posted 10-22-2003 05:41 PM            

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Posted: October 22, 2003
5:15 p.m. Eastern

By Sarah Foster
© 2003 WorldNetDaily.com

Even though Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and state legislature yesterday halted the court-ordered starvation death of brain-disabled Terri Schindler-Schiavo, her family and legal counsel are afraid her life will be increasingly at risk as long as the courts allow her husband to remain her guardian and do not appoint a guardian ad litem as demanded by the special legislation that was passed.

"My greatest fear is that Michael [Schiavo] will order Terri out of the hospital before she is medically stabilized and rehydrated – as he did three times last August when she had pneumonia," said Patricia Anderson, attorney for Terri's parents, Robert and Mary Schindler.

"That is why we need a guardian ad litem," she added. "That is what Terri's Bill is about. We've got to have a guardian ad litem to put a stop to that kind of hijinks, because his primary objective is to kill her."

Schiavo very nearly succeeded in his five-year quest to end his wife's life by court-approved starvation. With only a few hours remaining before she slipped beyond the point where she could be saved, Florida lawmakers yesterday delivered to the governor legislation empowering him to order Schiavo's feeding tube reinserted, and Bush signed the life-saving law as well as an implementing executive order.

"Terri's Bill" specifically directs the chief judge (David Demers) of the 6th Judicial Circuit Court to appoint a guardian ad litem to represent Terri "upon issuance of a stay," but he has not yet done so – which Anderson views as a matter of urgency.

"Terri will be out of danger only when Michael is no longer her guardian and no longer has access to her," she said bluntly.

Crowds of demonstrators cheered wildly, as Terri was transferred by ambulance from Woodside Hospice in Pinellas Park, Fla., to Morton Plant Hospital in Clearwater, about 25 miles away, where upon her feeding tube was reinserted and rehydration begun after her six days ordeal of judge-ordered starvation.

Family locked out

No sooner was his wife admitted to Morton Plant Hospital in Clearwater, Fla., than Schiavo sent an order barring Terri's parents and siblings from visiting her.

The Schindlers were not informed of Schiavo's action, and only learned of it late that evening from Terri's brother, who had driven to the hospital to visit his sister and was escorted from the premises by an armed security guard. Bobby Schindler, 38, told WorldNetDaily he was told by the administrator on duty that Schiavo had left instructions that "no family members, no anybody is to visit Terri," and that they were to be given no information about her medical condition.

Schindler was too exhausted by worry over the fate of his sister and the events of the past seven days to express anger. But he said he's not surprised by this recent action by Schiavo.

"Michael's been doing this kind of thing for almost as long as he's been guardian of my sister," he exclaimed. "It's been going on for over a decade and it continues. Even after the governor stepped in and did what he did today, [Schiavo] continues to use his power as a weapon against our family and Terri."

It's one of many times her husband has ordered Terri isolated from family and those close to her. In mid-August, he barred a Roman Catholic priest from visiting her at Morton Plant Hospital where she was taken due to a sudden medical crisis.

Schiavo said his action that time was prompted by a late-evening visit by Monsignor Thaddeus Malanowski, a former Army chaplain, who had been asked by Terri's father to drop by the hospital to see how she was faring.

Even though the monsignor was on a court-approved list of visitors and regularly visited her at the hospice where she has been a patient for three years, Schiavo had a long-standing policy that no one could visit Terri unaccompanied either by himself or family member and that Malanowski had knowingly violated his order.

Schiavo's attorney Deborah Bushnell told WorldNetDaily that her client was concerned about Malanowski's "integrity" and felt the 81-year-old priest was not "the kind of person that he wanted visiting Terri or that he felt comfortable visiting Terri." Eventually he relented slightly and the monsignor was allowed to resume his visits subject to week-to-week approval by Schiavo.

Last Wednesday, the day Terri's feeding tube was removed, Schiavo's attorneys ordered family members barred from being alone with Terri at the hospice following Robert Schindler's release to the media of a videotape distributed in evidence that the woman is not in a "persistent vegetative state," as Schiavo's advocates claim.

Schindler admitted the tape was made surreptitiously in violation of a court order by probate Judge George Greer of the Pinellas-County Circuit Court. The video, which shows Terri alert and laughing and trying to speak, further indicates attempts at rehabilitative therapy, also banned by the courts.

Following the video's release, her family was told they were barred from visiting the dying woman "unless [Schiavo] or his representative is present."

In at least one instance, the "representative" that accompanied Robert and Mary Schindler to the bedside of their daughter was none other than the mother of Schiavo's mistress, Jodi Centonze, with whom he has been living for a number of years. He and Centonze have a 1-year-old daughter and are expecting a second child.

As WorldNetDaily reported, the Schindlers had been fighting their son-in-law for 10 years over the lack of care and therapy Schiavo as her guardian provided for their daughter, who suffered massive brain damage when she collapsed at her home 13 years ago under mysterious circumstances at the age of 26.

The ongoing dispute escalated five years ago when Schiavo petitioned the court for permission to end his wife's life by removing her feeding tube, insisting she is in a "persistent vegetative state" and had told him years before she would not want to be maintained "by tubes" and "artificial means." Although Terri breathes on her on and maintains her own blood pressure, she requires a simple tube into her abdomen to her stomach for nourishment and hydration.

The Schindlers fought tenaciously to keep their daughter and the case alive in the courts, but they have been basically blocked at every turn, in particular by Greer, who has had charge of the case almost from the beginning. When the seven-member Florida Supreme Court in August turned down a petition to review the case, the way was clear for Schiavo to starve his wife to death.

posted 10-23-2003 09:23 AM            

Terri snatched from hospital
Attorney: Brain-disabled woman still in danger as judge has not appointed guardian ad litem

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Posted: October 23, 2003
1:00 a.m. Eastern

By Sarah Foster
© 2003 WorldNetDaily.com

Attorney Patricia Anderson's greatest fear was realized yesterday when she learned that Michael Schiavo had removed his wife Terri Schindler-Schiavo from Morton Plant Hospital in Clearwater, Fla., where she was taken to have her feeding tube reinstalled, and returned clandestinely to the Woodside Facility of the Hospice of the Florida Sun Coast in Pinellas Park where she has been a patient for over three years.

Just hours earlier, Anderson – who has represented Robert and Mary Schindler in their decade-long legal battle with their son-in-law – told WorldNetDaily she was intensely concerned that Schiavo would remove Terri from the hospital before her condition was medically stabilized and she was rehydrated, in accordance with Florida Gov. Jeb Bush's executive order.

This would be completely at odds with the purpose of Tuesday's special legislation by the Florida legislature that empowered Gov. Jeb Bush to order Schiavo's feeding tube reinserted, and halted the court-ordered death of the 39-year-old brain-disabled woman, whose husband had long sought to end her life.

But Schiavo had done that several times in the past, most recently in August when Terri was shuttled back and forth on three separate occasions during bouts with pneumonia and other medical problems. Each time she was kept at Morton Plant only a few days and returned to the hospice in a much-weakened state.

"I don't have any doubt that she should be in intensive care at the hospital," said Anderson. "But the fact is, Michael's her guardian and if he withdraws his consent for them to treat her there's nothing they can do. Their hands are tied. This tells you a lot about him."

Anderson said she felt that the hospital would have preferred to keep her before releasing her prematurely, but Schiavo is the one who must consent to treatment.

"If he revokes the consent and he is her legal guardian, their hands are tied," she explained. "They cannot continue to treat her without his consent. That is why the appointment of a guardian ad litem is so very crucial," she added.

Report from the frontlines

Anderson said she saw Terri was being tube-fed when she was there, but there is no IV line supplying hydration, though she may have had sufficient fluid during the 24 hours she was at Morton Plant.

Both parents and brother Bobby were with her, and she was responsive, though sleepy.

"That is why we need a guardian ad litem," she added. "That is what Terri's Bill is about. We've got to have a guardian ad litem to put a stop to that kind of hijinks, because [Michael's] primary objective is to kill her."

Schiavo very nearly succeeded in his five-year quest to end his wife's life by court-approved starvation. With only a few hours remaining before she slipped beyond the point where she could be saved, Florida lawmakers Tuesday delivered to the governor legislation empowering him to order Schiavo's feeding tube reinserted, and Bush signed the life-saving law as well as an implementing executive order.

"Terri's Bill" specifically directs the chief judge, David Demers of the 6th Judicial Circuit Court, to appoint a guardian ad litem to represent Terri "upon issuance of a stay," but he has not yet done so – a matter that Anderson views as a matter of urgency.

"Terri will be out of danger only when Michael is no longer her guardian and no longer has access to her," she said bluntly.

Bay 9 News TV reports Demers has directed the attorneys of both Michael Schiavo and the Schindlers to reach agreement on who should serve as guardian ad litem within five days. The guardian would be Terri's advocate in legal proceedings, but, the report said, Michael Schiavo would remain the decision-maker.

Demers says he will appoint Dr. Jay Wolfson, a professor of health and law at Stetson University, as the guardian ad litem if the parties cannot reach agreement.

Crowds of demonstrators cheered wildly as Terri was transferred by ambulance from Woodside Hospice to Morton Plant Hospital, about 25 miles away, whereupon her feeding tube was reinserted and rehydration begun after her six days ordeal of judge-ordered starvation.

Family locked out

No sooner was his wife admitted to Morton Plant than Schiavo sent an order directing the hospital to bar Terri's parents and siblings from visiting her.

The Schindlers were not informed of Schiavo's action, and only learned of it late that evening from Terri's brother who had driven to the hospital to visit his sister and was escorted from the premises by an armed security guard. Bobby Schindler, 38, told WorldNetDaily he was told by the administrator on duty that Schiavo had left instructions that "no family members, not anybody is to visit Terri," and that they were to be given no information about her medical condition. Schindler was too exhausted by worry over the fate of his sister and the events of the past seven days to express anger. But he said he's not surprised by this recent action by Schiavo.

"Michael's been doing this kind of thing for almost as long as he's been guardian of my sister," he exclaimed. "It's going on for over a decade and it continues. Even after the governor stepped in and did what he did today, [Schiavo] continues to use his guardianship power as a weapon against our family and Terri."

It's one of many times her husband has ordered Terri isolated from family and those close to her. In mid-August he barred a Roman Catholic priest from visiting her at Morton Plant Hospital where she was taken due to a sudden medical crisis.

Schiavo said his action was prompted by a late-evening visit by Terri's spiritual adviser, Monsignor Thaddeus Malanowski, a former Army chaplain, who had been asked by her father to drop by the hospital to see how she was faring.

Even though the monsignor was on a list of court-approved visitors and regularly visited her at the hospice with her parents, Schiavo was outraged when he heard about it, regarding it as a willful violation of a policy he had established prohibiting callers unless accompanied either by himself or a family member.

Schiavo's attorney Deborah Bushnell told WorldNetDaily that her client was concerned about Malanowski's "integrity" and felt the 81-year-old priest was not "the kind of person that he wanted visiting Terri or that he felt comfortable visiting Terri." Eventually he relented slightly, and the monsignor was allowed to resume his visits subject to week-to-week approval by Schiavo.

Last Wednesday, the day Terri's feeding tube was removed, Schiavo's attorneys ordered family members barred from being alone with Terri at the hospice following Robert Schindler's release to the media of a videotape distributed in evidence that the woman is not in a "persistent vegetative state" as Schiavo's advocates claim.

Schindler admitted the tape was made surreptitiously, in violation of a court order by probate Judge George Greer, of the Pinellas-County Circuit Court. The video, which shows Terri alert and laughing and trying to speak, further indicates attempts at rehabilatative therapy, also banned by the courts.

Following the video's release, her family was told they were barred from visiting the dying woman "unless [Schiavo] or his representative is present."

In at least one instance, the "representative" that accompanied Robert and Mary Schindler to the bedside of their daughter was none other than the mother of Schiavo's mistress, Jodi Centonze, with whom he has been living for a number of years. He and Centonze have a 1-year-old daughter and are expecting a second child.

As WorldNetDaily reported, the Schindlers had been fighting their son-in-law for 10 years over the lack of care and therapy Schiavo as her guardian provided for their daughter, who suffered massive brain damage when she collapsed at her home 13 years ago under mysterious circumstances at the age of 26.

The ongoing dispute escalated five years ago when Schiavo petitioned the court for permission to end his wife's life by removing her feeding tube, insisting she is in a "persistent vegetative state" and had told him years before she would not want to be maintained "by tubes" and "artificial means" Although Terri breathes on her own and maintains her own blood pressure, she requires a simple tube into her abdomen to her stomach for nourishment and hydration.

The Schindlers fought tenaciously to keep their daughter and the case alive in the courts, but were basically blocked at every turn, in particular by Judge George Greer, who has had charge of the case almost from the beginning. When the seven-member Florida Supreme Court in August turned down a petition to review the case, the way was clear for Schiavo to starve his wife to death.

On Sept. 17, Greer scheduled Oct. 15 as the day Terri's feeding tube would be removed. At the same time, in a separate ruling, he denied rehabilitation and speech therapy for the disabled woman.

posted 10-23-2003 11:11 AM            

BTW is it just a coincidence that the doctor hired by the 'husband' who sees her 3 times a year, shares a surmane with the judge aiding and abetting the murder of Terri?

posted 10-23-2003 10:20 PM            

OMG – can you even imagine? I have yet to hear one person admit they are behind the “heartless husband” (HH). Or maybe they are and won’t say it!? I read in an article yesterday that said attorneys nationwide are behind HH and feel that Jeb Bush’s interference is unconstitutional. This is a lie!!! I spoke with quite a few attorneys today regarding their opinion of this case – they were from different areas of practice, and one is a Professor of Law at Temple University. Without knowing the complete details of the case, they all basically said a court appointed guardian is detrimental at this point AND that there is no proof of what HH claims are her wishes. As such, they are going to have one tough time disputing Teri’s Bill beginning next week. I could not get one of them to agree with Felos.

Teri’s Bill: http://www.cnsnews.com/pdf/2003/s0012E.pdf

I came across this article by accident today. It’s a story about another woman that was apparently in a coma that woke up and could not communicate but could hear everything being said around her. Guess they all thought she was a vegetable too!
http://209.157.64.200/focus/f-news/970364/posts#comment

When I Woke Up..."; Hope for Terri Schiavo
by Rus Cooper-Dowda

In February of 1985, I woke up in a hospital bed in Boston, MA. I couldn't see very well and I couldn't move much -- but boy could I ever hear!

I heard a terrifying discussion then that I will never, ever forget.

Around the end of my bed were a "school" of doctors in their white coats, planning when to disconnect my ventilator and feeding tube. I immediately started screaming, "I'm here!!" No one but me heard me.

They did notice my sudden agitation. They heavily sedated me. For a time, every time I woke up I would make as much noise and move as a much as I could to show them I was "in there."

And they would, in response, heavily sedate me...

I then started spelling the same word in the air, "Don't! Don't! Don't!...."

The doctors decided that the letters I was spelling in the air were repetitive seizure activity and just happened to occur most often when they were in my room discussing killing me...I even took to writing them backwards to make it easy for them to read...

And their response was to sedate me even more....

But, the nursing staff began to believe I was really and truly with them.

One, in particular, starting bringing in a clipboard and a broken pen when she talked to me. She would put ink on my fingers, the clipboard under my right hand and then ask me yes and no questions in the beginning.
With her I secretly progressed to answering in sentence fragments. However, by doctor's orders she was not allowed to document in my file what she was doing and that I was giving meaningful responses.

But...she did save my inky answer sheets and recorded the questions she asked. She got into a lot of trouble for that.
Yet, it earned me a final conference where the doctors had to prove to the nursing staff for political reasons that all my communication was just agitation and seizures.

At that meeting, my then husband, who was a doctor siding with the other doctors who wanted to let me die, held that clipboard which was my lifeline up in the air in front of me. He was not going to make it easy.

The purpose was to prove that the nurses were basically hallucinating and that I was really and truly brain-dead.

To prove I could not communicate, he then put ink on my fingers and asked while laughing, "There isn't anything you want to tell us, is there?"

In response I spelled out, "D-I-V-O-R-C-E Y-O-U!" The laughter got very nervous then. The doctors called for medication because I was obviously having a seizure.

Then the nurse who used the board first with me said, "Let me try" and "What do you need to tell us today?"

I spelled out, "D-I-V-O-R-C-E H-I-M!!!!"
There was never a questions after that about whether I was "in there' or not.
Then they said I couldn't breath on my own -- and I could.

Then they said I couldn't learn to eat again on my own -- and I did.

Then they said therapy wasn't important -- and it was.

Then they said I would be dead within a year -- in 1985 -- this is 2003...
They also said I would never have meaningful mental function again -- yet I earned another Master's degree only a few years later.

Here's the real medical corker though --
They also said at the time that I was permanently sterile. That was a cause of great grief for me then, as I had very much wanted to bear and raise a child.

But, it turned out my son, who is here at this service today, was born at the end of that year.

It turned out that I was actually pregnant at the very moment they were telling me I was sterile -- a simple test at the time could have established that.

A test they didn't think they needed to do -- so they didn't.

My point is that the medical and legal staff of that world-renown hospital were wrong and didn't listen and made startling assumptions about the quality of life for the disabled community I had joined.

In their eyes, I only had two options then -- full recovery and a lovely hospice death. I did spend time in a hospice against my will fighting to get to my OB-GYN appointments -- but that is the stuff of another story.

Leave it to say that it was beyond them that most of us -- especially the disabled community -- live full lives in between physical perfection and death.

To borrow a current phase, we are here today because of that "Middle Earth." I live there, as does Terri, all other people with disabilities, their family, supporters and friends.

Even those doctors who were so sure Max and I could not possibly be here today will live in that land between perfect health and death if they last long enough -- that is, if they don't do themselves in out of fear that someone else will have to help them someday. Then will they ever be surprised at how much love and joy and life there is for the asking in that "Middle Earth" of the disabled community....

posted 10-24-2003 09:34 AM            

Posted on Thu, Oct. 23, 2003

'Save Terri' calls are pouring in
By James L. Rosica
DEMOCRAT STAFF WRITER

Thousands of people from around the country have been calling and e-mailing state offices in Tallahassee, urging officials to save Terri Schiavo.

And somehow, many of those messages have found their way to Craig Waters.

Waters, the Florida Supreme Court's spokesman, said he's personally taken dozens of calls, including one from a woman from Calgary, Canada, who offered to save the 39-year-old Schiavo, who has been in a Pinellas Park hospice.

"She wanted to take (Schiavo) back to Canada to care for her," Waters said. "I told her I had no authority for that kind of request."

Schiavo suffered brain damage in 1990 after her heart stopped because of a suspected potassium imbalance. Since then, doctors have kept her alive with food and water tubes. Her parents and other family members have been engaged in a legal struggle with her husband, Michael, who said Terri did not want to be kept alive artificially.

After Michael Schiavo finally won a legal decision to have his wife taken off her feeding tubes, the Legislature on Tuesday approved a special bill giving Gov. Jeb Bush the power to order the feeding tubes reactivated. Terri began receiving liquids intravenously later that day.

"I had one woman, from somewhere out West, cry almost the whole time I was on the phone with her," Waters said. "She was very concerned that, as she put it, this woman's life was being ended against her will."

The Supreme Court, which so far has not addressed the Schiavo case, has received more than 100 calls about it to its various offices, Waters said.

"They're very emotional about the subject," he said.

Bush spokeswoman Alia Faraj said the Governor's Office had gotten 165,411 e-mails about Schiavo since Aug. 27 and "thousands of phone calls." Faraj said the office normally gets about 5,000 e-mails a week on average.

"We don't have the lines to handle that many calls," she said, adding she didn't know the nature of particular messages but that "people are generally in support of saving Schiavo."

Representatives for House Speaker Johnnie Byrd, R-Plant City, and Senate President Jim King, R-Jacksonville, did not know how many calls were received on the Schiavo controversy but said many had expressed their thanks.

Waters recalled a time when phone calls about a controversial issue were even more frequent.

posted 10-25-2003 01:46 PM            

ACLU joins husband in battle to stop feeding of brain-damaged woman

By Megan O'Matz and Diane Lade
Staff Writers
Posted October 24 2003

The American Civil Liberties Union said Thursday that it will aid Michael Schiavo in his fight against Gov. Jeb Bush and the Florida Legislature, which earlier this week took the remarkable step of passing a law to prevent the Pinellas County man from disconnecting his brain-injured wife from a feeding tube.

For months, the ACLU resisted meddling in the dispute that has pitted a husband against his in-laws, believing that the courts were following the long-held legal right of an individual to refuse extraordinary medical measures, even if it hastens their death.

The intervention of the governor, however, altered the landscape, said Howard Simon, the organization's Florida director. Several other significant advocacy groups on the sidelines, such as the AARP, say they, too, are now looking at the issue.

The entry of the ACLU and possibly other influential players into the life-and-death drama playing out in Tallahassee and the Tampa area underscores the growing dimensions of the coming court battle over whether the state's top leaders acted unconstitutionally in sidestepping the courts in the high-profile right-to-die case.

By substituting his judgment for the judgment of the courts, the governor "set aside the role of the whole judicial system," Simon said, warning that a precedent has been set for Bush and legislators to write laws gutting any court decision they don't like.

Pamela Hennessy, a spokeswoman for the parents of the impaired woman, Terri Schiavo, said she was "outraged" at the intervention of the ACLU, the nation's largest defender of individual rights. Schiavo's parents, Mary and Bob Schindler, are trying to keep their daughter alive.

"I've been contacting the ACLU since the beginning of my involvement in this case to have them speak out against what's going on with Terri," Hennessy said. "It's going on against her will. She's had her religious freedoms stripped from her. She's had her civil liberties stripped from her. And they're defending the husband?"

Leaders of theAARP, the huge lobbying group that claims 2.6 million Floridians age 50 and older as members, are discussing whether to weigh in on the issue, said state Director Bentley Lipscomb.

The organization remained silent several years ago as the state's Supreme Court debated whether terminally ill, mentally competent patients should be allowed to end their lives with their doctor's assistance.

"Our members tell us that [medical self-determination] is a very important issue to them," Lipscomb said. "They're telling us they are very disturbed to think they could sign a living will or do not resuscitate order and have it overridden by the Legislature."

During a special session, the Legislature briskly passed a law Tuesday, crafted to apply only to Schiavo, 39, enabling the governor to order her feeding tube reconnected so that she may not die. It had been removed on Oct. 15 by court order. In response to the governor's order, Schiavo began receiving nourishment again Wednesday at Morton Plant Hospital in Clearwater.

Schiavo's parents visited her Thursday in a Pinellas Park hospice where she was transferred after the tube was reinstated. The family had been concerned that the days without food and water may have damaged her kidneys and other organs, but said she appeared to be doing well.

In a news conference Thursday, Michael Schiavo's attorney, George Felos, said Terri Schiavo was "generally stable," with good color and complexion. Her kidneys appeared to be working.

Her husband is committed to continuing the legal fight, taking it to the state Supreme Court if necessary, Michael Schiavo's other attorney, Deborah Bushnell said.

"The action of the Legislature and the governor has actually firmed his resolve. He's upset about what happened," Bushnell said. "It has raised this situation from one of personal importance to one of statewide and national importance. If this law is allowed to stand, it creates an incredible bad precedent. It potentially paralyzes the judicial system."

Doctors say Terri Schiavo has been in a "persistent vegetative state" since 1990, when an undetected potassium imbalance stopped her heart briefly. Her parents, believing there's a chance she can recover, mounted a fierce legal campaign to keep her alive. Her husband, seeing no hope, has argued that she would never want to live in a vegetative condition. The courts have sided with Michael Schiavo consistently.

His legal team faces a Monday deadline to submit briefs on their constitutional challenge before the Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Court.

Meanwhile, some members of the medical profession on Thursday expressed concern that the Legislature's intervention may cause doctors to disregard the wishes of dying patients.

"We are afraid of lawyers all the time," said Dr. Lofty L. Basta, a retired Clearwater cardiologist and founder of Project Grace, a non-profit group devoted to educating people about end-of-life planning. "We practice defensive medicine. We do things that we know are wrong to protect our behinds. So this ruling from the legislators makes us very leery to carry out any order for dying patients."

Terri Schiavo's doctor, Victor Gambone, faxed a letter to Morton Plant Hospital this week, shortly after the passage of what has become known as Terri's Law, saying he was resigning as her primary care physician, Bushnell said.

Michael Schiavo's lawyers, about the same time, sent a letter to area hospitals warning that, although the new law promised shelter from civil liability, the prospect that the measure is unconstitutional opened doctors up to a future lawsuit if they dared to reinsert the feeding tube.

Dr. Juergen Bludau, medical director of Morse Geriatric Center in West Palm Beach, said the threats of lawsuits could scare away caring physicians.

"I can understand how doctors would pull back and say: `This is not what we're here for.'"

Members of the Florida Bar Association's elder law section were planning an emergency telephone conference within the next few days to discuss whether they should get involved in the upcoming constitutional challenge, said section President Stephanie Schneider.

"We wonder if we'll see a domino effect," said Schneider, a Broward County elderlaw attorney. "If a party doesn't like what a court does, they'll say, `Let's just go to the governor's office.' "

Members of End of Life Choices, the pro assisted death group formerly known as the Hemlock Society, expressed surprise that a debate has resurfaced over whether vegetative or terminally ill patients should be tube-fed against their own or families' wishes. The last landmark Florida cases on the issue were 13 years ago.

"We thought we were done with forced sustenance," said Choices Chief Executive Officer David Brand. "This opens a whole can of worms that places people's wishes about their end of life care in jeopardy."

Orlando Sentinel reporter Sean Mussenden and Sun-Sentinel researcher Barbara Hijek contributed to this report.

Megan O'Matz can be reached at momatz@sun-sentinel.com or 954- 356-4518. Email story
Print story

posted 10-25-2003 01:56 PM            

The ACLU is no more a friend to liberty than the NRA is to gun right. Simply trojan horses to keep you thinking there is "someone" there opposing the incremental despotism on the rise.

The ACLU takes on the argument that we have civil rights only when they see fit to exercise the fight. Well the way I see it is that we have God given rights. Civil rights are issued by the state, God given rights were set out in our Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights. Self evident.

The state that giveth can also taketh away. This is what is so wrong about conceal carry laws. They take a right and turn it in to a privilege.

posted 10-26-2003 08:31 AM            

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Amid the raging controversy, family and friends say people forget that Terri Schiavo is a person - that before people became obsessed with whether she should die, she had a life.

By ALLEN G. BREED
Associated Press
10/25/2003


Associated Press
Mary and Bob Schindler flank their daughter Terri on the day in 1984 that she married Michael Schiavo.

Click to view larger picture

Associated Press
Friends and family members describe Terri Schiavo, shown in an undated photo, as a shy, retiring person.

Click to view larger picture

Associated Press
Bob Schindler talks to reporters about the fight to keep his daughter, comatose for 13 years, alive, over objections of her husband.

PINELLAS PARK, Fla. - Diane Meyer can recall only one time her best friend, the future Terri Schiavo, really got angry with her, and she remains haunted by that 1981 episode.
The recent high school graduates had just seen a television movie about Karen Ann Quinlan, who had been in a coma since collapsing six years earlier and was the subject of a bitter court battle over her parents' decision to take her off a respirator.

Meyer made a cruel joke about Quinlan, which set her friend off.

"She went down my throat about this joke, that it was inappropriate," Meyer said. She remembers her friend wondering how the doctors and lawyers could possibly know what Quinlan was feeling or what she would want.

"Where there's life," Meyer recalled her saying, "there's hope."

By contrast, Schiavo's husband, Michael, and members of his family have said Schiavo told them she would not want to be kept alive artificially if she were incapable of getting better.

She has not been fully conscious since collapsing in 1990 at age 26 from what doctors have said was a potassium imbalance that stopped her heart.

Theresa Marie Schindler had been born Dec. 3, 1963, into a well-to-do family in the Philadelphia suburbs. The oldest of three children, she was always shy and retiring.

Her mother, Mary, says the girl would spend hours in her room, arranging her more than 100 stuffed animals into a private zoo. Always heavy, she hated sports, except horseback riding, which fed her love for animals.

The girl never said anything about her weight, but her mother always sensed it bothered her.

"She cried a lot when she went to get clothes," Mary Schindler said.

He daughter didn't go to school dances, not even her senior prom. Instead, she and her friends would go to the movies. Meyer remembers they went to see "An Officer and a Gentleman" four times in one day.

She was a huge fan of the television show "Starsky and Hutch." Sue Pickwell figures she and Terri Schindler wrote hundreds of letters to co-star Paul Michael Glaser, and "I remember the excitement when they finally wrote back, or their people wrote back."

Father recalls a gullible girl

Terri Schindler was naive and somewhat gullible. When she couldn't get her Christmas tree to stand up straight one year, her father, Bob, told her to take it back to the lot and have them put it in the "tree straightener."

"She called me about an hour later and said, "What did you do to me? They all laughed at me.' "

She has always been very tenderhearted, especially when it came to animals.

She came home crying one night, saying she thought she had run over a rabbit or squirrel. Knowing she would be devastated if she saw the animal the next day, her brother Bobby went out and threw it in the bushes, then assured her he had found nothing.

In the girl's junior year, Mary Schindler took her to a doctor to ask about her weight, which had ballooned to more than 200 pounds on a 5-foot-3 frame. The doctor told her Terri would lose the weight when she was ready.

After graduation from Archbishop Wood Catholic School, she was ready. On a structured diet program, she initially got her weight down to 140 to 150 pounds.

College leads to romance

She enrolled in Bucks County Community College with the goal of working with animals, and there she met Michael Schiavo. Mary Schindler says her daughter went head over heels.

"It was the first guy who ever, ever paid any attention to her," she says.

Meyer says her friend talked about how gorgeous Schiavo was and how he was always telling her she was beautiful. He was the "Officer and a Gentleman" to a chubby girl who had lived vicariously through Danielle Steele romances, Meyer says.

After a little more than a year of dating, the two were married in 1984. Terri Schindler wrote to John Denver, her favorite entertainer, to ask him to sing at her wedding, but he never replied.

By a year later, Terri Schiavo had gained a little of her weight back. Meyer says her friend told her that Michael Schiavo had seen her high school graduation picture and warned her "if she ever got fat like that again he'd divorce her."

"I said, "He's probably kidding,' " Meyer said. "But it was upsetting to her."

Scott Schiavo, Michael's brother, says the Schindlers were the ones who rode Terri about her weight. He says her brother sometimes showed one of the woman's old driver's licenses for a laugh.

Friend airs talk of divorce

In 1986, the couple moved to Florida. Michael Schiavo managed restaurants, and his wife got a clerk's job at an insurance agency.

Jackie Rhodes, who worked and socialized with Terri Schiavo, says Michael Schiavo frequently called his wife at work and left her in tears. She says she and Terri Schiavo had discussed divorcing their husbands and moving in together.

But Scott Schiavo, Michael's brother, says he wasn't aware of any trouble in the marriage.

And when the couple went to his grandmother's funeral, Scott Schiavo says, Terri Schiavo told him she would not want to be put on a respirator, as the grandmother had been.

"Terri turned around and looked right in my eyes, and I can still see her sitting there on my left-
hand side," he recalled, repeating testimony he gave in court. " "If I'm gone, just let me go.' "

Bobby Schindler says his sister began talking about leaving Schiavo in 1989. "She said she wished she had the strength or the energy or the know-how to get a divorce," he said.

By this time, her weight had dropped below 120 pounds, and Mary Schindler says she confronted her daughter about it.

The reply: "I eat, Mom. I eat."

Potassium disorders and heart failure have been linked to anorexia, but family members say they do not think Terri Schiavo had a real eating disorder. Doctors never have been able to say with certainty what caused the collapse.

The day before she collapsed, Terri Schiavo had complained to her mother that she was having menstrual problems and that she wasn't satisfied with her doctor. Mary Schindler said they would get together after the weekend and find her a new one.

They never had the opportunity.

Terri Schiavo is 39 now, living in a hospice in Pinellas Park. After working so hard to come out of her shell, she spends most of her days alone in a single room.

She still has her "stuffies," only not as many as before. Just a couple of stuffed dogs and a pair of plush pumpkins her mother hung up for Halloween.

Her family says she laughs when they play John Denver for her and follows them with her eyes. Doctors say those are unconscious responses.

A special person, not a cause

Michael Schiavo, who has since become a registered nurse and has a daughter with his girlfriend, could not be reached to comment. But Scott Schiavo says his brother is merely trying to let Terri Schiavo die with dignity.

"When it sunk into Mike's head, Mike decided to stop being selfish. "I can't bring her back, and I've got to grant her wish,' " he said. "The bottom line is that Mike never wanted this to be a sideshow."

Her family and friends say they love her, too, and think she can get better with therapy. They are just as convinced that she would not want to be let go.

One thing they are sure of. She would not like all this attention and fuss over her. "She's not a cause," Meyer said. "She's a person. A very special person."

posted 10-27-2003 06:30 AM            

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted: October 26, 2003
5:45 p.m. Eastern

© 2003 WorldNetDaily.com

A world-renowned forensic pathologist with over 40 years experience as a medical examiner is challenging the official version of early events in the Terri-Schindler Schiavo case, providing the parents of the brain-disabled woman with powerful ammunition in their battle to save their daughter's life from her court-ordered starvation death.

Interviewed on the Fox News Channel, Dr. Michael Baden, co-director of the Investigative Unit of New York State Police in Albany and former chief medical examiner for New York City, ruled out potassium imbalance and a heart attack as factors in Terri's mysterious collapse 13 years ago – which left her severely incapacitated and unable to speak – and pointed to head trauma and bone injuries as a more likely cause.

Baden explained to host Greta van Susteren it was unlikely for a woman of Terri's age at the time to have a potassium imbalance, unless she had certain types of diseases, which she didn't have.

"Too little potassium can cause the heart to stop beating properly and lead to lack of blood flow to the brain and death of brain cells by lack of oxygen, but that's very unusual, Greta, extremely unusual," he said.

That Terri's heart was healthy would rule out the likelihood of cardiac arrest, he said.

"The reason she's in the state she's in is because there was a period of time, maybe five minutes or eight minutes, when not enough oxygen was going to her brain," said Baden. "That can happen because the heart stops for 5 or 8 minutes, but she had a healthy heart, from what we can see."

Baden said he studied a bone scan made in March 1991 at a rehabilitation facility that describes her as having a head injury: "That's why she's there, that's why she's getting a bone scan."

"A head injury can cause, can lead to the vegetative state that Ms. Schiavo is in now," he continued, adding the scan showed evidence of other injuries, bone fractures.

Something totally different

Van Susteren asked if he were suggesting a potassium imbalance caused a fall that led to a head injury, or perhaps some "pre-existing head injury [led] to her passing out."

"Something totally different," he answered. Because cardiac arrests triggered by low potassium are so rare, "the other issue is: Could it have been due to some other cause, which is raised by the family. [That] has to be looked at."

Baden said the injuries were caused by some kind of trauma. "The trauma can be from an auto accident, the trauma can be from some kind of beating that she obtained from somebody somewhere. It's something that should have been investigated in 1991 when those findings were fresh," and added, "Maybe they were. Maybe they were investigated by the police at that time."

As far as Terri's family knows, they were not.

In fact, her parents, Robert and Mary Schindler, knew nothing of the existence of the bone scan until their attorney Patricia Anderson was collecting evidence for a hearing scheduled for October 2002. Prior to that time, Terri's medical records had been kept sealed under court order at the request of her husband, Michael Schiavo, who had launched his crusade to remove his wife's feeding tube.

As WorldNetDaily reported last November, when the scan was discovered through sifting Terri's early medical records, Anderson checked with several physicians as to its significance and filed an emergency motion to have Schiavo removed as guardian. Schiavo's attorney, George Felos, denounced the motion as "garbage" and characterized it as being "rife with unattributed hearsay, rank innuendo and libel."

Nonetheless, the scan and other documentation are so compelling it was decided to make the possibility of foul play a large part of the petition on the terrisfight.org website, that people from around the world signed and e-mailed to Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, urging him to launch a full-scale investigation.

"The suspicions that Dr. Baden raised on Fox News are suspicions that the family members have had since learning of Terri's bone scan last November," said Pamela Hennessey, spokesperson for the Terri Schindler-Schiavo Foundation. "And we've been making it known for many months on the website."

posted 10-27-2003 09:11 PM            

I also could not believe how HH stammered when Larry King asked if CNN could go and video Terri tomorrow. Dear old HH said no because he didn’t want Terri put in the public’s eye in the sorry state that she’s in. HELLOOOOOOO! I think it’s already too late to worry about the public seeing her – don’t ya think?

posted 10-30-2003 10:07 PM            

Larry King will give equal time to Terri's side
Date: 10/29/03 2:38:25 PM Central Standard Time
Sent from the Internet
Larry King will give equal time to Terri's side next week - no doubt due to all your emails! Bob and Mary will be on Thur. after next.