Battle Over Possible Euthanasia of New York Teenager Gets Pro-Life Attention

Bronx, NY (LifeNews.com) -- The battle over the life and death of a teenage girl in New York has drawn the attention of pro-life advocates in recent days. The fight to save Javona Peters reminds some of the struggle of the Schindler family in Florida to save the life of Terri Schiavo, a beloved daughter and sibling whose former husband eventually took her life.

In this case, Peters' parents are disagreeing on whether or not to remove her feeding tube and take her life.

Peters fell into a coma in October while she had a routine medical procedure at Montefiore Medical Center. Doctors have pegged her as being in a persistent vegetative state, a medical diagnosis pro-life advocates dispute because so many patients have partially or fully recovered.

Peters' parents were never married and are estranged and have considered a medical malpractice suit against the hospital, according to a New York Daily News report.

But Janet Joseph and Leonard Peters are also feuding over Peters' care and have each filed separate requests to be given custody of their daughter. Peters has been opposed to removing the feeding tube but has wavered recently.

Edward Gersowitz, an attorney for Joseph, told the newspaper that "Because of her condition, she cannot make decisions for herself, and the court will have to appoint a guardian to make decisions for her."

As a teen, Peters doesn't have a living will or some other advanced directive providing guidelines for the type of medical treatment, or withdrawal, she favors.

The case has drawn the attention of the Schindler family, which sent out a notice about the case from its foundation, which helps disabled patients receive legal help and appropriate medical care.

Leading bioethics watchdog Wesley J. Smith has also commented on it and he says the PVS diagnosis seems "rushed" to him.

Smith says he sympathizes with the father and the pressure he is under to take Peters' life.

"We know that too often medical teams and social workers pressure and cajole for such outcomes," he said.

Smith draws comparisons to the case of Haleigh Poutre, a Massachusetts girl whom LifeNews.com reported was also declared PVS, but who has recovered from the abuse she suffered.

In that case, state government officials had ordered her feeding tube removed but she recovered from the PVS state shortly beforehand.

I wonder if Glenn was in a New York Hospital. He's supposedly on the radio tomorrow at 9 am est tomorrow.

Google search:January 4, 2008

Glenn Beck Botched Surgery Points to State of Healthcare in America (video) see link above

Glenn Beck, host of the Glenn Beck Show on CNN and radio personality, has released a video where he shares his recent planned surgery experience that “went horribly awry”. Unfortunately it appears there were problems and Glenn seemed to indicate they were in regards to the way the hospital treated him (”phenomenally bad”), how this affects anyone looking to receive healthcare in America (”…this is a hospital where the president of GE goes. If they don’t care about the president of GE well, will they care about the shlubs, average working stiffs?”), the effects of the drugs and how he would chose a ‘handgun to his head over taking more medicine’. Not sure where this is going to go, but he mentioned that he will talk more about it on his radio and television shows this upcoming Monday. We wish Glenn a speedy recovery. Stay tuned, could be interesting.

Was Glenn in Jovana's hospital????? That would be quite the coincidence.

Huckabee and Terri...

It is in the New York Times today.

.......................................

On the same program, the former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, the winner of the Iowa Republican caucuses, faced challenges to his own consistency on the subjects of the war in Iraq and the Congressional intervention in the case of Terri Schiavo, the long-comatose Florida woman. Religious conservatives and anti-abortion groups protested when Ms. Schiavo’s husband decided to shut down her life support system, as they argued that no life should end prematurely.

Confronted with a past statement expressing his reservations about the effect of President Bush’s Iraq troop “surge” on National Guard units, Mr. Huckabee argued that he both supported the surge and, as chief of the Arkansas National Guard, worried about the overstretching of the American military and its National Guard troops.

Mr. Huckabee also sought to reconcile one statement expressing doubts about federal authority to intervene in Ms. Schiavo’s state-court case and another statement supporting the idea as an intervention “on the side of life.” Mr. Huckabee deflected the question, launching into a monologue characterizing his support for “life,” and opposition to abortion rights as part of a larger belief in human equality regardless of “net income,” “I.Q.” or other social status.

8mm

Huckabee and Terri...

It is in the National Review Online today.

If they still had an editor like Tim Wheeler, our T'wit, they would have caught the mistake of spelling Terri's name inter alia. May we recall, George Steponalluvus embodies the essence of the left and is thereby obsessed with the burden of Terri's Legacy as he was in nagging Fred Thompson..

.................................

Hammering Huck [Jonathan Adler]

Huckabee's gotten pretty much a free pass from interviewers over his past false statements, flip-flops, and outrageous past positions. That said, George Stephanopolous hit Huckabee pretty hard on ABC's This Week this morning, hammering away on his misstatements abot the surge, his flip flip on whether the federal government should have intervened in the Terry Schiavo case (which mirrors his change on the federal role in abortion). Now that he's a front-runner, he's finally getting the scrutiny — and tough questions — that he deserves.

Hammering Huck

8mm

Huckabee and Terri

National Review Online again, this time from Mark Levin...

.................................

One More Go at It [Mark R. Levin]

Andrew writes, citing another: “You quote Olsen writing "Mr. Huckabee offers the Republican Party a new political narrative, light years removed from the limited government principles governing the GOP in the Reagan and post-Reagan era." This would be funny if it weren't so sad. As a small government fiscal conservative I'm amazed that someone as knowledgeable as Mr. Olsen could write such nonsense. Under Bush and his congressional enablers we got Medicare Part-D, The 2005 Transportation Act, No Child left Behind, an explosion of earmarks, intervention in the Schiavo case, the ongoing scandal and waste of the Ag bills and on and on. Really what part of this represents "Limited Government" in the post-Reagan era? The fact that he borrowed instead of taxed to do it does not make this fiscal conservative happy, that's just taxing a future generation. Huckabee is a kinder gentler Bush III.”

Let me try this one more time, not to convince you Andrew, but for others who aren't bored out of their socks by this.

The Senate voted unanimously or near unanimously in the Schiavo case, Andrew, as did most of the House, to pass legislation authorizing federal courts to review the state's court decision - something that is routinely granted in capital cases without legislation from Congress. I don't want to argue, endlessly, the Schiavo case again, but it does not prove your point. I am glad they did and wrote so at the time. Furthermore, it is preposterous to argue, with little more in your case, that evidence of the Republican party turning into a European Christian Democrat-style party can be found in the party's spending. By such reasoning, maybe it's becoming a socialist party. Maybe the Rockefeller wing has finally prevailed. Maybe, if, whatever. This proves that Republicans are aping liberals (European and American liberals, I might add.).................................

One More Go at It

8mm

What a wicked Webb-site we weave, or they do in the UK (or not.)...

Maybe the motto should be "We retort, you divide."

......................................

...................................Gradually, he began to air the issue. "I became very interested in this idea that we were selling ourselves and America short," he says. "And in the great clash of ideas around the world, I don't think the US always gets credit for providing the cultural and physical underpinning that allows all the rest of us to have all the arguments that we have."

An edition of From Our Own Correspondent about the severely brain-damaged Terri Schiavo's right to die was widely picked over in cyberspace. In it, Webb declared: "America is often portrayed as an ignorant, unsophisticated sort of place, full of bible-bashers and ruled to a dangerous extent by trashy television, superstition and religious bigotry . . . I know that is how it is portrayed as I have done my bit to paint that picture . . ."

It was a startling piece of self-flagellation. When pushed on the issue, Webb now says his criticism is less about British reporters "getting the story wrong" than "wilfully going for those gosh-aren't-Americans-weird stories"..................................

'I'm a real admirer of American patriotism'

8mm

Huckabee...

Thread by Ol' Sparky. Thanks, narses, for the ping.

There's a species of Republican true believers in Arkansas who've always suspected his bona fides as an honest-to-goodness fiscal conservative and social reactionary. Much the same anti-Huckabee line is now being repeated by the high-powered Club for Growth, which has launched an all-out effort to dub the Huck just another tax-and-spender.

The Club has a point - but only on paper. When you compare the dramatic tax cuts enacted early in the Huckabee administration with the later tax increases, you come up with some $500 million in additional taxes.............

Mike Huckabee: He left Arkansas a better state

8mm

Glenn Beck, a supporter of Terri, now is facing his own bout with medical institutions. Thanks, FV, for the ping to thread by redlocks322.

Does anyone know what happened to Glenn? I saw some of his you tube video and he looks horrible. Just guessing but from the little big I heard it sounded like the hospital gave him the wrong medicine or something after surgery...

Glenn Beck health problem?

8mm

Bobby Schindler defines direction...

.................................

Was the government right to get involved in Terri Schiavo’s death? Did the court overstep its bounds when it ordered the disabled 41-year-old woman’s feeding tube removed? Will the debate over euthanasia be a factor in the upcoming election?

These are some of the questions Chris Mitchell, president of the Florida Chautauqua Center, hopes Bobby Schindler, Schiavo’s brother, will answer at the 13th Annual Florida Chautauqua Assembly. Schindler opens the assembly with a keynote speech at 10 a.m. on Jan. 31 at First United Methodist Church in DeFuniak Springs. Mitchell said he wants the assembly to educate voters.

Schiavo died March 31, 2005, 13 days after a judge ordered her feeding tube removed. Schiavo collapsed in 1990 for unknown reasons at her home and had no living will. Schiavo’s husband, Michael Schiavo, said it was his wife’s wish that she wanted to die if she became disabled and was unable to care for herself.

Schindler said he now wants to raise awareness for the families and people dealing with similar situations.

Schiavo brother speech

8mm

Hearing it from the left with their warble which will never "change"...

Whether from the Obama Nation or from cuddly Killary, the tune does not change. But yes, the choir chimes change. Is it chump change or the kind of pennies and nickels rattling in pockets? In situations where anyone would want to save an innocent life like that of Terri, they demand change.

It runs deep. Their pals in socialist and communist thrusts sometimes succeeded in invoking change, with examples like Cuba and Zimbabwe coming to mind. The thrust never changes. And the left cries this time it will work.

Are we happy with a great country full of prosperity and success the world has never seen, a country with near full employment, freedoms like few countries left? That is what they mean to change. Why be happy when we can be like Zimbabwe?

The social agenda issues -- which Republicans sometimes like to label "values" -- came to flower in American politics with the Reagan Revolution. The Gipper used the social issues to cement the loyalty of the once-Democratic South to the GOP. It's one of the nice ironies of American politics that the South, the Bible Belt, the most overtly religion-touting region of the country, was also a hotbed of death -- by electrocution in most cases or occasionally (especially for blacks) by hanging from a neighborhood tree.

It took some time, but eventually the social issue warriors discovered that Reagan gave them little but lip service and, to add insult to injury, also gave them Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, a bulwark against repeal of Roe vs. Wade, which legalized abortion.

Unlike Reagan, George W. Bush really bought into the social wedge issues, even injecting himself and the federal government -- with disastrous judicial results -- into the Terri Schiavo case................

Change in key issues is bad news for the GOP

8mm

Karl Marx must be turning over in his barbecue spit, realizing his children echo so forcefully his themes. In this thread by wagglebee, top leftist candidates vie for the title of the most committed mass killers. Is it Killary who is the greatest at snuff or is it she who is crazy and is it Barak Hussain?

MANCHESTER, New Hampshire, January 7, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Following her crushing defeat in Iowa, Hillary Clinton has decided to attack Barack Obama on different ground: she is claiming that he is not as committed to abortion as she is, hoping to cast doubt that Obama is pro-abortion enough to make an acceptable Democratic president.

Clinton to Obama: You're not as Pro-Abortion as Me

8mm

Poor Killary...

Now she is accused of suboptimal blood thirst for euthanasia.

.................................

Some of my friends who are Hillary Clinton supporters have been feeling sad and bitter since Iowa punctured the aura of invincibility around her campaign. But she’s recovered from that loss to win New Hampshire. It appears there could be a long, close race ahead.
I’ve felt sad about her, too, especially since she almost broke down at an appearance Monday. This is such a grueling and public process, full of ups and downs.

~Snip~

None of us can presume to understand what goes on in another’s marriage, so I didn’t join those critics who blamed Hillary for staying with Bill. I was thrilled when she ran for the Senate and got her chance to shine and lead.
But then that fearless, progressive voice started to get muffled. She not only voted for the Iraq war and increased spending for it; she still won’t admit she was wrong. She accepted money from the very health-care industry that fought her on health-care reform.
And as the late columnist Molly Ivins pointed out, she clammed up when it came to a spectacle like the Terri Schiavo right-to-die battle, but made a big deal in support of an anti-flag-burning amendment.
So it doesn’t work to cast herself as the “change” candidate. But relying on her husband to claim the mantle of experience didn’t quite work here either.

Basu: Clinton camp must accept blame for problems

8mm

With the latest buzzword,"change" the projection word of the far left, the old lie lauded loud and long reappears, the message that Americans want innocents like Terri killed and want those who defend her to be reviled.

As we know the lefties shout change but they will never change. They want us to change. But Farmer plows ahead, with an interesting comment by a reader at the end...

Unlike Reagan, George W. Bush really bought into the social wedge issues, even injecting himself and the federal government -- with disastrous judicial results -- into the Terri Schiavo case.

As Bush's term winds down, even the social conservatives know that the country is overwhelmingly rejecting him -- and with him the administration's exploitation of the social issue agenda as a political wedge.

Change in key issues is bad news for GOP

8mm

Hmmmm...

Cruel executions:

he paper went on to note that lethal injection is the most humane method available and is a vast improvement over prior punishments, such as hanging and the electric chair. “Once tried and convicted of a felony,” the paper concluded, “you have given up the right to live how you want. It also means that if you are sentenced to death, you’ve given up the right to die how you want. Not ironically, it’s the same right that murderers took away from their victims.” In the current Supreme Court case, Justice Scalia questioned attorney Verrilli about the argument that the state must use the least painful methods of execution: “We have approved electrocution. We have approved death by firing squad. I expect both of these have more possibilities of painful death than the protocol here. But where is it written that the state must choose the least painful method? Is that somewhere in the Constitution?”

An editorial in the North County Gazette (New York State) wondered why lethal injection is cruel, but death by dehydration over a 13-day period is not. The editorial was referring to Terri Schiavo, allowed by the Supreme Court to die by starvation and dehydration, a process that took nearly two weeks. Schiavo had been in a lengthy coma, disabled and unable to speak. Justice Anthony Kennedy refused to allow the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to hear Schiavo’s case. Subsequently, her husband, Michael Schiavo was permitted to remove his wife’s feeding tube, setting in motion 13 days of starvation and dehydration.

Another execution that has been put on hold is that of Ohio inmate Jeffrey Lundgren, convicted of fatally shooting a family of five. Lundgren now claims that lethal injection would be a cruel way to put him to death and is part of a class action suit that challenges Ohio’s method of execution. Court transcripts show that Lundgren carried the youngest of the murdered children around on his shoulders before shooting her.

Supreme Court hears lethal injection case

8mm

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.