Posted on 03/20/2005 2:15:46 PM PST by Jean S
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Terri Schiavo case has been catapulted from a drawn-out medical and legal battle into a fast-paced political drama with Congress, the White House and the courts playing leading roles.
Republicans see a vote for prolonging the life of the brain-damaged Florida woman as an opportunity to strengthen their support among religious conservatives, a vital constituency group, ahead of next year's congressional elections.
For the most part, minority-party Democrats are asserting that congressional involvement in such a heart-wrenching private matter is unwarranted and unwise. But they are treading carefully, not wanting again to get clobbered on the "values" issue that hurt them in last year's elections.
Schiavo and members of her family have "become political pawns to larger political issues," Rep. Jim Moran, D-Va., said Sunday. "This is an issue that should be left to the state courts."
But Moran raised a distinction not lost on Democrats in other parts of the country: "I can't say necessarily that I'm speaking for my constituents."
So many parts of the drama were in motion over the weekend after Schiavo's feeding tube was removed on Friday at the direction of a Florida judge.
President Bush rushed back from spring break vacation at his Texas ranch to be on hand to sign legislation that supporters said would allow a federal judge to order the feeing tube reinserted.
Lawmakers were returning to the Capitol to try to pass a last-minute compromise. As GOP leaders scrambled to get enough members for a quorum, Schiavo's parents notified her hospice to prepare to have the tube reinserted.
Not since the case of 6-year-old Cuban refugee Elian Gonzalez in 2000 have national leaders so involved themselves in such a personal issue.
Gonzalez survived a shipwreck that killed his mother and 10 others who were fleeing Cuba. His Miami relatives balked at returning him to his father in Cuba, but the Clinton administration did just that after court appeals and GOP-led efforts to declare the boy a U.S. citizen failed.
Republicans were quick to embrace legislation to prolong the life of Schiavo, in a coma since a heart attack 15 years ago. Her husband and parents have been in a long legal battle.
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., a physician, urged the Senate to side with the parents and "give Terri Schiavo one last chance at life."
An unsigned one-page memo, distributed to Republican senators, called it "an important moral issue and the pro-life base will be excited that the Senate is debating this important issue."
The memo, reported first by ABC News and the Washington Post and later obtained by The Associated Press, added that "this is a tough issue for Democrats."
"It's a very complicated case, but it can be boiled down to simple human values. It's a story people can rally around," said University of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato. "This is the 'values' issue writ large again. And the divide couldn't be clearer between the two parties."
The issue has a dramatic impact because of video tapes that show Schiavo in her hospice bed with her mother and because of her parents' dogged campaign to keep their daughter alive.
"She is responsive. She does try to vocalize. She emotes. ... And, at least according to the family, she is still in that kind of condition where she responds," said Rep. Dave Weldon, R-Fla. He is a sponsor of the legislation to order her feeding tube reinserted until a federal judge reviews the case.
Critics of congressional intervention cite doctors who say the 41-year-old woman is in a persistent vegetative state.
Schiavo could linger for one or two weeks if the tube is not reinserted - as has happened twice before.
"Hours do matter at this point," White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters as Bush rushed back to town.
McClellan shrugged off suggestions of a political component to Bush's response. But the issue has mobilized religious conservatives and has become a dominant topic on conservative talk radio.
It has also provided House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, a role that helps deflect heat on him for alleged fund-raising improprieties and possible violation of House travel rules.
Critics suggest it is hypocrisy for a Congress that espouses federalism to get involved in case that has exhausted appeals in Florida courts.
"It is particularly hypocritical when you have people who say they advocate on behalf of the defense of marriage who now insert themselves between a husband and his wife," said Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla.
"It is not Congress' place to say yes or no" on the feeding tube issue, she said.
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EDITOR'S NOTE - Tom Raum has covered national and international affairs for The Associated Press since 1973, including five presidencies.
AP-ES-03-20-05 1619EST
This story can be found at: http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGB3TC6RJ6E.html
And it won't.
So the Pubbies are all in it for political expediency?
For the most part, minority-party Democrats are asserting that congressional involvement in such a heart-wrenching private matter is unwarranted and unwise. But they are treading carefully, not wanting again to get clobbered on the "values" issue that hurt them in last year's elections.
So the Dems are in it for principle...sorta.
Gee, biased much?
I'm so sick and tire of these truly brain-dead people spouting off on the marriage point. MS has been common-law married to another women for the past 10 years.
This woman has got to win the Vicious Princess prize.
We just want to assert ourselves between a man, his wife, and HIS FIANCE.
What a twit! What a little bleached-blonde snake!
Congress are changing (extending the scope of) a federal law - an act completely within its perogative. Once so extended it can be enforced. This is a considerable legal leg to stand on.
What kind of husband is this man who never divorced her wife but then goes and impregnates another woman who had 2 children by him? This is not husband, this is a man who for some reason does not want his wife to live, perhaps because she just might become fully conscious, and speak some things he does not want to become public. He has not permitted doctors to give any medical attention to his wife since the early 1990's and he's is given custody over her care and life? Give me a break. He may as well just go to her room and finish what he started: to elimanate her life. Why else has he prevented medical care to be given to his wife? Why haven't they taken that right from him since he shows no concern for her health, well being or her life. I think she holds in her mind something incriminating about her husband.
Right now we need to pray for Terri. The rats will shoot themselves in the head over this without any prompting or help from us. Let's just appeal to the Highest Authority and trust Him.
When I see godless demonrats, the American Hemlock Society, the American hating, God hating ACLU, a scummy death loving promoting lawyer (Felos), a wife beating, adulterous husband, the MSM, etc., etc., ALL LINING UP ON ONE SIDE, I KNOW THAT I KNOW, THAT I WANT TO BE ON THE OTHER SIDE!!!
Yes, a nurse gave a sworn affidavit that she believed SCUMBAG tried to overdose Terri with insulin several times. SCUMBAG locked himself in the room and when he left, Terri was highly agitated, looking very fearful and frightful. When she recovers, which she will, she will testify how SCUMBAG tried to murder her.
"Bills of attainder, ex post facto laws, and laws impairing the obligations of contracts, are contrary to the first principles of the social compact, and to every principle of sound legislation. ... The sober people of America are weary of the fluctuating policy which has directed the public councils. They have seen with regret and indignation that sudden changes and legislative interferences, in cases affecting personal rights, become jobs in the hands of enterprising and influential speculators, and snares to the more-industrious and less-informed part of the community." James Madison, Federalist Number 44, 1788.
1) she has had not representation other than her husband, who was having an affair and pissed all the malpractice money away
2) No rehabilitation was even attempted on her. she is conscience and not in a coma
3) The judge violated the subpoena of the US Congress to impose a judiciary dictatorship over a woman who cannot defend herself
4) Under Florida law she was denied due process.
Terri Schiavo and the soul of America
By Lisa Fabrizio
© 2005 WorldNetDaily.com
It is often said by abortion supporters that a fetus is not a baby until it can survive independently outside the mother's womb. This is, of course, a specious argument since this "survival" is not possible without the care and nourishment of others, either pre or post birth.
This is true not only of infants and children, but of the sick, disabled and elderly as well. But if certain right-to-death groups get their way this week, you can add Terri Schiavo's name to the growing list of disposables for whom the simple act of feeding would make her life otherwise viable.
We live in a society where multibillion-dollar projects are cancelled or altered in order to protect certain animal habitats, and one that engages in Herculean labors to spare the lives of confessed serial rapists and killers like Michael Ross. Yet a family who wishes nothing more than to take home and care for their daughter – a woman guilty of nothing except maybe her fatal choice of a husband – may yet lose their battle for her life.
For those not familiar with Terri's case, in 1990 Terri Schindler-Schiavo collapsed in her home and suffered a 10-minute loss of oxygen due to causes unknown. Her husband of six years, Michael Schiavo, although he reportedly knew CPR did not perform it and his wife suffered severe brain damage which left her badly handicapped.
Two years later, when Michael won a malpractice suit against Terri's doctors, he claimed he needed the million dollar-plus settlement to care for her for the rest of her life. This caring ended less than five years later when, in 1998, Michael suddenly remembered that Terri had indicated to him shortly after their marriage that she would reject any life support should it someday become necessary.
Even though Terri never signed any living will-type document, the Florida courts believed Michael's story and granted him guardianship of Terri even though he'd been living for three years with a woman with whom he was to have two children.
In 2001, Judge George Greer, a man who has reported conflicts of interest in this case, ordered Terri's feeding tube disconnected. This action prompted the Schindler family to begin their own round of legal proceedings and, in the course of one, they discovered new evidence. A report of a medical exam done shortly after Terri's collapse seemed to suggest she might have been the victim of violence.
No matter what evidence the Schindler family has presented, Michael Schiavo, Judge Greer and noted euthanasia lawyer George Felos are determined that Terri must die for her own good. This despite numerous reports by nurses and others that she is a vital and responsive young woman of 41 who smiles at and recognizes her family; regardless of the fact that her feeding tube is only inserted at mealtimes and she needs no other life support; even though she is a Catholic whose religion forbids euthanasia.
The lengths to which those who wish her slow death by starvation have gone are truly appalling. They have, at various times refused medication for routine infections which could prove fatal if untreated; withheld dental and gynecological tests and treatments for periods of up to seven years; restricted visits from her family and worse, visits by her parish priest, even refusing to allow him to administer the Host during the Last Rites the last time her tube was removed, claiming it would constitute "sustenance."
That this case, if carried to its most ghastly conclusion, will become a legal precedent is as disturbing a tragedy as the execution of Terri herself. Worse than merely representing a culture of death begun by the abortionists, euthanasia, along with cloning and embryonic research, represents a belief that certain humans should control the making and taking of innocent life. This thinking is precisely that of Hitler's Third Reich, an idea that millions paid the ultimate price to eradicate.
There are thousands of people with brain-impairments of varying degrees alive today around the world and I'm willing to bet that the great majority of their loved ones cherish every day they've been allowed to care for them. Some people cannot understand that what would be an unbearable burden to them is a blessing to others.
One wonderful woman who recently passed away devoted most of her life to the home care of her severely impaired 54-year-old son rather than leave him in an institution. Another family lovingly rotated monthly care of their brother until his death at the age of 81.
Such devotion to and belief in the sanctity of all innocent life is at the core of the Terri Schindler-Schiavo case and those who wish her death this week know it. This is a fight that has been coming for some time that will shape the future of our country in as profound a way as we have ever known and one that should be fought as fiercely as was Hitler.
Those who think that man should be an architect of life and an arbiter of death are using a disabled woman's plight to foist their notion of 21st-century morality on the rest of us. The fate of Terri Schiavo will be a measure of their success or failure. It is tragic that freedom is now on the march all over the world, yet here at home the most basic of all human rights may be lost.
Mike Schiavo gave 400,000. to his lawyer Felos.
And he has 540,000 left over from the One Million he was supposed to use for the Rehab of Terri Schiavo.
What a piece of dirt this guy Mike is !!
The problem is the courts. I don't see how a judge could possibly have concluded that this woman was in a vegetative state, or that the appropriate thing to do was to starve her to death. The courts have lost all moral authority, as far as I can see.
A good thing about all this is that every case of euthanasia is different. If they all take 8 years worth of litigation to reach a conclusion, ethanasia is not going to be a very popular thing to do.
Now Congress is one step further in meddling in peoples private affairs.
All this thing has done is solidify the pro-euthanesia side. I tell you this, if I was in her place I would pray to God that someone would put me out of my misery properly instead of starving me to death.
After all we are kind and compassionate to dogs and cats when they are in pain and can't live life anymore, we should do if for people to if that is they're choice.
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