Would it be possible for you to contact Knight's of Columbus councils in Florida district 8 to contact Senator King? [Other ones too, but especially district 8]
Ping, thought you might like to see this...
Let's start emailing FoxNews about this special session. They are ignoring Terri's plight. If enough of us send them email, they will cover it again. I think we need to stress that Terri is not is not in a vegetative state. Judge Neapolean (or what ever his name is) kept saying she was in a vegetative state.
Some moron named Sheryl McCarthy posted this article for New York Newsday. I sent her a nasty e-mail. Here are both.
However Hard, Terri Schiavo Has to Be Let Go
Oct 20, 2003
In the video taken two years ago, Terri Schiavo looks straight into the camera. Her eyes are wide, her mouth hangs slightly agape, and the hint of a smile plays about her face.
She's been heard to grown and moan, has appeared to smile or grimace, has had her eyes tear up, all of which her parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, say are signs that she's responding to them.
A cast of doctors say these are only involuntary reflexes and that Schiavo is trapped in a permanent vegetative state from which she will never recover. And, after a legal battle that has gone on for five years, last Wednesday a Florida court gave the go-ahead to remove the feeding tube that has sustained Schiavo for 13 years. It was disconnected, and doctors say Schiavo will be dead within two weeks.
Since then, protesters have gathered outside the hospice where she's being kept. They pray, carry signs, and they and others who are outraged by the decision have appealed to Gov. Jeb Bush to intervene and restore the feeding tube. Last week, Bush said he was looking for a legal way to reverse the court's decision.
What's happening in Florida resembles the vigils we often see prior to an execution. This isn't an execution though. This is the rational ending to a human being who all the medical evidence says can no longer meaningfully participate in or appreciate life.
Rulings like the Florida court's provoke strong emotions because they involve hard decisions. It's similar to the debates over abortion, assisted suicide and capital punishment because it requires us to balance important interests and clarify what our values are, in addition to deciding how we feel about life and how we define what life is.
In Schiavo's case, the question is whether being maintained in a twilight state - the cause of which is unknown - where she's unable to move, communicate or receive communication, feed herself unaided, make choices, think, remember and feel emotion amounts to living and, if she had the choice, would choose to continue in this condition.
Her parents understandably are clinging to the hope that one day their daughter can be revived and can be taught to eat and swallow on her own. There have been cases where people emerged from comas after 19 years and progressively got better.
The Schindlers have charged that Michael Schiavo, Terri's husband, harbors ulterior motives for wanting to let his wife expire. They include greed for the proceeds of an old legal settlement, his alleged culpability in putting her into her disabled state and the desire to move on with his life with his current girlfriend.
But these arguments have been taken into the courts 20 times, and all of them have been rejected. Michael Schiavo, who at this point stands to gain no money from ending his wife's life and who presumably could have divorced her long ago if he had wished, says he's merely respecting her wish not to have her life artificially sustained.
Terri Schiavo is brain-dead. Doctors have repeatedly testified that her condition is irreversible, their only debate being over whether she has a small amount of isolated living tissue left in her cerebral cortex, or whether she has none. And the question is whether keeping her in a permanent unconscious state, with no hope of improvement, is a worthwhile goal.
When the people closest to someone in this condition disagree, the best way we have to resolve it is in the courts, and they've repeatedly sided with allowing Schiavo to expire peacefully.
This doesn't mean that as a society we condone murdering people because they're severely physically handicapped or mentally incompetent. Each individual case has to be decided according to its facts.
But while the Schindlers' supporters may rally in support of life and against what they charge is "judicial murder," Terri Schiavo's existence bears no resemblance to life as we know it. She's in a form of limbo, and ought to be allowed to pass peacefully from it.
Email:
mccart731@aol.com Copyright © 2003, Newsday, Inc.
My e-mail to her:
Sheryl:
You really are pathetic. Someone most likely doesn't love you enough to keep you alive.
You are part of the "death culture" that tries to make ridiculous claims that a feeding tube is life support.
Terri Schiavo is not in a coma or a vegative state. It is only the word of her adulterous murdering husband, his sleazy lawyer, and a judge who refuses to look at any evidence of her ability to recover that she is in the position she is in today. You make me sick.
What comes around, goes around. You've earned a place in hell Sheryl for your complete lack of empathy and supporting a system that plays God. Who the hell
do you think you are? Explain it to God. Oh, you probably are an athiest scum sucker.
Carla Carter
Bradenton, FL
I e-mailed the District Deputies and state officers and am waiting for someone to respond to me. It was hard trying to find a council in the 8th Legislative district.