Now, I Have Some Questions

From West Palm Beach Florida:

Family's Fight Over Feeding Tube Reminiscent Of Schiavo Case
Husband, Mom At Odds Over Tube

A Florida woman put on a
feeding tube after she had a stroke is at the center of a court case similar to
the dispute over whether Terri Schiavo should be kept alive.

Karen
Weber's husband wants to have her feeding tube removed and have her transferred
to a hospital ward, where she would likely die. He claims that his 57-year-old
wife is in a vegetative state, but Weber's family is fighting to keep her alive,
arguing she's alert and responsive...

...A judge in Weber's case has
issued an injunction prohibiting the feeding tube's removal while a committee
determines the woman's competency. She does not have a living will and can not
talk.
Her husband, Raymond Weber, said he doesn't want this to become a
media event, but her mother, Martha Tatro, said she refuses to let her daughter
die.

Read complete story here.

Now, I have some questions. For one, is this woman alert and responsive or not? If so then she is not in a so-called 'vegetative state'. I understand that due to privacy laws, Mrs. Weber's doctors may not explain her condition to the media. But either she is or she isn't.

(I use the word 'so-called' because the terminology of vegetative state is ridiculous and undignified. An individual in such a state is not a plant in the corner being kept watered occasionally. He or she is someone who has lost cognitive neurological function and awareness of the environment but retains noncognitive function and a preserved sleep-wake cycle. In other words, he or she is still a person, one with profound cognitive disabilities.)

Second question, since there many cases of misdiagnosis of and treatment for this state, such as the sleeping pill Zolpidem which can temporarily revive people in a so-called permanent vegetative state, or one similar, to the point where they can have conversations, have these treatments been attempted?

Thirdly, why is removing her feeding tube even an option. Mrs. Weber is alive, with brain function and breathing on her own. A feeding tube has technically legally been deemed life support lately, but unlike removing a breathing tube of someone with absolutely no brain activity who will instantly die when that breathing tube is removed because he or she is already dead, pulling out the feeding tube of Mrs. Weber is not 'letting her die'. It is refusing to feed a woman who needs help eating; it is willful neglect. It is death by neglect. It is murder.

Lastly, what difference does it make whether she is in a 'vegetative state' or not? What if Mrs. Weber never regains awareness of her surroundings or even of her very existence? What if she remains totally and completely dependent on others the rest of her life for every aspect of her life?

I wonder if a life like hers is testimony that a person's worth to us and to God is not at all dependent on abilities, but on simply the fact that she is a fellow human being. Now is our chance to show we believe that idea when we tell our children, "God loves you for who you are, not for what you can do" by protesting this woman's murder, caring for those most in need of caring around us, and caring for their families.

Some say that it would be undignified to 'allow' Mrs. Weber to remain alive in such an event. However, is it not more undignified to refer to her as a vegetable, rescind her status of personhood, and starve her to death?

Assisted Suicide Initiative Being Promoted in Washington State

From their website, "In Washington, the Coalition Against Assisted Suicide has formed to combat I-1000, the assisted suicide initiative that is being promoted for the 2008 ballot."
With the passing of this law assisted suicide would be legal in Washington State, allowing doctors to prescribe lethal drugs to patients with terminal illnesses to kill themselves. This law would be modeled after Oregon's Law.

In the Netherlands, where assisted suicide and euthanasia have been practiced for the last 20 years, since both have become less of a rare occurance and more of a standard practive, improvements in pain management and palliative care have slown down. "Pressure for improved pallitive care seems to have evaporated," according to Herbert Hendin, M.D., a Director of Suicide Prevention International.

From the Coalition Against Assisted Suicide website, we see what a slippery slope the acceptance of assisted suicide is:

"Once the Dutch accepted assisted suicide it was not possible legally or morally
to deny more active medical (assistance to die), i.e. euthanasia, to those who
could not effect their own deaths. Nor could they deny assisted suicide or
euthanasia to the chronically ill who have longer to suffer than the terminally
ill or to those who have psychological pain not associated with physical
disease. To do so would be a form of discrimination.

Involuntary
euthanasia has been justified as necessitated by the need to make decisions for
patients not [medically] competent to choose for themselves."


Research shows that, for one thousand people a year in the
Netherlands, physicians have ended their patients' lives without any request
from or consultation with the patients.

This would be our future. Go to the website and offer support now.

Please Continue to Pray

From Christian Examiner Online (emphasis mine):

California Assembly approves legislation promoting euthanasia of terminally ill patients
Christian Examiner staff report

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — An end-of-life bill that would require doctors
to tell their terminal patients about options to hasten their deaths, including
starving themselves, passed the Assembly May 28 and will be heard on the Senate
floor.

According to an analysis by Concerned Women for America,
the bill undercuts established medical advances to ease dying for terminal
patients and, in some cases, would allow end-of-life medical care to be passed
on to less qualified health-care providers such as nurse practitioners and
physician assistants.

“While careful pain management and palliative care
at the end of a truly terminal illness are extremely important and support must
be given to dying patients and their families, this bill, as
written, is a step down a very slippery slope toward the assisted suicide bill
we fought in last year’s session,” the CWA analysis reads.

Opponents of the bill say that it paves the way for a shift in pallative
care that goes beyond pain relief to unconscious dehydration and starvation
through the use of strong sedatives.

Further, they argue that the
one-year-left-to-live diagnosis is arbitrary and often wrong, and
requiring doctors to offer end-of-life options hits patients when they are most
vulnerable. Some medical experts also believe that forcing doctors to
even discuss those issues constitutes endorsement of the practices.

Finally, opponents are concerned those without health
insurance and who are poor, might feel pressured into end-of-life decisions
because of burdensome financial legacies for their families.

But
Patty Berg, a Santa Rosa Democrat, who sponsored the bill with Lloyd Levine,
D-Van Nuys, said the legislation is merely promoting “honest talk” about medical
options. Berg, who was unsuccessful in three previous attempts to legislate
physician-assisted suicide, decided this year to try a different approach.

Her latest bill is supported by Compassion and Choices, a
pro-euthanasia group that was formerly called the Hemlock Society.

“Unlike my previous end-of-life bill, which was rejected and which I no
longer am pursuing, my new bill doesn’t give anyone any new options,” Berg wrote
in a May 15 opinion piece for Capitol Weekly. Everything that is illegal now—and
that most notably includes physician-aided dying—would remain illegal. AB 2747
changes none of that. Instead, it provides a precious commodity— information.

“Most people in the Capitol understand the difference. Some, however,
are still fighting last year’s battle and are trying to convince the gullible
that my new bill is a Trojan horse, designed somehow to legalize aid-in-dying.
That is simply not the case.”

But Marilyn Golden, a policy analyst at
the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund, disagrees and in a May 22
rebuttal in Capitol Weekly.

“The real ‘honest talk’ about AB 2747 is
that it has very little to do with improving care,” Golden wrote. “For this
bill, the devil is really in the details. Close inspection reveals it to be a
vehicle for Compassion and Choices’ long-term agenda: facilitating assisted
suicide. Let’s not forget that this is the organization formerly
known as the Hemlock Society and one of the primary sponsors of this
legislation. The bill includes many elements that would significantly
undermine end-of-life care in service of this goal.”

The Assembly vote
was 42-34. The bill will now be heard in the Senate Judiciary committee.For more
information on AB 2747, the end-of-life bill visit these links:
• Assembly bill text and history
• Concerned Women for America
• California ProLife Council
• Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund

Click
here to see- How
the Calif. assembly members voted on the end-of-life bill

Chimps Are People, Too... Yeah, Whatever

From the article "European Court agrees to hear chimp's plea for human rights":

His name is Matthew, he is 26 years old, and his supporters hope to take his
case to the European Court of Human Rights.

But he won't be able to give
evidence on his own behalf - since he is a chimpanzee. Animal rights activists
led by British teacher Paula Stibbe are fighting to have Matthew legally
declared a 'person' so she can be appointed as his guardian if the bankrupt
animal sanctuary where he lives in Vienna is forced to close...

...Miss Stibbe, who is from Brighton but has lived in Vienna for several years, says she is not trying to get the chimp declared a human, just a person.

A seemingly good idea, if not rather comical, for a seemingly good cause. I hate to see animals used and abused. But the attempt to declare an animal a person- not a good idea, not comical, and, in fact, it's quite ominous.

It is becoming an accepted idea, as evidenced by those who believe that even animals can be people, that there is a difference between a person and a human. So, with this reasoning, 'human being' doesn't automatically mean 'person', and, therefore, not every human being is afforded automatic human rights for simply being human, unlike 'persons', including the right to life.

This is what some animal rights activist such as Peter Singer want, for animals to be acknowledged as persons, while at the same time denying the existence of personhood for some people, such as the fetus, infants, and children and adults with profound cognitive disabilities.
Here's an example of his thinking from the story "An Ethical Man":

"'HIV research using chimps has not been very helpful as they don't seem to get
the disease in the same way humans do,' Singer explains. 'So I don't think it's
right and it's causing a lot of suffering and distress to beings who are
sensitive animals--social animals who should be living in social groups and who
suffer being in isolation and confined and that's wrong. If we need beings very
like us to do this on, we should perhaps [turn to] the families of people who
tragically have been brain-damaged and have no hope of recovery from persistent
vegetative state who are totally beyond suffering because they are beyond
consciousness."

Sex Change Treatment for 7 Year-Olds

From the blog Secondhand Smoke:

This seems to me to be unethical human experimentation: A doctor in Boston gives hormones to children who believe themselves to be transgendered to help prevent puberty and move them toward a sex change. From the story:

Boston's Children's Hospital bills itself as the hospital for children--and now it's also the hospital for children who want a sex change, a procedure some critics are calling "barbaric." Dr. Norman Spack, a pediatric specialist at the hospital, has launched a clinic for transgendered kids--boys who feel like girls, girls who want to be boys-- and he's opening his doors to patients as young as 7. Spack offers his younger patients counseling and drugs that delay the onset of puberty.

The drugs stop the natural flood of hormones that would make it difficult to have a sex alteration later in life, allowing patients more time to decide whether they want to make the change.

Spack also offers some teenagers hormone therapy, a drastic step that changes the way they grow and develop. While the effects of drug treatments can be stopped, long-term hormone therapy can be irreversible, causing permanent infertility in both sexes.

We have no true understanding of the causes of transexualism. We don't know that a kid who is seven and thinks he is a girl will still feel that way when he is 20. He might. Some transexuals report having those feelings very early. But we don't know how many people there might be who felt that way at 7 but don't at 20.

Worse, to medically intervene with strong hormones--the long term impact on the child's body and mental state we cannot know--when there is no underlying physical disease requiring the treatment, is to me, abuse. What if it causes cancer in 20 years? What if it impacts on the children of these children? What if the hormones impact their emotional and mental states, perhaps influencing their transexuality? We can't know the answers. All of this is just too new.

I am reminded of "Ashley's treatment," in which a profoundly disabled girl's normal physical development was interfered with through surgery and hormones to allow better ease of care. Caring motives notwithstanding, that was wrong, at least without a court order, as the hospital so admitted.

And now this: According to the story the Europeans are already traveling this path. And of course, NPR has come out with a properly nonjudgmental feature story:

The hormone blockers are the first stage of the treatment, but there's a second stage that's possible. Once children have postponed puberty for three or four years, at around age 16 they can choose to begin maturing sexually into the opposite gender, the gender they want to become. To do this, they begin taking the hormones of the opposite sex. For males, taking estrogen at this point will bring on breast and hip growth--and all the attributes physical and emotional of females. The reverse will happen for girls who take testosterone. Spack says this treatment can help make an adult transgender male almost indistinguishable from a biological male in terms of physical appearance. "We can make it possible that they can fit in in the way they want to. It is really quite amazing," he says.

This is unconscionable and reflects how sick our culture is becoming--and I am not referring to transgendered people. The inability or unwillingness by a growing number of us to make any judgments that might be criticized as moralism--lest one be denigrated as a bigot, premodern, or a hypocrite--has created a moral vacuum in which very little remains out of bounds. And the worst part is that the greatest victims in the ongoing and utter collapse of norms are our children.

While Worshiping

I often refer to the reality of those with disabilities not fully exercising themselves as the necessary members of the body that they are. Who aren't being welcomed by their fellow members, i.e., the rest of us. I see them fully as part of the body of Christ.

However, at this moment, during this opportunity for praise, I saw them as His bride! His beautiful bride. There's a difference in the love of a man's body, you see, and the love for his bride. And, oh, how Jesus loves His bride! Intimately and passionately He loves those hidden in the deepest, most secret of crevices known as nursing homes and institutions. He sees them, and He longs to stretch out His hand to reach them and capture them. For they are most lovely to Him.

And I wondered what has happened to His bride? To this part of His Bride, that they are hidden away and suffering so under the oppression of indifference.

We can be His hands. We can stretch out on His behalf to bring the hidden ones into His body, where Jesus longs to make them His bride! And we will all be ready and waiting for His return.

PRAY: California Legislature Expected To Vote This Week On Bill Promoting Euthanasia

From Life News:

Undaunted by their repeated failure to get the California legislature to approve
a bill legalizing assisted suicide, the sponsors of the bill are moving forward
with a new measure that promotes euthanasia in limited circumstances. Pro-life
groups are asking for phone calls to defeat the bill.

Last Tuesday, on a straight party line vote, the Assembly Judiciary Committee sent AB 2747 to the Assembly floor.

Assemblymembers Patty Berg and Lloyd Levine, the authors of the pro-assisted suicide bill, are behind the bill.

Brian Johnston, the head of the California Pro-Life Council and the author of a seminal book on assisted suicide, talked with LifeNews.com about the measure's problems.

"On the surface, AB 2747 seems like a simple bill benefiting the hospice care industry," he said. "However, it contains a sneaky loophole that will permit doctors and health care providers to transform the rarely used practice of 'palliative
sedation' into a vehicle permitting assisted suicide."

Palliative sedation, otherwise known as deep sedation, is the sedation of a suffering and imminently dying patient to the point of unconsciousness and the bill changes the standards surrounding its use.

Johnston says AB 2747 has a host of other problems -- including defining terminal illness as having one year or less to live.

"We believe this is very arbitrary and subjective because predicting a patient’s
time from death is merely a lifespan forecast," he says.

He says the bill also would create situations where cost considerations could affect treatment options, as assisted suicide options are generally cheaper than treatment.

Ultimately, Johnston told LifeNews.com that "AB 2747 promotes practices
which may hasten death, overlooking what should be the primary focus of
counseling to a patient approaching the end of life, chiefly excellent
palliative care and hospice referral."

Pro-life groups fear that deep sedation, once introduced and promoted in California, will become a frequent occurrence as it has been in the Netherlands, one of the few nations to approve assisted suicide and euthanasia.

An April study finds the number of patients killed via deep sedation is on the rise.Researchers at the Erasmus University Medical Centre in Rotterdam found 1,800 people -- or 7.1 percent of all deaths in the Netherlands in 2005 -- involved deep sedation.

That percentage rose from 5.6 percent of all deaths involving deep sedation in 2001
while, during the same time period, euthanasia death fell from 2.6 percent of
all deaths to 1.7 percent.

Judith Rietjens of Erasmus University told Reuters, “The increased use of continuous deep sedation for patients nearing death in the Netherlands and the limited use of palliative consultation suggests that this practice is increasingly considered as part of a regular medical practice.”

American author and attorney Wesley J. Smith commented on the recent research.
“Demonstrating the subversive nature of the euthanasia/assisted suicide movement on proper medical care, Dutch doctors are switching from lethally injecting patients to sedating them into a permanent coma so they die by dehydration over a period of days or weeks,” he said.

Smith said he thinks physicians are changing the way they kill patients
so they don't have to be present during the actual death and can assuage their
consciences.

ACTION: Please contact your member of the California Assembly
immediately and urge strong opposition to AB 2747 because it promotes
euthanasia. You can find contact information at http://www.assembly.ca.gov/.