Lauren Richardson Becomes Next Terri Schiavo as Parents Debate Euthanasia (Delaware)

LifeNews ^ | 2/1/2008 | Steven Ertelt

[Pyro7480]

A Delaware woman has become the next Terri Schiavo as her parents engage in a massive legal and philosophical debate about whether to subject her to euthanasia. Richardson is a 23-year-old woman who overdosed on heroin in August 2006 while she was three months pregnant with a baby girl.

Doctors kept Lauren on life support until she delivered her baby in February 2007. Shortly thereafter, her parents began a fight that is reminiscent of the battle over Terri's life and death.

As in the Terri Schiavo case, physicians have been quick to label Lauren as having a persistent vegetative state -- something Terri's family called dehumanizing and medically inaccurate as patients have recovered from it.

Edith Towers, Lauren's mother, wants to remove her feeding tube and starve and dehydrate her to death in the same manner that Michael Schiavo subjected Terri.

Towers claims Lauren would never have wanted to live as a permanently disabled person, but Lauren, as with Terri, did not have a living will or other advance directive spelling out her treatment wishes. She claims Lauren told her during Terri's battle that she would not want to live like her.

On the other side is Randy Richardson, Lauren's father is fighting to save her life and wants to be appointed as her guardian to ensure she receives appropriate medical care and treatment.

"She's committed no crime and doesn't deserve to have this death imposed on her," Richardson told the News Journal newspaper on Wednesday. "We just want to give her a chance."

Lauren no longer uses a ventilator or other breathing apparatus and is not on artificial life support -- something Randy contends is showing progress.

Towers is winning the legal battle in court as she was awarded guardianship of Lauren, but Randy Richardson has filed an appeal.

The News Journal indicates Delaware Court of Chancery Master Sam Glasscock III has put any action taking Lauren's life on hold while the court reviews the guardianship ruling -- a process that could take as much as three months to complete.

Regardless of the decision, an appeal to the Delaware Supreme Court is expected.

Randy Richardson also has other concerns about his daughter and says that Towers, his ex-wife, has not allowed Lauren's baby to see her.

Richardson and the Delaware Pro-Life Coalition released a video on Wednesday that shows Lauren at a nursing home reacting to family members and a dog.

The pro-life group also organized a prayer vigil near the Arbors Rehab Center in New Castle.

[Etixos]

Sorry for the delay in my reply (computer has been down for a couple of days). I did not mean to imply that wearing what you like is the sum total of freedom. However, when you consider the fate of Al Qaeda women, who have no such choices but are forced to wear the odious burqa, the freedom to wear what you want looks pretty good as a representation of the totality of our freedom.

To me, anyway!

Best,
Etixos

[floriduh voter]

I thank Mitt Romney for helping protect HALEIGH POUTRE. Right there, he’s more of a man and a leader than JEBEDIAH.

[LilAngel]

Clothes can certainly be symbolic of freedom, I’ll grant you that. And when you’re dressed a certain way, it can make you more aware of your freedom. For me, it’s when I’m barefoot, looking out over the water. That’s not the sum total of freedom, but it sure puts me in mind of it. It also puts me in mind of how fragile that freedom is. If I should suffer a brain injury, a probate judge could order my death, and there would be nothing my family could do to stop it. I don’t really have the freedom I once thought I had. There is no guarantee that the Constitution will be applied to any court decision. If clothes were the sum total of freedom, I’m sure some judge would find a way to force me into a burka.

[floriduh voter]

Good morning.

March 1, 2008

PRESS RELEASE

Mothers' Outcry to Shock National Organization of Women

On March 8th 2008, mothers across the nation will join the efforts of leaders like Adele Guadalupe from Florida, Palm Beach County, N.O.W., one of the largest and most active in the country, to honor Susan B. Anthony and to denounce continuous bias against women in court.

As director of FACTs Court Watch and member of National Now Family Law Advisory Committee, Adele says that: "After hearing from hundreds of parents in matters of domestic violence and child abuse, the court has frequently rewarded the offender with primary custody. This travesty must stop!" Adele, explains.

"There is widespread, systematic failure of agencies and the courts in America. A system that was created to protect victims has for years now, further oppressed children and their protective mothers, " according to leader and researcher, Liz Richards of National Alliance for Family Court Justice.

"Equipped with broad discretion decision, family court judges are not subject to scrutiny and their decisions are hard to reverse: That is where all across our nation, bias and discrimination against women are present, more than in any other public arena," states Puppet Child's, author Talia Carner.

"It has only gotten worse for abused women and children, who increasingly find themselves oppressed also by the courts," says Texas' leader Tommy King, of Justice for Us. "We are concerned and closely monitoring the courts after hearing from many victims and studying the issue in depth," he adds.

"Other Judicial watchdogs groups are also increasingly and loudly denouncing this judicial crisis in America," adds Alex Petroski of Florida, We the People.

Dr. Mo Theresa Hannah, psychologist and Chair of the Battered Mothers Conference, adds that "Gardner's brainchild, `Parental Alienation Syndrome,' continues to be applied regularly, even against standards of courtrooms procedure and rules of evidence; Despite ongoing controversy and widespread criticism from top legal and medical experts, as well as victims' advocates in the country. "

In response to this unprecedented crisis in America, women across the nation will be joining National Organization for Women on March 8th to draw attention to this devastating trend with far reaching consequences.

A call for action, from protective mothers and victims of abuse across the country, is the message that many will send on this, March 8th, marking a new historical hallmark for the rights of abused women and children across the United States.

For more information, contact Mari Fernandez of Mothers in Crisis Coalition, Florida Chapter at 813-610-2842

Mari worked very hard in Terri's Fight. This press release reveals that it was never just about Terri. Mari met Senator Jim King. She should get some kind of medal for that. He was rude and threatening. He gets excited discussing dehydration and Senator Jim King had a special law written SO THAT HIS DOG CAN BE BURIED WITH HIM WHEN HE DIES. (Now, I don't know if the dog is on ice or if Senator King's wishes are to kill the dog upon his death).

He's really a sicko).

Anyway, MARCH 8TH A DAY TO REMEMBER MISTREATED AND ABUSED MOTHERS & KIDS. When will they get justice??? Is this a third world country or what?

FV

[floriduh voter]

THIS IS NOT PART OF THE PRESS RELEASE WHICH IS ON THE END.

FV SAYS: Mari worked very hard in Terri's Fight. This press release reveals that it was never just about Terri. Mari met Senator Jim King. She should get some kind of medal for that. He was rude and threatening. He gets excited discussing dehydration and Senator Jim King had a special law written SO THAT HIS DOG CAN BE BURIED WITH HIM WHEN HE DIES. (Now, I don't know if the dog is on ice or if Senator King's wishes are to kill the dog upon his death). He's really a sicko).

Anyway, MARCH 8TH A DAY TO REMEMBER MISTREATED AND ABUSED MOTHERS & KIDS. When will they get justice??? Is this a third world country or what?

FV

[8mmMauser]

Haleigh Poutre...

More pressure comes to air the unusually long detention of Haleigh.

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

BOSTON - Haleigh Poutre, at the center of one of the state’s most highly publicized end-of-life case, has spent more than two years in a rehabilitation hospital.

That’s 12 times longer than the typical patient, who stays about two months.

Critics say the state is reluctant to place Poutre in a permanent home after her adoptive mother and stepfather were accused of beating her.

They say that reluctance stems in part from the fact that the Department of Social Services initially pushed for permission to remove her from life support. Poutre’s health improved before they could act.

Other child advocates say the long hospital stay shows the state is trying to do all it can for Poutre.

Critics: Poutre spending too much time in state care

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[8mmMauser]

Sam Golubchuk...

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

Asked by The New York Times in 2005 what today-taken-for-granted idea or value he thinks may disappear in the next 35 years, Professor Peter Singer, the Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University's Center for Human Values, responded: “the traditional view of the sanctity of human life.” It will, he explained, “collapse under pressure from scientific, technological and demographic developments.”

 

This past January 30, the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Manitoba, Canada issued a policy statement that may come to permit the professor to add “prophet” to his curriculum vitae.

In that document, the governing body of the Canadian province’s medical profession directs that doctors have the final say with regard to ending life-sustaining treatment of patients – regardless of the wishes or religious beliefs of the patients or their families. It also establishes a baseline for justifying life-sustaining treatment – including a patient’s ability to “experience his/her own existence” – below which a doctor is directed to end life-sustaining treatment, regardless of the wishes of the patient’s family. The new policy paper has garnered much attention, and may well have ramifications throughout Canada and, conceivably, elsewhere.

~Snip~

More recently, doctors at Manitoba’s own Grace Memorial Hospital sought to disconnect Samuel Golubchuk from the ventilator that was helping him breathe, claiming that he was unconscious and unresponsive – presumably never to recover. Mr. Golubchuk’s children, Orthodox Jews whose religious convictions opposed terminating their father’s life, promptly sought and obtained a court injunction. The judge in that case recently announced that there were sufficient grounds to doubt the hospital’s analysis of the patient’s condition, and Mr. Golubchuk’s children report that he is now alert and making purposeful movements.

 

Neither those cases, nor scores of similar ones, seem to have given the Manitoba College of Physicians pause before arrogating to doctors the final say in matters of life and death. One thing is certain: In the wake of Manitoba medicine’s new rules, physicians in that province will in the future be spared such embarrassing outcomes. Dead patients tell no tales.....................

BRAZEN NEW WORLD

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[8mmMauser]

Excerpted from WND

Considering that voter registration among younger people is sharply up this year, could it be that Barack Hussein Obama's rising popularity is one indicator of government education's brainwashing success? With voters younger than age 25 offering him the highest margin of victory, record numbers of young people helped push Obama 20,000 votes ahead of competitors in the Iowa Caucus. Increased leftist political activity on college campuses is powering an unprecedented surge of students to voter registration booths.

This year could be a turning point in America as young people, excited about a candidate supporting partial-birth abortion and the dehydration death of Terri Schiavo, come out in droves to support Obama for the highest public office in the world.

Or … this year could spark a revolution marking a more dynamic spiritual change as Christian parents take their country back by pulling their children out of the socialist indoctrination centers mistakenly called "public" schools..........

Christianity's death spiral

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[8mmMauser]

Where's the truth in advertising? Thread by wagglebee.

In a victory for Washington's proposed Death With Dignity initiative, a judge on Friday refused to add the words "physician-assisted suicide" to the ballot or official voters pamphlet description.

"It is a somewhat loaded term," said Thurston County Superior Court Judge Chris Wickham. He said it conjures up images of Jack Kevorkian, the Michigan physician who claimed to have helped more than 100 people die before being convicted of murder in one of the cases...........

No "suicide" label on initiative (Washington State)

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[8mmMauser]

Another example of liberal projection in this instance: The poor lib projects his own dim intelligence onto beings his intellectual superiors. Thread by wagglebee. MountainFlower has a link to an interesting poll on #50.

MEXICO, February 29, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A former attorney general and human rights commission chairman is claiming that unborn children in the earliest stages of development are not human, and are in fact chimpanzees.

Dr. Jorge Carpizo McGregor claims that "for the topic of abortion, there are very important scientific advances that prove that the DNA of chimpanzees is 99 percent identical to that of a human being. The difference between ourselves and chimpanzees is one percent, this quantity that makes the difference is the central nervous system."..........

Legal Expert Claims that Unborn Babies are Really Chimpanzee

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[Dante3]

I agree.

Just saw a photo of Crist with his deer-in-the-headlights look.

I don't know why but I can no longer get "latest posts" but only "latest articles."

[floriduh voter]

ABC REPORTS HALEIGH MAY TESTIFY..photo of Haleigh also.

http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/story?id=4375206&page=1

[floriduh voter]

Use a nickname or omit your last name. The men don’t seem to mind but women should make up a name as a general rule. Get to CC from my pg see r. side.

[8mmMauser]

From the Dakota Voice a perspective on Haleigh Poutre...

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

Have you ever wondered why some people are opposed to euthanasia, and believe that as long as there is any evidence of life, that the date of someone's death is best left up to God?

Unless you're very young, or have been on Mars for a few years, you've probably heard of the Terri Schiavo case from a few years ago. She was the woman who was hospitalized unconscious under suspicious circumstances, and was diagnosed as being in a Persistent Vegetative State (PVS). Her husband, who had since moved on and produced children with another woman and stood to gain financially from Terri's death, lobbied the courts until they finally gave permission to starve this woman to death.

No one denied Terri had suffered brain damage, but despite videos showing her laughing, trying to talk, and responding to various stimuli, a judge in Florida determined her life wasn't living and ordered her feeding tube removed. After about 13 or 14 days, she finally died of dehydration.

~Snip~

Now comes word from ABC News of Haleigh Poutre who was beaten into a coma by her stepfather Jason Strickland in 2005. She became a ward of the state and the Massachusetts Department of Social Services tried to have her life ended. Almost at the last minute was her death sentence by the state lifted, when her stepfather--probably trying to avoid a murder trial--petitioned the court to keep her alive, and before the state could remove her ventilator, she began breathing on her own.

Now, after doctors said she would never recover, the girl is awake and communicating.

Here is what the "experts" said:

"Short of developing a technique for a complete brain transplant, there is no hope that medical treatment will be discovered in the foreseeable future which could reverse" her condition, a doctor said, according to court records.

How many people--like Terri Schiavo--have we, in our vast wisdom, killed when life remained? How many have we killed who might have recovered, had we not taken life-and-death into our own hands?.............................

Coma Patient Who Would Never Recover Has Recovered

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[8mmMauser]

As news rolls in about Haleigh's progress, I plucked this excerpt from a blog by a doctor.

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

This is especially true in children, who have a more “plastic” brain that often recovers from even severe injuries. So why the rush to discontinue life support before there was time? Yes, her father might have interest in keeping her alive.

But the state (who faces a huge hospital bill, not to mention a huge lawsuit for her care since they failed to intervene when previous evidence of abuse had been noted) also had an interest –in making her dead.

Ironically because of the slowness of court appeals, Haleigh’s life support was not ended in October after the first court approved the state’s petition, and by the time the courts made the final decision in January she was starting to show signs of alertness.

A January 2006 report shows that the day after the court authorized the hospital to stop treatment, she was able to be removed from the breathing machine, and needed only a feeding tube, and the DSS said they didn’t plan to do that quite yet..........................

Haleigh Poutre: Not Dead Yet,

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[8mmMauser]

It is one of those times I really regret we can only excerpt from WND these days.

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

But now, as much as I hate to, I must disagree with my friend Joseph Farah once again. Yesterday he wrote: "But Bill Buckley is gone. And so, in my opinion, is the conservative movement."

~Snip~

The last man standing as the leader of the heart of the Republican Party is Gov. Mike Huckabee. He's only candidate who stands for the Human Life Amendment and Marriage Protection Amendment – which just got even more important.

~Snip~

Terri Schiavo: Obama says helping her was his one great "regret" in life. He wishes he could go back in time and have a hand in starving a disabled women to death. Nice. But so does John McCain. Take a look at what he told Esquire (August 2006) and re-run Feb. 21, 2008:

"I understand the frustrations a lot of Republicans feel," McCain says. "We're not representing their hopes and dreams and aspirations. We worry about Ms. Schiavo before we worry about balancing the budget."

As Bobby Schindler said on my radio program last week, "What about the hopes and dreams of my sister (Terri Schiavo)?" Wasn't Barack's book about hope? Just not for the disabled, apparently. The audacity. And do we really want a candidate who thinks the budget is more important than human life? I don't. Huckabee stands for "the least" of us, and he's the only one.......................

The conservative movement's new leader

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[8mmMauser]

From The American Spectator...

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

Re: Letters (under "Kevorkian Care") in Reader Mail's Sissy Slapped:

As someone who is both handicapped and over sixty, the prospect of Obama Care is positively chilling. I can't help but wonder if I, too, will face the horrible death by torture endured by Terri Schiavo at the end of my life. Even mass murderer Timothy McVeigh had a more merciful death, but then, of course, the law forbids "cruel and unusual punishment." The only "crime" poor Terri was guilty of was that of being an inconvenience to her louse of a two-timing spouse.
-- Gretchen L. Chellson
Alexandria, Virginia

IN DEFENSE OF GEORGE NEUMAYR

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[8mmMauser]

Sighhh, this comes for the New York Times, aka NYET.

Those who watched "Family Ties" years ago would recognize this as the writing of the conservative views of Alex Keaton played by Michael J. Fox. The character was a "conservative" as many viewed the term, well close in my view, but NKR (Not Quite Right.) As I remember he was a conservative as liberals see us.

It’s been almost 20 years since “Family Ties” went off the air. And Alex P. Keaton’s political idols, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, have each gone off to their deserved places in history. Yet I still get asked a lot — O.K. maybe not a lot but more than twice — whether Alex Keaton would be a Republican today. And, if so, who would be his candidate in the 2008 presidential election.

~Snip~

Alex Keaton was a true conservative Republican. He was for limited government. He was strongly against government involvement in the personal lives of its citizens. He was competent and capable — the ultimate over-achiever. But, above all Alex Keaton was a firm believer in the power of ideas. He believed in the competitive marketplace of intellectual discourse, where the best ideas win — usually Alex’s. And so it’s difficult to recognize in this current incarnation of the Republican Party, a party whose legacy will include Terri Schiavo and Hurricane Katrina, a place where Alex Keaton might feel the least bit comfortable............

Comedy Stop: What Would Alex Keaton Do?

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[8mmMauser]

From the Moderate Voice, that perspective striving to be nondescript, middle of the highway, median and mean...

Departed liberal Molly Ivins foresaw (had an advance copy of the script...)

The funny, and typical, thing, is that she saw this story coming. She may even be responsible for it, a self-fulfilling Molly Ivins prophecy. It would be interesting to go back and see who in the Democratic Party read her column of Jan. 20, 2006, dateline Austin, distributed nationally by Creators Syndicate. It began:

“I’d like to make it clear to the people who run the Democratic Party that I will not support Hillary Clinton for president . . . Sen. Clinton is apparently incapable of taking a clear stand on the war in Iraq, and that alone is enough to disqualify her. Her failure to speak out on Terri Schiavo, not to mention that gross pandering on flag-burning, are just contemptible little dodges . . . “

In Texas, an Ivins-fulfilling prophecy

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[8mmMauser]

My choice was that he reverse the order of his name to be Hussain Barack Orama, or HBO, the new Hussain on the show circuit. Maybe HussainOrama would do. The Obama Nation would become the Hussain asylum.

What's really behind the vehement protests against the mention of Barack Obama's middle name and the arrogant advice of some Democrats NOT to oppose him in certain ways (as though they really want to be helpful to those who DON'T want Barack to become the President of the United States)?

Answer: Grave concern that the Barack bubble will burst, if he's closely inspected.

The middle name of the candidate of hope and change (and supporter of infanticide and euthanasia as well as abortion) is Hussein. When it's mentioned, some folks go insane.

~Snip~

Barack identifies himself as a Christian, but he lies when he finds it helpful. For example, during his Ohio debate with Hillary he identified himself as a constitutional law professor when lamenting his failure to block the United States Congress from passing a law permitting Terri Schiavo's parents to go to federal court to try to prevent Terri from being starved and dehydrated to death. The truth is that he was a lecturer, not a professor, and he has to know the difference............

Barack Obama's Middle Name

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