldn't want to be kept alive in Schiavo's condition, and taxpayers who wouldn't want to fund it.

OTOH, I've been known to have been wrong before so this is the last I will say on the matter (in order not to interfere with your activism). And I will be ready for a helping of crow if the time comes. :)

That's for sure.

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In an interview Friday, Weldon said he has promises from several Republicans and Democrats in the House to sign it, and two U.S. senators he declined to name are considering sponsoring it in that chamber.

(snip)

Congress is in recess until Tuesday. Weldon said he agreed to introduce the bill after being approached by Ken Connor, a lawyer and longtime conservative activist with strong Florida ties, who wrote the bill with a legal expert at Catholic University in Washington.

Connor represented Gov. Jeb Bush as Florida defended a hastily passed state law that allowed Bush to order Schiavo's feeding tube reinserted in 2003 after it had been removed for six days. The Florida Supreme Court, however, later declared the law unconstitutional.

http://www.sptimes.com/2005/03/05/Tampabay/Attorney__Claims_of_S.shtml

Next we can have parents deciding you can't have a same sex domestic partner because of the suffering it might cause some parent.

Add this to the law:

"If this law is enacted on behalf of any citizen, then it is incumbent upon the state to release the family members from any debt obligation--past or present--regarding the care of this person.
Upon enacting this legislation, the state agrees to accept full fiscal responsibility of this person until their natural death."

Since the state wants to make our decisions for us, then why not let them pay for the decisions they make?
Makes sense to me.

and got them punched by the courts.

why would doing it again at the state or national level make it any more acceptable?

This could go on forever.

someone to make your medical decisions, if incapacitated, OTHER than the person YOU chose?

Meanwhile, U.S. Rep. Dave Weldon, R-Palm Bay, said a bill he plans to file on Terri Schiavo's behalf next week is picking up bipartisan support in Congress.

The bill, nicknamed Terri's Law, would allow federal courts to intervene, and Weldon contends it is written narrowly enough to pass Congress.

Under the terms of the bill, a person like Schiavo could be awarded legal representation in federal court only if the case meets four conditions: The patient must be incapacitated; the patient must have left no written medical directive; there must be a state court order to withhold food and water; and there must be dispute, as there is in Schiavo's case. A federal court could then determine if the patient's rights had been properly considered.

In an interview Friday, Weldon said he has promises from several Republicans and Democrats in the House to sign it, and two U.S. senators he declined to name are considering sponsoring it in that chamber.

http://www.sptimes.com/2005/03/05/Tampabay/Attorney__Claims_of_S.shtml

life...I hate these people

has remained sane. And the implications of this are making me sick.

first, let me say that i am not that familiar with this specific case so the law i'm proposing is derived only from my own values ...

the law should give the highest priority, irrevocable authority, to the patient's WRITTEN wishes ... instructions for end of life decisions would need to be explicitly stated in writing (i.e. a "critical care" proxy) for them to be binding ... vagueries like "she told me this many times" or "that's how she lived her life" would not be acceptable support to terminate life without consensus of "key parties" ...

"Key parties" would include (by default unless otherwise directed in writing by the patient): spouse (or domestic partner), parents or guardians and perhaps adult children (not sure about this) ... absent agreement by all key parties, the patient would be kept alive to the extent it was "medically reasonable" to do so ... courts could intervene in cases where the patient was clearly suffering (i.e no hope of recovery COMBINED WITH significant unmanagable pain or mental anguish) ... the following would not be sufficient by themselves to allow a court to step in: "poor quality of life assessments" like vegetative states, coma, poor prognosis ...

underlying all this is a change to the "default" situation ... the law would be modified to choose life over death and would default to a larger group of "key parties" over the current situation that defaults to giving a spouse sole control ...

go

When my mother was in a care facility due to having had a stroke that disabled her, she lost her "gag reflex". The administrators wanted to insert a feeding tube because they said she would aspirate her food and get pneumonia. She was in her 80's and our father was deceased. She had a miserable existence and did not want a feeding tube, nor did we. My god, we had to have a big meeting with everyone present and they questioned whether she was suicidal, for chrissakes. We stood our ground, a feeding tube was NOT inserted and she never got pneumonia in the following 18 months of her life.

in dysphagia would know that absence of a "gag" reflex is not indicative of whether or not the patient is at risk for aspiration.

If a bedside exam and follow-up swallow study wasn't done, then someone was really negligent.

to do so, then once the feeding tube is clamped, could the parents visit Terri at feeding time and manually feed her? This can go on forever.

You need to be alert and participatory to eat, and she's not.

Her family is in total disagreement on what to do. A neutral advocate could go a long way to making a final decision.

Why didn’t the court appoint a guardian other than Terri’s husband to speak for her?

The trial judge could have utilized a guardian ad litem as a neutral party to speak for Terri, but in the end the trial judge did not do so. The Second District affirmed this decision and explained its rationale in this way:


Under these circumstances, the two parties, as adversaries, present their evidence to the trial court. The trial court determines whether the evidence is sufficient to allow it to make the decision for the ward to discontinue life support. In this context, the trial court essentially serves as the ward's guardian. Although we do not rule out the occasional need for a guardian in this type of proceeding, a guardian ad litem would tend to duplicate the function of the judge, would add little of value to this process, and might cause the process to be influenced by hearsay or matters outside the record. Accordingly, we affirm the trial court's discretionary decision in this case to proceed without a guardian ad litem.

end of quote from your source

While I will admit these are somewhat similar things it isn't the same. Given the court ruling I think the parents really ought to let it go unless they are convinced the judge wasn't impartial for some reason. But she never did have a guardian ad litem.

She told him that she didn't want to be on life support.

I find it amazing we take this man at his word given his disregard of her wishes by having kids with another woman.

What's adultery got to do with it? He didn't pronounce her brain dead, the doctors did. Or, all of them "adulters" too?

then a neutral advocate would agree to end support.

And has been for 15 years! Do you expect him to become a monk? Maybe he should just give up his entire life and spend every waking hour by her bedside. sheesh

There have been a lot of stupid comments made about this case, and this claim that he is an adulterer (and the implication that he therefore can no longer determine what is best for her) is one of the stupidest.

This is what DIVORCE is for. I do not intend for him to become a monk but he should DIVORCE the woman and let her parents and other family decide her fate.