Freedom For Life ... I Am A Human ... Let Me Live

Terri Schiavo's fight to live is the new civil right's cause for our century that we must embrace. Her stand for life must be preserved. Justice demands that we initiate a nationwide petition drive in every home, every community and in every meeting hall. Every office and every religious institution and place of worship should circulate petitions that acknowledge, "Freedom For Life...I Am A Human...Let Me Live" as the new rallying cry for our nation.

Why now? We need it now, because too often the fight for preservation of life is typically played out in the nation's headlines only in order to preserve the life of murderers, and perpetrators of the most heinous crimes against humanity. These are the ones whom receive the hundreds of thousands of dollars and even millions of signatures gathered by Hollywood celebs.

Americans get involved in those causes because these entertainers, these Hollywood and liberal icons hold concerts, host mammoth fundraisers all to preserve a death row inmate's 14th Amendment Due Process protection. Even recently convicted murderer Scott Peterson will be afforded those same protections that Michael Schiavo, Terri Schiavo's husband feels is nothing more than an irritating interference by "outsiders". We have we heard that phrase before...Hmmm... perhaps by former opponents of landmark civil rights legislation to "interfere on behalf of blacks in the south who were being discriminated against 'states' and state law who knew what was best for the black residents of those Jim Crow states."

Now is the time for those same liberals who marched and faith leaders who spoke then and now so eloquently about the affirmative action to protect the civil rights of Blacks to understand that there is also an intrinsic connection between her civil rights' freedom to live and the same civil rights freedoms argued for and won in the 1950s and 60s.

Yet, there these icons of the civil rights movement of the 60s sit, waiting and watching for the next exercise by the state to deprive a poor tortured human murder machine, a death row inmate of his just due. And yes, they would have missed the moral point altogether.

It has become too easy to be an advocate for the guilty. It is far more difficult to mentally deal with the haunting images of the innocent victims. The cry for justice that Terri Schiavo's family has asked for all these years has been ignored because it has not fit into a neat dramatic Hollywood-like ideological package.

You see, in order for a Hollywood type like Susan Sarandon or Sean Penn to get involved in a cause, there has to be some real drama. You remember their film they did several years ago. "Dead Man Walking". Hollywood called it a good film that was full of passion and drama. There sat this human killing machine on death row, and yet somehow it evoked the passion filled emotions of the left to call upon the sainted liberal angels of America to save others like him from the hangman's noose, from "ole Sparky's electric chair accommodation or even death by firing squad.

Why, because preserving the life of the guilty has become more chic than to preserve the life of an innocent.

But it is exactly why we have to be the heroes for those who are innocent and who are defenseless. Now, with Terri Schiavo's case society has been more moved to act to defend the life and the constitutional rights of a lone young woman. And as President Bush said as he signed the law passed this weekend by Congress, in case's like Terri's right to live, and her right to Due Process guaranteed by the 14th Amendment of the Constitution there should always be a presumption for life."

Terri's husband vigorously disagrees. Yet, we have to wonder about a society that would want to take the word of a "so called" husband who was very vehement about Terri's right to live leading up to the million dollar settlement that he won on Terri's behalf, so that she could receive the type of rehabilitation, the type of up-to-date care that this money would provide in order for her to preserve her right to live.

Then suddenly, the same husband who fought so diligently for her right to life, decided after the financial windfall the money brought, that perhaps he was in error. He in fact began the long arduous track to let her die. Suddenly her state protected rights under the state constitution of Florida meant nothing.

Now I have to believe that somewhere in the midst of this tortured logic exhibited by Michael Schiavo lies a thin blade of truth. The truth perhaps that Terri's husband would want to remain hidden. Yes, Terri deserves the right to live, and yes, Terri should receive the best of care, but only if there was nothing to hide, and only if there was more money to be had, and only if the truth would not come out about the possible harm and possible abuse that Michael Schiavo inflicted upon his wife before she suddenly "fell ill" and collapsed into a coma.

You see, it is the very fact that there is a vigorous dispute about Terri's condition, and the very fact that Florida's Department of Children and Families asked the Florida court to look into certain concerns that Terri's family had concerning possible pre-coma injuries to Terri's body, which would suggest that her husband's motives for depriving her of her right to life are not entirely pure.

There are a number of facts to this case that is now in U.S. Federal court in Florida that were not adjudicated at the time when the original case was litigated. After all, the science at the time was light years behind today's advances. The court never examined any facts that dealt with Terri's possible injuries before her lapse into a coma and who possibly inflicted them. The court had no way of knowing at the time that the forceful defense that Terri's husband displayed in going against " her wishes" to keep her alive so that he would be able to win a malpractice suit, would be used against her after the settlement so that she would be allowed to die with Michael Schiavo's idea of dignity.

In America we call these and other little lapses of factual evidence the reason the Due Process protection is needed. It is a significant part of what is the core of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. It was why federal action is demanded when state court action may quite possibly either trample on the rights of the innocent and the weak. Or may quite frankly ignore those rights altogether.

It is why Congresses' federal intervention is required when the state decides that in the instance of those who cannot defend themselves because of state court action, i.e.. imprisoning Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in a Montgomery, Alabama jail cell along with literally hundreds of others in dark jail cells around the south in the early 1960s.

You see, this is exactly why Michael Schiavo believes that Congress is wrong, and President Bush is wrong, and Florida Governor Jeb Bush is wrong, and The Passion of the Christ's director Mel Gibson who has taken a strong public stance for Terri Schiavo is wrong. He does not want Terri to have a voice. He does not want her to have the same constitutional protections that you and I enjoy and even the same that his new "common law wife and their two little kids by this same "common law" wife do enjoy under our nation's Constitution.

I have to wonder also where are the same civil rights advocates who marched with Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. They sang so loudly and so clearly about "We Shall Overcome" and proudly displayed signs stating "We Want Freedom Now"! Well, those voices and many who marched, who sung, who prayed during those turbulent years are strangely silent, because while they wanted freedom for "Blacks and freedom for women, they don't want or worse yet don't care about "Freedom for Life".

Terri's fate is not just in the hands of a Florida federal district court. Her life and the life of perhaps hundreds of thousands of other Americans who we may never hear about but who deserve to have their constitutional protection deserve to be heard loudly and clearly in every community city, every county, and every state throughout this nation.

This is indeed a defining moment in our nation's history. The Freedom For Life is not something incidental, just as the freedom banner that Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. marched under over 40 years ago proudly declared, "I am a Man".

That new banner in this century and for this moment in our nation's history must be unfurled and should state proudly "Freedom For Life...I Am A Human...Let Me Live".

Kevin Fobbs is President of National Urban Policy Action Council (NuPac), a non-partisan civic and citizen-action organization that focuses on taking the politics out of policy to secure urban America's future one neighborhood, one city, and one person at a time. View NuPac on the web at www.nupac.info. Kevin Fobbs is also Outreach Communications Vice Chairman of the Michigan Republican Party and daily host of The Kevin Fobbs Show on News Talk WDTK - 1400 AM in Detroit as well as co-founder of the Jackson, MI-based American Conservative Values Television Network. Listen to The Kevin Fobbs Show at http://www.wdtkam.com.

The fundamental moral principle upon which our soociety and our liberty rests is an absoulte respect for and deference to innocent life. Terri Shiavo is that. Her husband and those seeking her death are not only opposed by her direct family, whose only interest is her well being (unlike Michael's), but there are just as many doctors on the other side of the issue...which the court will not allow. In such circumstances, every fiber of decency, virtue and moral responsibility cries out to err on the side of life...which is what should happen in this case.

Terri videos here. Nobody should judge this situation without looking at her first.

http://www.sacramentolifechain.org/schiavo.html

Wrong. This is not "life sustaining medical treatment". It's food and water. Starving and dehyrdating someone to death is ACTIVE killing. Get comfortable with it.

6 posted on 03/22/2005 8:01:53 AM PST by mother22wife21 (Walking into a Gang War wearing plaid is dangerous, you're bound to be wearing offending colors)

Of course there is:
Capital punishment is the just dessert of a heinous criminal; withholding life-sustiaining medical treatment is vile torture. The former is the proper execution of justice; the latter, a pernicious evil in and of itself worthy of investigation and prosecution.

Furthermore, as that applies to this particular case, since when is feeding someone considered "medical treatment"? That's absured on it's face. It's "medical treatment" to insert a feeding tube to facilitate feeding of an incapacitated individual. It is not medical treatment to feed them.

Do I misunderstand the thrust of your comment or do you number yourself among the Death Cultists?

Aren't the implications for this - why should I buy serious medical insurance, the govt. will always pay for me to get the care I need to live?

Laws made in haste don't pass away as fast. We are about to face a whole lot of ageing Baby Boomers who may now have found their last way to bilk the system.

Good point ... does that mean I should refile all my Form 1040's and include food as a medical expense on my Schedule A?

;)

Does seem to have 'long reaching ramifications that those who are thinking emotionally and not rationally are not even considering'*

(*common accusation toward those of us who do think there is a constitutional right being denied here)

"He does not want her to have the same constitutional protections that you and I enjoy and even the same that his new "common law wife and their two little kids by this same "common law" wife do enjoy under our nation's Constitution."

I heard somewhere that the second child is still in the womb. Therefore, the second child has exactly the same voice and rights and Terri. The unborn child can be killed if her mother decides she does not want her.

wanted=you have the right to live

unwanted=you have the right to die

Since Congress has limited their bill to Terri's case, it seems to me the only 'long reaching ramifications' that anyone, including the courts, should be condidering is the affect of their decision(s) on Terri's life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Unfortunately the default cost of inaction in her case is death by starvation.

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