Posted on 11/18/2003 5:41:24 PM PST by sweetliberty
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Contact info for Judge Greer and the 6th DCA, link to argument between Pat Anderson and Judge Greer, Judge Baird's predetermination of the case, timeline of Terri's case, statutes being violated (also here) in Terri's case, contact information for Bernie McCabe and Jay Wolfson ( link to a better address for Bernie McCabe), super contact list for Florida courts, legislature, Senate and Washington, link to Gov. Bush's amicus curiae brief, Responding to Patients in the Persistent Vegetative State , a Christian parspective, PC93's letter of complaint against Michael Schiavo to demand criminal investigation and more contact information, contact information for the Florida Committee on guardianship, testimony of Jackie Rhodes, interesting article Is Wife-icide Legal In Florida(?), contact information for investigative ops and judicial operations, transcript of the Hannity and Colmes interview with the Schindlers, links to transcripts of other shows on Terri's case, contact information for Fox News shows, address to send Terri's birthday cards and contact information for advocacy center investigating Terri's abuse and neglect.
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This thread serves as a place for posting all new general information and references, along with links following Terri's case, plus information on cable news and talk radio shows dealing with the issue, court cases and press releases. This is also the place to post contact information, prayers and general discussion.
If you have something that qualifies as BREAKING NEWS or FRONT PAGE NEWS, please post it on a separate thread in that category in order to give it maximum exposure and then post a link to the article/thread here so that it will be included in the next update of links. Also, if you post links to articles from original sources and there is also a thread on FR, please link to the FR thread. Many original links become corrupt over time and we want to be able to access the information at will.
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Was Terri Schiavo Beaten in 1990? (Nat Hentoff)
His Fight to Give Terri Schiavo Communion
Terri's family appeals to Oprah fans
Court Issues New Stay in Schiavo Case
Judge calls Terri's Law intrusive
Mom kept hope for girl who came out of vegetative state
Hannity & Colmes Tonight - Monday, 11-17-03 - Terri Schindler-Schiavo's Parents
"Terri's Lights" Campaign Raises Awareness of Terri Schiavo's Plight
Catholic Media Coalition Declares November 30, 2003 "Theresa Schindler Schiavo Day"
Terri's dad: 'She's literally been a prisoner'
Husband's attorney seeks end to delays in Schiavo case
Terri's Threads on FreeRepublic.com - 18 Nov 2003 0351 PST
Vigil for Terri Schiavo underway: plaid ribbons, lights in windows
Nov 20, 2003
By Joni B. Hannigan
ST. PETERSBURG BEACH, Fla. (BP)--Green plaid ribbons and a light in the window will remind people around the world that Terri Schiavo, a 39-year-old disabled woman, is not yet out of danger and faces death by starvation and dehydration if her husband and guardian prevails in the Florida courts.
A family supporter, Julie Smithson, has initiated a movement being called "Terri's Lights." The Ohio woman has encouraged those who believe Terri has the right to live to display green plaid ribbons and lights in their windows until Terri is safe from harm and can return to the care of her family, according to a press release from the Terri-Schindler-Schiavo Foundation.
Schiavo, the brain-damaged woman who collapsed in her home in 1990, is at the center of a national "right-to-die" debate that is being played out daily through court decisions and legal wranglings. The Florida legislature and Gov. Jeb Bush intervened and halted her death by starvation and dehydration Oct. 21, six days after her feeding tube had been removed by a court order obtained by her husband and legal guardian, Michael Schiavo.
Michael Schiavo continues to battle Bush and assert his wife's "privacy rights" are being violated. Terri's parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, contend Terri has not been given needed therapy and is not in a "persistent vegetative state" as Michael's attorneys have said -- and therefore her life is worth saving.
Supporters of the Terri's Lights initiative are urged to place green plaid ribbons around their trees, to wear a green plaid ribbon on their clothes and to place a light in their window until Terri is out of danger.
There are some reports that Terri's Lights already are being displayed throughout the United States and as far away as Australia -- where pro-life advocates have asked what they could do to show their support.
"We are truly overwhelmed and grateful for the many thoughts and prayers for Terri," said Mary Schindler, Terri's mother, in the news release. "It helps to know that there are so many people who recognize that Terri is merely a disabled woman who deserves to be given a chance. We want desperately to continue to care for her and get her the therapy she needs."
--30--
Joni B. Hannigan is managing editor at Florida Baptist Witness. For more information on Terri's Lights and other information about the Schiavo case go to www.terrisfight.org/ and to www.FloridaBaptistWitness.com.
I've got errands to run today.
I'M LOOKING FOR A GLENN BECK INSIDER FREEPER TO CONTACT GLENN... Maybe he can do a birthday party on the air for Terri. That would be kewl. Thanks in advance.
The daily news is running behind what we were told at the Vigil last night. Maybe we'll find out about the deposition in a couple of days. It's confusing on scene sometimes in addition to on the www.
By Rus Cooper-Dowda (written in 2002)
In 1990, Terri Schiavo's heart suddenly stopped. Before she could be revived, her brain was damaged and she slipped into a comalike state.
In early October, the latest hearing began to determine the 38-year-old woman's fate. Her parents and their doctors say Terri is responsive and deserves to live. Her husband, who has just had a daughter by the woman to which he is now engaged, wants Terri to die.
Terri received a $700,000 malpractice award in the early 1990s (doctors hadn't done enough to diagnose the potassium deficiency that led to her heart attack); husband Michael has been paying his legal fees out of it in his fight to end her life. If she dies, as her husband (he has never filed for divorce) he will receive whatever funds are left.
Michael Schiavo says Terri is brain dead. He wants to remove her feeding tube and end her life. Her parents maintain that their daughter smiles, turns her head, vocalizes and tracks with her eyes. They say she would improve with treatment.
To date, the husband has refused to OK antibiotics or dental work -- "Her teeth are fine; she doesn't eat," he has said. She has not had physical, occupational, recreational or speech therapy for years. She has not had a mammogram or pap smear for four years. When a complete physical was ordered for her in preparation for the current hearing, a urinary tract infection was discovered.
The major issue involved in this round of the fight for her life is what is meant by "new" treatment. The hubby says it means untried, pointless care. The parents say they want the kind of care she hasn't gotten yet.
The husband's doctors maintain that she does not feel pain, yet have prescribed pain medication for her ‹ to make the nurses feel better, they say.. Terri's moaning and crying is only primitive brain stem activity, it's said.
When she smiles at her mother coming in the room, it's just primitive stem cell activity, say the doctors hired by Michael.
I attended the hearing in Clearwater, Florida to determine whether Terri Schiavo should have her feeding tube removed. She is stable. She is not terminally ill.
The hardest part of that first day was watching videos of Terri. "That could have been me," I thought.
On one of the videos, a doctor asks Terri to open her eyes as widely as she can. While she was doing this on tape, I looked around the courtroom. Everybody in the courtroom was doing the same widening action . . . including the husband, his attorney, the sheriffs and the judge himself.
In the videotape of Terri, she is responding to doctors and family. Sometimes she is responding to music. Frequently she can be seen clearly responding to spoken requests to move parts of her body.
A snip of the tape was shown on Tampa's ABC-TV affiliate: At its end, the news anchor said, "I guess it seems a matter of semantics, but it doesn't look like a coma."
Throughout the hearing, Michael Schiavo's attorney, George Felos, has been trying to doctors to agree that Terri is not "with it" enough to be allowed to continue her life. One of the doctors seemed to consider message boards a rare thing, and claimed to have never heard of the most famous computerized message board user of all -- Stephen Hawking. While examining Terri's videotaped interaction with her mother, he had to be asked twice to please look at his monitor, and to put his glasses back on so he could see his screen clearly.
And Ronald Cranford, a Minnesota neurologist known for his involvement in so-called "right-to-die" cases, seemed content to testify about the tapes without having viewed them.
Watching his own videotaped exam of Terri, I heard him first declare the woman could not hear him, and then giving her a series of very fast verbal commands. I've had neurological exams myself, but have never experienced one as physically brutal as the one I watched Terri received on Cranford's videotape. He clumsily poked, prodded, thumped, shoved and pinched her -- she DID seem to pull away when he approached her, he testified. He thunked her hard between the eyebrows. She moaned. That was not a pain response, Cranford told the court.
On viewing a large photo of Terri and her mother joyously greeting, Cranford maintained Terri could not be recognizing her mother. It was only an "involuntary subcortical response," he said. The photo "cheap sensationalism," he insisted.
Should the court base its decision as to whether Terri lives or dies on a nose count, asked Ms. Pat Anderson, attorney for Terri's parents, in her closing argument. No; credibility of the medical experts who'd testified was the key, she said.
Yet none of those saying Terri should die had any patients like Terri, she told the court, nor did they -- by their own testimony -- keep up on advances in rehabilitation. Anderson reminded the court that Terri's current attending physician has for years spent only spent ten minutes with her every four months.
What about the "untried" therapies for Terri? Much of the therapy Terri's parents want for her, Anderson said, has been standard therapy for a good while -- but somehow never for Terri.
The experts speaking against Terri, she said, practiced an "intellectual disconnection" that filtered Terri's humanity through the sieve of what people with such disabilities are not expected to be able to do. "Is it fair or equitable to keep saying that we are not going to help you because 'you have brain damage'?" she asked the court.
"Terri has shown us her spirit and tried as hard as she can under the circumstances to say, 'I'M STILL HERE!'
After the hearing, I reflected. Those videotapes of Terri interacting with her environment had been both good and sad to see. Physicians who current treat people with disabilities like Terri -- and everyone else in the courtroom -- can clearly see her voluntary responses -- to balloons, pain and humor. If you are fortunate enough to have a loving relationship with your mother, then it is very easy to see the love that passes between mother and adult child when Terri's mother enters the room.
The other side says that what we are seeing is merely an uncontrolled brain stem reflex -- that just coincidentally happens every time she sees her mother.
Terri has never been given standard speech and communication therapy to enable her to tell us what she thinks. Because of that, she has lost the speech she is said to have had even after her injury. Now that same lack of therapy is being used against her.
Rus Cooper-Dowda is a minister and freelance writer in St. Petersburg, Fla.
post script:
A 1991 bone scan recently discovered by Pat Anderson, attorney for Schiavo's parents, shows old fractures to Terri's ribs, back, knees and ankles. Her family believes the newly uncovered scan supports allegations that her disabilities are due to domestic violence. At an emergency Nov. 15 hearing, they asked the court once again that Michael Schiavo be removed as guardian.
They want the suspected violence and subsequent lack of treatment for her breaks to be investigated before Judge Greer rules on whether her feeding tube is removed.
Michael Schiavo's attorney, George Felos, attributed the bone breakage to Terri's paralysis but backed off of that explanation when the judge pressed him into admitting that she is not actually paralyzed. Felos has also said her breaks are the result of anti-seizure medication and physical therapy.
On Nov. 22, Judge Greer ruled that that Terri's feeding tube be removed.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This is an old article but one I had not seen before. I searched but did not see it posted here, my apologies if it has been.It speaks volumes.
Because he is a RINO-RAT? Beside, no matter how wrong or perverted one judges decision may be, they're going to stick together.
Florida certainly has more than its share of corrupt judges. And it's part of a national trend of "Dictatorship by Judges" and our Constitution and justice be damned.
The husband will not allow anyone to examine her or give her terapy tofind out exactly.
Translation: Yes, I am biased. Yes, I have pre-judged the matter, But I am also a corrupt waste of skin with the power to do what I want.
So don't bother presenting any more motions to me or my buddies because they will all be dismissed.
So screw you. Screw the law.
We are going to see to it that the veggie bitch dies so that Michael can get on with his life and George can go on with his cruise.
Get the picture?
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