If this was about what her husband (her legal guardian) wanted,let me take this one step further.
Who has the final authority,the parents of a minor in Terri's condition,or that minor's legal guardian (the state)?
I ask this because my sister is the legal guardian of a 10 year old boy that has a feeding tube,is not aware of anything,and will never progress beyond the state he is in now.
He was born that way,caused by a virus his mother got while she was cleaning a cat box while pregnant.
I dont know the name of the virus,but apparently it is fairly common.
Since my sister is his legal guardian,should she be allowed to order his death,even though his birth mother is against it?
The mother and the county made my sister the legal guardian,because the mother has 2 other kids.
She always visits,and is involved in his care.
So,can my sister order his death,or cant she?
Book project? Boy, that's news to me. Although, I am currently designing the cover for a book, but it's a fictional tale written by a local author here in the Bay Area. And you can rest assured it has absolutely NOTHING to do with a2k.
Fox's position is wrong, as it ignores a very real fact:
Quote:If she truly was PVS there was no harm in allowing her parents and siblings who loved to to continue to care for her.
In fact, this is completely wrong. There is major harm in keeping a dead woman's body alive in order to assuage the feelings of parents who can't let go of their DEAD daughter. Death is a part of life, and for all intents and purposes, Terri Schiavo has been dead since 1990. The sooner her parents realize this fact, the sooner they can start moving on with their lives; the obsession they have shown with Terri's body is just plain sick and may be indicative of mental disorder.
Cycloptichorn
The Terri Schiavo Case: Following the Money
The Recorder
By Jon B. Eisenberg
March 4, 2005
Have you ever wondered who is bankrolling the seemingly endless courtroom effort to keep Terri Schiavo's feeding tube attached?
During the Watergate scandal, investigative reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein were famously advised to "follow the money." In the Schiavo case, the money leads to a consortium of conservative foundations, with $2 billion in total assets, that are funding a legal and public relations war of attrition intended to prolong Terri's life indefinitely in order to further their own faith-based cultural agendas.
For the past 12 years, Terri's husband, Michael Schiavo, and her parents, Robert and Mary Schindler, have been locked in a bitter dispute over whether to withdraw artificial nutrition and hydration from Terri, whom the courts have determined is in a persistent vegetative state with no hope of recovery. The Schindlers want the doctors to keep Terri alive; Michael does not. Late last year, in Bush v. Schiavo, the Florida Supreme Court ruled that Florida Gov. Jeb Bush violated the constitutional separation of powers when he attempted to overturn a court order to remove Terri's feeding tube. A few weeks ago, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the case.
I filed an amicus curiae brief in the Florida Supreme Court on behalf of 55 bioethicists and a disability rights organization opposing the governor's action. Two months later I participated in a public debate on the case at Florida State University. Among the participants supporting Gov. Bush's position were Pat Anderson, one of multiple attorneys who have represented the Schindlers, and Wesley Smith and Rita Marker, two activists whose specialty is opposing surrogate removal of life-support from comatose and persistent vegetative state patients. I found myself wondering: "I'm doing this pro bono; are they?"
I did some Internet research and learned that many of the attorneys, activists and organizations working to keep Schiavo on life support all these years have been funded by members of the Philanthropy Roundtable.
The Philanthropy Roundtable is a collection of foundations that have funded conservative causes ranging from abolition of Social Security to anti-tax crusades and United Nations conspiracy theories. The Roundtable members' founders include scions of America's wealthiest families, including Richard Mellon Scaife (heir to the Mellon industrial, oil and banking fortune), Harry Bradley (electronics), Joseph Coors (beer), and the Smith Richardson family (pharmaceutical products).
I found a Web site called mediatransparency.com which tracks funding for these foundations. Using just that Web site and the Schindlers' own site, terrisfight.org, I learned of a network of funding connections between some of the Philanthropy Roundtable's members and various organizations behind the Schindlers, their lawyers and supporters, and the lawyers who represented Gov. Bush in Bush v. Schiavo.
Here are a few examples:
Schindler lawyer Pat Anderson "was paid directly" by the anti-abortion Life Legal Defense Foundation, which "has already spent over $300,000 on this case," according to the foundation's Web site. Much of the support for Life Legal Defense Foundation, in turn, comes from the Alliance Defense Fund, an anti-gay rights group which collected more than $15 million in private donations in 2002 and admits to having spent money on the Schiavo case "in the six figures," according to a recent article in the Palm Beach Post. Mediatransparency.org states that between 1994 and 2002, the Alliance Defense Fund received $142,000 from Philanthropy Roundtable members that include the Lynde & Harry Bradley Foundation and the Richard and Helen DeVos Foundation.
Wesley Smith and Rita Marker also work for organizations that get funding from Roundtable members. Smith is a paid senior fellow with the Discovery Institute, a Seattle-based think tank that advocates the teaching of creationist "intelligent design" theory in public schools. Between 1993 and 1997, the Discovery Institute received $175,000 from the Bradley Foundation. Marker is executive director of the International Task Force on Euthanasia, which lobbies against physician-assisted suicide. In 2001, Marker's organization received $110,390 from the Randolph Foundation, an affiliate of the Smith Richardson family.
Roundtable members also played a role in financing the Bush v. Schiavo litigation.
The Family Research Council, which uses its annual $10 million budget to lobby for prayer in public schools and against gay marriage, filed an amicus curiae brief in Bush v. Schiavo supporting Gov. Bush, at the same time its former president, attorney Kenneth Connor, was representing the governor in that litigation. Between 1992 and 2000, the council received $215,000 from the Bradley Foundation.
Another amicus brief backing Bush was filed by a coalition of disability rights organizations that included the National Organization on Disability and the World Institute on Disability. The former received $810,000 between 1991 and 2002 from the Scaife Family Foundations, the Richard and Helen DeVos Foundation, and the JM Foundation; the latter received $20,000 in 1997 from the JM Foundation.
These connections may be just the tip of the iceberg. I'm no Woodward or Bernstein. I got this information using only the most rudimentary Google skills. I imagine that a thorough search by a seasoned investigator would yield quite a bit more.
With this kind of big bucks behind them, it's no wonder the Schindlers and their allies have been able to keep the legal fight over their daughter going for so long. And it's still not over. Although the U.S. Supreme Court has refused to intervene, the Schindlers' lawyers are now trying to prolong the litigation yet again through a series of post-judgment motions which, regardless of their merit, could yield stays that would continue to forestall the removal of Terri's feeding tube.
Maneuvers within the past few months have included requests for a new trial based on something the Pope said in a speech criticizing the removal of feeding tubes from persistent vegetative state patients, and on a newly minted claim that Terri was deprived of the right to independent court-appointed counsel. Those maneuvers achieved the desired delay but were ultimately unsuccessful. On Feb. 25, the trial judge, George Greer, ordered Terri's feeding tube to be removed March 18.
On Feb. 28, however, the Schindlers struck back by filing 15 written motions and requesting 48 hours of court hearing time. These motions run an extraordinary gamut, from a suggestion that Judge Greer should order Terri and Michael Schiavo be immediately divorced, to a request for "limited media access" to Terri, to a proposal for a 20-hour evidentiary hearing on Terri's "medical/psychiatric/rehabilitative status." The ploy is obvious: still more delay.
There is something wrong here. The Florida courts have ruled repeatedly -- based on her doctors' testimony and evidence of statements she previously made about her end-of-life wishes -- that Terri is in a persistent vegetative state, would not want her life to be prolonged under such circumstances, and should be allowed to die as the courts have determined she would wish. But the conservative foundations, with their massive funding, have turned the Schiavo case into a war of attrition, where delay is victory.
They have met defeat in the U.S. Supreme Court. But they won't give up, and they have the cash it takes to out-gun Michael Schiavo on every front. It is going to take yet more judicial courage to ensure that the rule of law prevails over big money. That will require Judge Greer to reject the latest round of delaying motions, and the Florida Court of Appeal and Supreme Court to back him up.
Of course,this article was published before the recent Congresional and Presidential intervention and before today's ruling. But, if nothting else, it reveals some intriguing details about HOW the right goes about organizing and funding the promotion of its agenda. It seems to be a sort of hierarchical structure: the heavy-duty foundations (with very rich and powerful finaciers), such as the Scaife Foundation,at the top. These foundations then channel their resources through charitabale organiztions which employ wonderful sounding euphemisms like "Philanthropic Convention" to mask their insidious aims. These organiztions,in turn,
finance the right-wing lawyers and pseudo-scientists who testify in particlar cases.
My question is: when is the American left going to learn from these people? Or, at least, realize that the fight is always directed from the bottom but financed from the top, and therefore we should, perhaps, direct our efforts at both elements?
Think of the implications. It is really frightening!
Foxfyre- The point that I was attempting to make is that IMO, Terri Schaivo was being USED. These groups are interested in pulling a larger political base together. What better way than to focus on one sympathetic figure, in order to energize people to your cause?
Phoenix writes
Quote:Think of the implications. It is really frightening!
Almost as frightening as Michael Schiavo using a huge lion's share of the settlement awarded for Terri's care and rehabilitation to pay lawyers to file suit to have her killed. And prevailing.
There is nothing sinister about advocates for life helping the Schindlers in this case. Michael Schiavo is not without his advocates as well including the ACLU who has served as co-counsel right alongside him most of the way.
When it all shakes out, I believe history and prevailing public opinion will come down on the side of those who put a high priority on a disabled citizen's right tolife. And that includes George Bush and Jeb Bush. That is certainly my fervent hope. I will never agree that it is right to intentionally kill a person for expediency.
http://villagevoice.com/news/0513,hentoff,62489,6.html
In 1992, Michael Schiavo brought a medical malpractice suit against the obstetrician who had been treating Terri for infertility, charging that the doctor had failed to diagnose the hypokalemia. The jury concluded that Schiavo had indeed suffered from bulimia, which had caused her hypokalemia and subsequent cardiac arrest, and had not been properly diagnosed by the obstetrician. The case was appealed and then settled in January 1993 before the appeal could be decided; Terri Schiavo received US$750,000 and Michael Schiavo received $300,000. Terri's award was placed in a trust fund controlled by a third party for her medical care. Florida's Second District Court was also later to find that Schiavo's cardiac arrest had been the result of a potassium imbalance.
GLOBE EDITORIAL
Terri Schiavo's affliction
April 5, 2005
RIVETED BY the personal and political battles over Terri Schiavo's rights to life and death, the country is largely ignoring a chance to act on an underlying issue: eating disorders.
Schiavo was an overweight kid who reportedly wept when she bought clothes, fearful of being teased about her size. After high school she lost weight, dropping from over 200 pounds to 150. When she was 26 she weighed 110 pounds. On Feb. 25, 1990, less than three months after her 26th birthday, she collapsed. Her heart stopped, depriving her brain of oxygen and causing severe physical damage. Doctors say the cause was a chemical imbalance that had been triggered by an eating disorder.
But Congress is not rushing to pass bills to battle eating disorders. Nor is President Bush pointedly waiting to sign such legislation. And protesters who supported Terri Schiavo by taping their mouths shut did not realize the cruel irony of their symbolism.
Eating disorders have gotten attention in the celebrity-focused press with stories about stars battling anorexia. But the news is often about fan support and public appearances.
Missing are hard clinical facts such as those offered by the National Institute of Mental Health, which warns that ''people who suffer from eating disorders can experience a wide range of physical health complications, including serious heart conditions and kidney failure which may lead to death."
Philip Levendusky, the vice president of new program development at McLean Hospital in Belmont says, ''Kids don't realize how much of a game of Russian roulette they're playing." He ran through a tragic list of problems related to eating disorders, from bowel disorders to death. He points to sufferers as young as 8 years old and to estimates that 10 to 15 percent of those with anorexia die.
Despite the devastation of the problem, help can be hard to find. In 2000, Beth and Seth Klarman of Brookline, parents of a teenage daughter with an eating disorder, opted to send her to New Orleans because that was the closest site they found with a comprehensive treatment program. This experience prompted them to donate $2.5 million to McLean to fund the Klarman Eating Disorders Center, where a multidisciplinary team treats women ages 13 to 23.
But victims of eating disorders can be hard to see. They may not recognize or admit that they are ill. Ironically, Terri Schiavo got attention at the end of her life, when she may have needed intervention earlier, when she appeared fine but was struggling with food.
The legacy of Terri Schiavo's death should not merely be about living wills or intrusive laws but about greater public awareness and action to protect people against the ravages of feeling victimized by food.
Do you honestly believe that even politicians are so devoid of feelings...
Foxfyre wrote:Do you honestly believe that even politicians are so devoid of feelings...
Yes.
Lola, i really wish you were able to express yourself better.
BBB:wink:
