Over the past week I've immersed myself in a provocative debate with Nathan Nelson of the blog Sollicitudo Rei Socialis. Our debate began with my response to a post of his -- "Returning to Christendom" June 25, 2005 -- in which he contends that Catholics make a grave mistake in seeking common ground with evangelical Christians ("extremist Christians" or the "Christian Right" in his words), due to the latter's belief in "dominion theology" and, according to Nathan, implicit desire to establish a theocracy. Examples of this collaboration would be Fr. Pavone standing beside Operation Rescue's Randall Terry in the defense of Terry Schiavo and "the vast majority of neoconservative Catholic leaders [who] endorsed and actively promoted a man who clearly does believe in dominion theology for President of the United States."

According to Nathan, such collaborations are ultimately detrimental to Catholics because "When the common enemy of the Evangelical Right and the Catholic Right has been eliminated, the Catholic Christian minority in this country will be in very real danger from the theocratic government ruled primarily by evangelical Christians." Consequently:

Given the absurdity of this comparison (Randall Terry the Christian equivalent of Osama Bin Ladin?) one might be tempted to abandon the discussion at this point, but in the course of further comments I decided to explore the reason behind Nathan's charge that Fr. Pavone seeks "the enforcement of Catholic doctrine at the state level." While Nathan asserted the charge against Pavone was made with reference to contraception, he maintained it would equally apply to any Catholic supporting anti-abortion legislation with the ultimate goal of overturning Roe v. Wade.

Before long, we had arrived at the philosophical core of our disagreement:

Which of course brings us to the question: Is the contention that the unborn are persons an essentially Catholic proposition or is it one that can be defended by reason alone? That is to say, absent of appeal to Catholic dogma and divine revelation?

If the argument that Nathan is proposing sounds familiar to readers, it should. It's the same argument advanced by Senator Kerry in the 2004 Presidential election, in an interview with Peter Jennings. It was addressed by Amy Welborn and myself ("Senator Kerry may be human -- but is he a person?", CatholicKerryWatch July 23, 2004).

It was also made by Ron Reagan during the 2004 Democratic National Convention, making the case for embryonic stem cell research (Ron Reagan and Functionalism, Revisited CatholicKerryWatch July 29, 2004).

The Defense of Personhood - Three Worthy Articles

In responding to Nathan, I had recommended the following articles, which I believe would be helpful to our readers and anybody considering this matter:

• Distorting Catholic Doctrine, Newsmax.com. April 16, 2004. Phil Brennan interviews George Weigel on Senator Kerry's "systematic misrepresentation" of the nature of Catholic teaching on the life issues:
  "What belongs to everyone, since this is a national candidacy, is the responsibility to make clear that when Kerry says the Church's pro-life teaching is a sectarian position which cannot be imposed on a pluralistic society, he is willfully misrepresenting the nature of the Church's position – by suggesting that this is something analogous to the Catholic Church trying to force everyone in the United States to abstain from eating hot dogs on Fridays during Lent."

  "This is simply false . . . The Church's pro-life teaching is something that can be engaged seriously by anyone. You don't have to believe that there are seven sacraments to deal with this, you don't have to believe in the primacy of the bishop of Rome to engage this position. You don't even have to believe in God to engage this [pro-Life] position because it's a position rooted in basic embryology and in basic logic, and anybody can engage that."

• Human Personhood Begins at Conception, by Peter Kreeft. Medical Ethics Policy Monograph Stafford, Virginia: Castello Institute. Boston University professor and Catholic philosopher Peter Kreeft begins:
  Non-Christians and even Christians can take opposite positions on abortion even when they think rationally, honestly, and with good will. The continuing controversy over abortion shows that it is a truly controversial issue. It is not simple and clear-cut, but complex. Just as the choices for action are often difficult for a woman contemplating abortion, the choices for thought are often difficult for open-minded philosophers.

  Everything I have said so far is a lie, in fact a dangerous lie.

  In a hard-hitting passage, he explains exactly what is at stake in the debate over personhood and why it matters:

  Are there any human beings who are not persons? If so, killing them might be permissible, like killing warts. But who might these human non-persons be? Jews? Blacks? Slaves? Infidels? Counterrevolutionaries? Others have said so, and justified their genocide, lynching, slavery, jihad, or gulag. But pro-choicers never include these groups as non-persons. Many pro-choicers include severely retarded or handicapped humans, or very old and sick humans, as non-persons, but this is still morally shocking to most people, and many pro-choicers avoid that morally shocking position by including only fetuses as members of this newly invented class of human non-persons, or non-personal humans. I think no one ever conceived of this category before the abortion controversy. It looks very suspiciously like the category was invented to justify the killing, for its only members are the humans we happen to be now killing and want to keep killing and want to justify killing.

  Kreeft proceeds to make a sound case for the personhood of the fetus, presenting (in Thomistic fashion) a number of arguments commonly employed to explain why the unborn child is not a human person, and then soundly refuting them.

  He reveals the philosophical premises of those who through pure sophistry attempt to separate personhood from humanity:

  There is a common premise hidden behind all seven of these pro-choice arguments. It is the premise of Functionalism: defining a person by his or her functioning or behavior. A "behavioral definition" is proper and practical for scientific purposes of prediction and experimentation, but it is not adequate for ordinary reason and common sense, much less for good philosophy or morality, which should be based on common sense. Why? Because common sense distinguishes between what one is and what one does, between being and fun functioning, thus between "being a person" and "functioning as a person." One cannot function as a person without being a person, but one can surely be a person without functioning as a person.

• God's Reasons (1998), by Princeton University Professor of Jurisprudence Robert P. George, on the relevance of appeals to religious authority have a role in public policy debate. Nathan remarks: "Without having yet read the essay, I can already tell you that I reject any assertion that appeals to religious authority have a place in the formation of public policy," and launches into an explanation of why he believes this is the case. Had he actually read the essay, he would have discovered that Dr. George agrees with him:
  Appeals to religious authority have their place. That place is plainly not, however, in philosophical debates, including philosophical debates about public policy.

  Do such appeals have a legitimate place in political advocacy? I think they do, but at the same time, I have some sympathy with Professor John Rawls's proposition that such appeals are legitimate only where they are offered to buttress and motivate people to act on positions that are defensible without such appeals. . . .

  Many, perhaps most, serious religious believers in our society believe . . . that God is a God of justice, who cares what the public policy of our society is on morally significant questions -- e.g., abortion, euthanasia, and marriage and sexuality, not to mention capital punishment, civil and human rights, military policy, economic justice, etc. And a great many believers, though not all, believe, as I do, that God wills that the unborn, handicapped, and frail elderly be protected by law, and that the institution of marriage as a permanent and exclusive union of one man and one woman be preserved against what we believe are the corrupting influences of sexual immorality.

  But we also believe not only that there are reasons (apart from revelation) for these policy positions, but also that these reasons are (or, at least, are among) God's reasons for willing what He wills. Indeed, it is our view that often the identification of these reasons by philosophical inquiry and analysis, supplemented sometimes by knowledge derived from the natural and/or social sciences, is critical to an accurate understanding of the content of revelation in, say, the Bible or Jewish or Christian tradition.

  George goes on to demonstrate exactly how the case for the humanity of the unborn can be made independantly of appeal to religious authority. (He has little patience for those who attempt to distinguish between human beings in the biological sense and beings in the moral sense, or "persons." For George, a honest and dispassionate consideration of the scientific evidence suffices to establish

  "the fact that each of us was, from conception, a human being. Science, not religion, vindicates this crucial premise of the pro-life claim. From it, there is no avoiding the conclusion that deliberate feticide is a form of homicide."

A religious defense of Roe v. Wade?

In what seems to me rather odd behavior for a Catholic blog that characterizes itself as one "[seeking] to joyfully proclaim the fullness of Catholic social teaching for progress in the American government and politics in general", Nathan actually defends Roe v. Wade as a protection of the "right to privacy" and a necessary bullwark against the encroachment of Christian theocracy:

In the article I mentioned above, Dr. George turns this argument on its head, noting that many of those who defend abortion now find themselves in the curious position of defending the choice to abort one's child as a distinctly religious one -- against those who ground the right to life in an appeal to human reason:

With the vacancy in the U.S. Supreme Court and both sides gearing up to address the merits of the President's nomination, we can expect the host of "life issues" to play their part. As we prepare for the oncoming debates, it is important to recognize the philosophical grounds on which the advocates of abortion, euthanasia ("mercy killing"); embroyonic stem-cell research and human cloning make their case, and to recognize as well false arguments that are erected in the attempt to restrict the role of American Catholics in shaping a culture of life and a nation that truly ensures the right of life for all.

As a supplement to this post I recommend "Church Teachings and the "Delayed Personhood" Ruse" (August 12, 2004), by Dianne N. Irving (LifeIssues.Net). According to Dianne:

Dianne has compiled for our benefit a list of teachings by the Church -- stated verbatim -- on the issue of "personhood." As the reader will discover,

Labels: terry schiavo

Even worse, patients who are thus "cognitively impaired" are, in the minds of such intellectuals, prime candidates for organ-harvesting or human research subjects. The kind of talk that was once the inspiration for medical horror films, or the fevered speculations of Jack "Dr. Death" Kevorkian, are now, according to Smith, no longer on the fringe in bioethics:

Mr. Smith is an attorney for the International Task Force on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide, and a special consultant to the Center for Bioethics and Culture. He is the author most recently of Consumer's Guide to a Brave New World.

Labels: terry schiavo

Fr. Rob also provides a line-by-line commentary of Terri Schiavo's "Exit Protocol" prepared by Terry's own doctors and nurses at the hospital where she resides, "a regimen of medication intended to perpetrate an illusion: the illusion that someone is peacefully "slipping away", when in fact they are dying in a painful and brutal way."

Pray for Terri, pray for this country, God have mercy.

• Starving for a Fair Diagnosis, by Fr. Rob Johansen. National Review March 16, 2005. The courts, and many in the mainstream media, seem matter-of-fact that Terri has had the best of medical care, that she has been subject to every attempt at therapy and rehabilitation, and that she has been correctly diagnosed to be in a "persistent vegetative state" [PVS]. Don't believe a word.
• 3/19/05 - Congress Moves Again to Keep Fla. Woman Alive Reuters, March 19, 2005.
• 3/20/05 - Update! - US House to Reconvene at 12:01 AM for Terri's Bill
  In an unprecedented move, the United States House of Representatives convened today at 1 PM and immediately went into recess until 12:01 AM. This was a tactical move to prevent certain representatives from killing a bill designed to give Terry Schiavo standing in Federal Court.

  At this time, the House is scheduled to vote on the measure at one minute past midnight and the Senate is to take up the measure sometime thereafter. President George W. Bush has already left his Crawford, TX, ranch to return to Washington so he will be available to sign the bill, if passed by Congress.

  We urge you to pray for this measure and contact members of the US House (http://www.house.gov/) and Senate (http://www.senate.gov/) and urge them to support Terri's Bill.

  (via Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam).

Labels: terry schiavo

The T4 Euthanasia Program had its roots in Hitler's drive to develop a "master race" out of a "biologically pure" Aryan population. The forced sterilization of those suffering from hereditary disease -- a move reflected in the United States' eugenics movement -- was a precursor to the mercy killing of those deemed "uncurable."

According to the HMM, planning for the Euthanasia Program was believed to be initiated in 1939. In October of that year, Hitler signed a secret authorization granting doctors the right to carry out "mercy deaths" of patients considered "incurable according to the best available human judgment of their state of health." The authorization gave physicians, medical staff and administrators immunity from prosecution for their participation in the program. Six gassing installations were subsequently established to facilitate the secret execution of children and adults with physical disabilities or mental ilness, otherwise deemed "unfit" for life. (Mentally and Physically Handicapped: Victims of the Nazi Era; also available in PDF format).

Eventually, the T4 Program became public knowledge, and in August 1941 was formally halted by order of Hitler, in response to "private and public protests concerning the killings, especially from members of the German clergy." This did not bring an end to the executions, however, which secretly resumed in 1942. Rather than gassing, the executions were carried out by lethal injection and drug overdose in clinics throughout Germany into the last days of World War II, "expanding to include an ever wider range of victims: so-called asocials, geriatric patients, bombing victims, and foreign forced laborers.":

For further documentation of the T4 Euthanasia Program, see Henry Friedlander's The Origins of Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia to the Final Solution.

In December 2004, the Royal Dutch Medical Association (KNMG) "asked the Netherlands Ministry of Health to create an independent board to evaluate euthanasia cases for each category of people 'with no free will,' a category that would include children, the severely mentally retarded and patients in irreversible comas. ("Dutch ponder 'mercy killing' rules", CNN Dec. 2, 2004).

According to the Associated Press, the Groningen Academic Hospital in Amsterdam "recently proposed guidelines for mercy killings of terminally ill newborns, and then made a startling revelation: It has already begun carrying out such procedures, which include administering a lethal dose of sedatives." ("Netherlands grapples with euthanasia of babies" MSNBC, Nov. 30, 2004). The story made its rounds through the blogosphere, but as Hugh Hewitt noted in the Weekly Standard ("Death by Committee", received precious little mention by the editors and pundits in the mainstream press.

Now, according to Knight Ridder News, a group of Dutch doctors are pressing the issue further by publicly admitting to killing twenty newborns, presenting themselves to public prosecutors with the intent of provoking public recognition of their actions by the Dutch Parliament:

"Doctors report killing of babies" Knight Ridder News (March 7, 2005).

The Dutch Parliament's approval of euthanasia "under certain circumstances" is practically a myth. Euthanasia is now being performed in the Netherlands not only by consent of the patient but autonomous fiat of the physician -- as Henk Reitsema, leader of the L'Abri Fellowship in Holland, learned when he discovered the facts behind his grandfather's death. (Deadly Diagnosis in the Netherlands, by Jonathan Imbody. Family Voice January/February 2001).

According to the report by Concerned Women for America, "Dutch politicians and health officials carefully emphasize a system of controls designed to ensure patient autonomy. In practice, however, those controls are a fairy tale. Dutch medical surveys reveal that in three out of four cases where doctors intervened to hasten death, the patient did not give permission."

And according to a recent article in the New England Journal of Medicine by euthanasia advocates Eduard Verhagen and Pieter Sauer, infant euthanasia is unreported and widespread as well, by a rate of "15-20 cases every year -- yet only an average of three reported annually." (LifeSiteNews, March 11, 2005).

It is an "irony of history," notes the International Task Force on Euthanasia, that Holland was the only occupied country whose doctors refused to participate in the Nazieuthanasia program:

Those living in the United States might react with horror and moral repugnance at the news coming from the Netherlands, but we've got monsters in our own backyard to contend with. The State of Oregon has already taken the plunge by passing its own doctor-assisted suicide law in 1997, resulting in the documented deaths of more than 170 patients (I'm not sure if this one counts).

And as I write this, Florida's 6th Circuit Courge Judge Greer is hell-bent -- figuratively and metaphysically -- on ensuring the death of Terri Schindler-Schiavo, brushing aside every attempt by her parents to save her life (as reported by Fr. Rob Johansen of Thrown Back, March 8, 2005).

At this point, all that seems to stand between Judge Greer and Terri's demise are the efforts of Rep. Dennis Baxley, R-Ocala and the Florida legislature (as reported by Sun Sentinel March 10, 2005; further commentary on Earl Appleby of LifeMatters, Catholics in the Public Square).

And, as we noted in an earlier post ("Better Off Dead" or "Not Dead Yet?" March 2, 2005), the lawyer for Terri's husband Michael, as well as the leading medical witness, are both personally involved in the movement to legalize euthanasia in the United States. No small coincidence, that.

Those involved in Germany's T4 program were compelled by social Darwinianism (for whom the disabled were considered an impediment to their utopian dream of a master race); the Dutch on the other hand are motivated by a more enlightened compassion (desiring a quick and "painless" end to those for whom there is no cure), and Michael Schiavo is driven by the desire to put his wife out of her alleged misery and go on with his own life (having already done so to a certain extent, shacking up with his mistress and melting down Terri's wedding rings to make jewelry for himself). Regardless of the historical context or personal motivation, there seems to be an underlying theme to these situations: when faced with the task of caring for the disabled, and especially those deemed incurable, all those involved have subjectively decided that the patient's life is of such a quality that he or she may be deemed expendable. Suffering is regarded as the greatest offense, and killing is considered the chief act of mercy.

As Dr. Bert P. Dorenbos, President Schreeuw om Leven (Cry for Life) Hilversum, Holland, observes, underlying the push for euthanasia is an attempt to get rid of suffering, and all the inconvenience and human drudgery that suffering entails. In a report on The Dutch Euthanasia Law (Public Justice Report Vol. 25, No. 3, 2002), Dr. Dorenbos examines the implications of this view:

When Dr. Dorenbos was notified of the plight of Terri Schiavo in 2003, he responded with a "warning from Holland" that Judge Greer's decision to deprive Terri of essential nutrition and hydration "is more important than the Supreme Court Decision to ban euthanasia in the United States of America," given that it would "[open] the floodgate of subjective decision making in cases of life and death":

Dr. Dorenbos should know the dangers of the subjective approach, as his country has already made the transition from formal legalization of voluntary euthanasia to covert involuntary euthanasia for the elderly, to what looks to be the impending endorsement of infanticide (but only under certain conditions) in a matter of decades.

There is a memorable scene in The Thanatos Syndrome, by Walker Percy, involving a chapter-length conversation between the protagonist, Dr. Thomas More, and Father Smith, a somewhat off-kilter but perceptive priest holed up in a fire-tower:

Dr. More shrugs off the priest's response. Readers may be inclined to do so as well, convinced that any mention of the Holocaust in the context of a moral argument borders on the cliche. However, it is altogether likely that, barring persistent action by our legislators and the vocal protest and opposition of fellow Americans, we will witness an increasing number of "mercy killings" such as those already happening in the Netherlands under the masque of compassion. We best heed the cryptic warning of Fr. Smith:

Recommended Links:

• The International Task Force on Euthanasia's website compiles articles "addressing the issues of euthanasia, assisted suicide, advance directives, assisted suicide proposals, "right-to-die" cases, euthanasia practices in the Netherlands, disability rights, pain control and much, much more" -- including a one-page fact sheet on Terri Schiavo you can send to journalists ignorant about the case.

Labels: terry schiavo

I've been thinking about the confluence of these two issues in the news over the past several weeks and the underlying themes that they share: the fear of suffering and disability that pervades our culture that compels some to seek "an easy way out", a quick painless end -- "better off dead" rather than a burden to self and others.

In Killing Terri Schiavo, (Crisis Magazine January 4, 2004), Rev. Robert Johansen examines "the euthanasia connection" in great detail. It is no coincidence that Michael Schiavo's attorney, George Felos, is a member of the Hemlock Society (presently known as the warm, fuzzy and politically-correct Compassion & Choices"), or that Felos' book Litigation as Spiritual Practice describes him as "spearheading a social revolution to enable death with dignity in the state of Florida."

Neither is it a coincidence that Michael Schiavo's leading medical witness in the case, Dr. Ronald Cranford, "was the leading medical voice calling for the deaths of Paul Brophy, Nancy Jobes, Nancy Cruzan, and Christine Busalucci, all of whom were brain-damaged but not dying."

You can read more about Felos and Cranford in Tony Collins' substantial article "Dealers of Death" (Envoy Magazine January 2004), in which she exames the Right-to-Die movement's exploitation of Terri Schiavo to advance their political agenda. How often do we hear pundits murmur in sympathetic tones that the plight of Terri Schiavo could have been avoided if only she had "A Living Will"?

Whereas right-to-die advocates see Terri Schiavo as a lesson in opportunities lost, disability rights advocates express concern that Million Dollar Baby will bolster the public case for physician-assisted suicide. In Seeing Million Dollar Baby From My Wheelchair, Diane Coleman, J.D., president of disability-rights organization Not Dead Yet, describes her experience watching the film and being a part of the audience:

Not Dead Yet joins other organizations such as the National Spinal Cord Injury Association, in its opposition to the film. According to CNN:

(Source: The backlash over 'Million Dollar Baby' CNN. Feb. 7, 2005.)

Related Links:

• Emotional Punch, Jay Cridlin. St. Petersburg Times February 27, 2005. Another journalist looks at the comparisons between the film and real-life happenings in Florida.
• "The Oscars, Suicide Movies, Clint Eastwood & the ADA", by disability-rights publication The Ragged Edge.
• "Dangerous Times", a review of Million Dollar Baby by Steve Drake, Research Analyst for Not Dead Yet. Ragged Edge January 11, 2005.
• BlogsForTerri, a list of sites that are committed to supporting and defending the life of Terri Schiavo through their blogging activities.

Labels: terry schiavo

I. Shawn McElhinney (Rerum Novarum) has a provocative and well-written string of posts on this subject. The essence of his argument is this: that there are three fundamental rights of man (life, liberty, property):

These rights must be defended together as a unit, or else they will fail -- that is to say, to defend one to the exclusion of the others (by neglect and inattention) is ultimately counter-productive.

The argument was made on Rerum Novarum well before the plight of Terri Schiavo, but it is no less relevant to the discussion, and I mention it for the benefit of our readers:

More on Terri Schiavo and the Fundamental Rights of Man. Feb. 18, 2005.

Related posts from Rerum Novarum:

• More on Terri Schiavo, an Activist Blogosphere Effort on Her Behalf, Etc. Feb. 20, 2005.
• More on Terri Schiavo and the Fundamental Rights of Man. Feb. 18, 2005.
• Developing a Consistent Principle of Argumentation, Oct. 30, 2003.
• Discussion of these fundamental rights and their unity took place last year, when Shawn defended the right of fellow blogger Jeff Cullbreath and his family against those who attacked his printing business on account of his refusal to print documents he found morally objectionable. Oct. 15, 2003.

For updates on Terri Schiavo, stay tuned to Fr. Rob Johansen @ Thrown Back.

Labels: terry schiavo

• Fellow Catholic bloggers (Life Matters; Times Against Humanity; Thrown Back, among others) relay the news that a number of legal specialists are insisting that Gov. Bush does in fact posses the legal authority (and obligation) to intervene on behalf of Terry Schiavo, despite his claims to the contrary. Unfortunately, Gov. Bush appears to be lacking the political motivation to do so, prompting many to query along with Newsmax.com: "Has Gov. Bush wimped out?".

  Those wishing to ask Gov. Bush about his reluctance to assist can e-mail him at jeb.bush@myflorida.com or phone him at 850-488-7146 (comments line) and 850-488-4441. I confess to being skeptical when it comes to politicans taking action on behalf of moral causes -- short of a miracle, I think that only an overwhelming outcry among resident voters in Florida will prompt him to further action. (Of course, I hope he'll prove me wrong and said as much in my letter).

  [UPDATE: As reported by Mark Shea, Jeb Bush has called a special session of the Fla. legislature for Monday, and a state legislator will introduce "Terri's Bill," a bill to put a temporary moratorium on all dehydration and starvation deaths underway in Florida].

• Peter Vere from Catholic Light wonders (justifiably so, I think) if there is something more than money motivating Mr. Schiavo's desire to end the life of his wife. He also requests prayers for Christopher Ferrara, who is providing legal assistance to Schiavo's family in seeking an intervention.
• Providing a different stance on the issue, Mark from Minute Particulars blogs on one what he believes is a neglected element of this debate, namely, the "right of a husband or wife to determine what is best for his or her incapacitated spouse." Peter of Sursum Corda responds, initiating an interesting exchange in the comments section with El Camino Real's Jeff Culbreath and others.
• Finally, Disturber of the Peace posts some stern criticisms pertaining to Schiavo case from one courageous Catholic bishop. Bishop Lynch of St. Petersberg, FL? -- Unfortunately, no. Rather, from Cardinal Clemens von Galen, Archbishop of Munster, Germany, 1941, who spoke out against the "mercy killings" of the Nazi euthanasia movement.

Labels: terry schiavo

See William Luse, Bill Cork, Fr. Rob Johansen, and Times Against Humanity -- providing regular updates and commentary noticeably absent from the mainstream media.

St. Teresa d'Avila, pray for us.

Labels: terry schiavo

Terri has been confined to a nursing home in what has been called a 'persistent vegetative state' due to brain damage from a "sudden collapse" in 1990. (This charge is disputed by videotaped evidence that Terri responds to stimulus, such as her presence of her parents).

Terri was awarded $750,000 from this suit and an additional $250,000 from a separate malpractice lawsuit. The money was awarded to Terri for her care and rehabilitation and to be placed in a Medical Trust Fund.  Terri’s husband received his personal award money and Terri’s medical fund money in early 1993. From the date he received the award money in 1993, Michael Schiavo has denied Terri any rehabilitation treatment. Michael Schiavo has confined Terri to a nursing home (currently, Terri is in a Hospice facility) where she is 'maintained.' ¹

Michael Schiavo claims his wife would not want to live this way and has been petitioning to have the feeding tube removed since 1998. He is currently living with another woman to whom he has announced his engagement -- because Terri has no will, in the event of her death he would inherit what is left of Terri’s $750,000 medical fund, which he currently uses to pay for his legal bills.

Terri's parents are fighting to save her life. Their efforts are impeded by the fact that her husband has withheld all medical and neurological information and will not permit any doctor to examine Terri other than the doctors he selects.

Even more disturbing is the fact that there appears to be criminal play behind Terri's "collapse." According to this article:

But Terri's parents have questions about the circumstances of the reported heart attack that caused Terri's brain damage, questions they believe should cast doubt on Michael Schiavo's fitness to be Terri's guardian. They point to an emergency room "admitting summary" from the night the brain damage occurred, which noted that Terri had a "rigid neck." One physician reviewing the records stated that the only other patient he had treated with a similarly "rigid neck" had been the victim of strangulation.

The parents also believe a bone-scan report supports their theory that Terri's brain damage is the result of an assault and not a heart attack. The parties in the dispute hotly contest the bone scan, which was completed 53 weeks after the event that led to the brain damage.

Three physicians have testified that, based upon the bone scan, Terri appeared to have been physically assaulted. The injuries they identified included "trauma to her ribs, her pelvic area, L1 vertebrae, spine, both knees and both ankles...a broken femur and a broken back." ²

According to a petition to Governor Bush, Terri's husband has recently petitioned the court to have Terri’s body cremated immediately following her death. The Schindler Family believes Terri’s cremation is a maneuver her husband will utilize to destroy evidence of his criminal acts.

[Thanks to Michael Dubruiel by way of Times Against Humanity for the news].

Additional Links:

• Interview Bob Schindler, Jr. Terri's brother.
• Terri Schiavo’s Life and Death. National Review Sept. 16, 2003.
• Not Dead Yet, people with disabilities opposed to euthanasia and assisted suicide, have joined in the fight for Terri's life.
• The Mighty Barrister has penned A Prayer for the Life of Terri Schiavo.

Labels: terry schiavo