Posted on 09/05/2006 4:45:45 AM PDT by 8mmMauser
Boston, MA (LifeNews.com) -- Haleigh Poutre was the victim of child abuse and was nearly killed via euthanasia when Massachusetts officials gave up on her after she entered a coma. Now Poutre, once termed "brain dead" by doctors, continues to improve and is speaking a few words, her grandmother says.
Sandra Sudyka, the girl's biological grandmother, is no longer allowed to visit her granddaughter and now says she is ready to speak to the media about Poutre's condition.
She told The Republican newspaper that she last saw Poutre on July 18 but indicated she was "doing well."
"She was bright-eyed and smiling. She is always responsive to us," Sudyka explained.
Department of Social Services had asked Sudyka not to talk with reporters about Haleigh, but since they will no longer allow her and Haleigh's biological mother, Allison Avrett, to visit the 12 year-old, she said she's going to talk to the media.
"I decided since they broke the deal, I am going to talk. People should know how well she is doing," Sudyka told the newspaper.
"They don't want people to know how she is doing after they wanted to pull the plug," Sudyka said.
DSS spokeswoman Denise Monteiro declined an interview with The Republican but said that the visiting privileges have been suspended, not terminated.
Haleigh first began speaking in June, her grandmother told the newspaper.
"I was saying to her 'I love you,' and she was trying to say 'love' and it came out as a vibration...'ove,'" Sudyka said.
Sudyka, who is working with an attorney to adopt the girl, said she has said hello, responds to comments and questions, speaks nonverbally and is able to write her name. Haleigh can't walk and is confined to a wheelchair.
Avrett, Poutre's biological mother, lost custody of her daughter after physically abusing her. Poutre was put into a foster home where her adoptive parents also abused her. Her adopted mother committed suicide after abusing Poutre so much she had to be hospitalized.
DSS took Poutre into custody and when she appeared to slip into a coma, the agency asked the state Supreme Court for permission to take her life. That's when Poutre began responding.
Poutre has been receiving physical, speech and occupational therapy since January 26 at Franciscan Hospital for Children in Brighton.
Gov. Mitt Romney appointed a commission to look into how the state failed to properly handle the girl's case.
"It'll undo domestic violence protections." Nope. Wisconsin domestic violence laws don't factor sexual orientation. In fact, 2001 Wis. Act 109 expanded our statute to "romantic or intimate social relationship(s) between (two) adult individuals" — no word on orientation.
"Gays will lose visitation rights, power of attorney, etc." Actually, anybody can make these arrangements with anyone, regardless of the relationship. How do eccentric widows leave property to their cats?
They write a will. To liberals who scoff at this, why, then, was the importance of everybody getting their legal affairs in order the only lesson you learned and promoted after Terri Schiavo's murder?
Letters: Amendments; Recycling... Check amendment facts before voting
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In particular, he has been battered for living in Virginia rather than Pennsylvania, and for taking $70,000 from Pennsylvania for his children's home-school education. After his book of conservative values, "It Takes a Family," was released last year, Santorum was criticized for passages that appeared to demean working mothers.
Santorum has repeatedly drawn heat as the voice of the extreme right on controversial social issues such as abortion and gay marriage - during an interview he infamously compared gay sex to "man-on-dog" sex - and championing Terri Schiavo's right to remain on life support.
In 11th hour, Santorum pulling out all stops
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Carrie K. Hutchens of the Dakota Voice writes...
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It's quite exciting reading about the new and advanced technique that measures brain activity in unconscious patients. It's a ray of hope for many who may have been, or maybe would have been, misdiagnosed and therefore put to sleep. Of course, everyone seems quick to bring up Terri Schiavo and appear to insist -- no matter how stated -- that unlike her (and people such as she)..., as though she was hopeless and this new technique would have had no benefit in her case. And they would know this because why?
Hello! They didn't think this research subject was in their either. She supposedly showed no outward signs. Surprise!
What might have happened to this young woman had they not used her in a research project? Might her family have "let her go"? Would she have layen dormant forevermore due to lack of stimulation and, therefore, a chance at the awakening that would open the door and eventually let her out?
Yes, what might have happened? It gives reason to wonder. Gives reason just like in the Terri Schiavo case.
Terri Schiavo: Forever the Exception
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The statement furthers the arguments that Singer's position is just an extension of the culture of death that has developed in the world, with euthanasia legal in some locations, abortion legal in many and even charges that in some repressive societies there's an active business in harvesting healthy organs from victims in order to provide transplants for the wealthy.
"At least he's consistent," Alex Scadenberg, executive director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, told LifeSiteNews.com.
Singer holds that man is no different from other forms a life, and therefore man's life is not worth more than, for example, a cow.
Snip...
Editor's note: WorldNetDaily has been reporting on the Terri Schiavo story since 2002 – far longer than most other national news organization – and exposing the many troubling, scandalous, and possibly criminal, aspects of the case that to this day rarely surface in news reports. Read WorldNetDaily's unparalleled, in-depth coverage of the life-and-death fight over Terri Schiavo, including over 150 original stories and columns.
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When ethicist and author Peter Singer was invited to Princeton University, he got a scanner to check his mail for bombs.
Singer's search for a global morality frequently offends antiabortion groups, the disabled, the religious and the corporate. In 2005, Time magazine named him one of the world's 100 most influential people. Tonight he will give a public lecture at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg.
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And there you are.
Mahoney faces incumbent U.S. Rep. Mark Foley, a Republican from Fort Pierce, in the race for the District 16 seat. The district encompasses eight counties including Punta Gorda and Port Charlotte in Charlotte County.
He said he'll oppose "wedge bills that divide us," like bills to intervene in the Terri Schiavo case or gay marriage.
"They're not bringing us together to solve America's problems," he said.
Mahoney opens local campaign office
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Nearly a year after the accident, the British patient had advanced into a state of minimal consciousness. She could follow a mirror with her eyes. But no machine can tell her family or doctors whether she wanted to live “like this.” The deep family conversations that were prompted by Terri Schiavo’s fate are not simplified by this science, but, rather, expanded.
Woman in Vegetative State Plays Tennis in Her Head. But is it a game or a trap?
Ellen Goodman: Horror or Hope in Vegetative Patient Study?
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Bttt.
I can't let it go: I just can't.
A lot of people thought about poor Terri when it was revealed that a British patient diagnosed as PVS was clearly interactive, based on MRI testing. That brought to many people's minds, mine included, the request of Terri's folks that she receive a test that would measure brain function rather than mere structure.
This was refused adamantly by Judge Greer.
Terri Schiavo and the "Unconscious" Interactive Patient
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Another reporter practices medicine with predictable results. Terri did not have heart failure as we usually understand the term. No natural cause for her so-called "collapse" was found and she did not have a heart attack. She was found in a state of cardiac arrest, but that is an effect not a cause. So what caused the cardiac arrest? Or rather, who?
There is only one suspect and he doesn't have an alibi.
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If returns hold, Rep. Al Wynn (D-MD) may become the third Democratic incumbent to be ousted in a primary this cycle.
Wynn's opponent, Donna Edwards, called him Maryland's Joe Lieberman; he voted for the war in Iraq (though now regrets it), voted to repeal the estate tax several times (he has constituents who will benefit), voted for Republican energy initiatives (he has his reasons), voted to intervene in the Terri Schiavo affair (he believed it was the right thing to do), voted for bankruptcy reform (he says he negotiated a better bill, though Rep. Jerry Nadler strongly disagrees.)
Upheaveal in Prince George's County?
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SEMINOLE, Fla. (BP)--The independent medical examiner’s report released nearly three months after the death of Terri Schiavo was supposed to illustrate that the Florida woman was in a persistent vegetative state, but a new book authored by the attorney who represented Schiavo’s parents claims the report produced more questions than answers.
David Gibbs recounts the findings of the report and conversations with the medical examiner in “Fighting for Dear Life: The Untold Story of Terri Schiavo and What It Means for All of Us.” Gibbs notes that the medical examiner, Dr. John Thogmartin, was unable to answer questions about Schiavo’s brain function, in spite of the fact that the media reported he had confirmed the diagnosis of the patient’s vegetative condition.
Medical examiner’s Schiavo report deficient, Gibbs writes
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DSS and cronies tried to sit on this book and now it is opened just a bit. Good news for Haleigh, in my guess, as the light shines in again.
Never heard of the fellow, know nothing about it, but Kottkamp sounds like a pretty good choice in this account. However, I should have thought the phrase "conservative trial lawyer" was a screaming oxymoron.
Almost as bad as Capitalist Armand Hammer of OXY, an oxy-moron.
It was ever thus. Especially Ellen Goodman.
T'wit's operative (and unfailing) rule is, "Liberals are always wrong, even when they come down on both sides of the issue."
We have always been told there is no recovery from persistent vegetative state - doctors can only make a sufferer's last days as painless as possible. But is that really the truth?
...For three years, Riaan Bolton has lain motionless, his eyes open but unseeing. After a devastating car crash doctors said he would never again see or speak or hear. Now his mother, Johanna, dissolves a pill in a little water on a teaspoon and forces it gently into his mouth. Within half an hour, as if a switch has been flicked in his brain, Riaan looks around his home in the South African town of Kimberley and says, "Hello." Shortly after his accident, Johanna had turned down the option of letting him die.
Reborn (Zolpidem - "Ambien" - brings people out of Persistent Vegetative State")
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What protection can the law afford against domestic violence? Ever? Only moral education and personal restraint can stay your hand from striking your spouse or partner. The law can't prevent violence, it can only punish the wrong-doer afterward.
With the erosion of moral education and religious values, domestic violence has become the number one cause of death and injury to young women. It's even slightly ahead of the carnage from auto accidents, although the two figures are in the same ball park. Nothing else -- disease, suicide, other accidents -- is even close. We've been through the figures and their sources in great detail. (Domestic violence is substantially higher in non-married than married relationships, btw, and I believe it is higher still in gay relationships.)
So what can the law do about this? Nothing. The law is, in fact, left-handedly feeding the epidemic of DV by prohibiting all trace of moral and religious teaching from public schools. Thank you, ACLU -- you have this blood on your hands.
Terri Schiavo suffered severe trauma at some point. The odds are very high it was the night she ended up on the floor nearly dead soon after her husband came home. There is no other explanation of how she was so badly injured. Michael has no alibi. None.
Armand Hammer's commie name was no Occident.
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