Oh What A Tangled Web They Weave

Debi Vinnedge - Terri Schiavo 2

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The homicide of Terri Schindler-Schiavo, Part II

In last month’s article, we read how the legal system condemned an innocent, disabled woman to suffer a cruel and tortuous death. But when one looks at all the players involved in Terri Schiavo’s case, it’s crystal clear that she was merely a pawn in a much larger agenda, one intently focused on the legalization of physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia in America. The plan was simple: sell the idea that no one should have to live with disabilities; sugarcoat the organization’s name and intent; secure funding; and last but not least, infiltrate the legislature, the healthcare network and even the Catholic Church to the point that Margaret Sanger would have been proud.

A Rose by Any Other Name…

Beginning in the 1930s, a group intent on advancing legalized suicide founded The Euthanasia Society of America. To make their cause more socially palatable, they would eventually change their name in the mid-sixties to Choice in Dying and then infiltrate the hospice industry with their right-to-die agenda. That goal would be realized decades later through their merger with Partnership for Caring and Last Acts, a coalition of hospices worldwide.

In 1980, euthanasia advocate Derek Humphry founded the Hemlock Society of America in Santa Monica, California. It grew to over 50,000 members with 90 U.S. chapters. Humphry’s group provided substantial financing for physician-assisted suicide legislation, including the eventual enactment of Oregon’s 1997 law. But to advance euthanasia nationwide, a more subtle approach would be needed.

In 2003, Hemlock chapters across the country renamed themselves under more palatable titles such as Death with Dignity, Compassion and Choices, Caring Friends, Compassion in Dying and End of Life Choices. While their names changed, their motives did not with Humphry boldly stating, “For too long, the Judeo-Christian religions have dominated ethical thinking in the West…A person cannot ask to be killed. We must get this modified.”

And in his book, Good Euthanasia Guide 2004, Humphry godlessly attests: “Don’t bother to acquire this book if you are a person who believes that a religious deity is in sole charge of your life and dying.”

Financial Backing

Meanwhile, pro-death foundations invested unprecedented funding to rid the world of those deemed a burden to society. With the 1994 formation of Project Death in America, multi-billionaire founder George Soros stoked $15 million to promote euthanasia in healthcare facilities nationwide.

Soros’ fixation on death is both intimate and appalling. In a January 1995 interview with The New Yorker, Soros spoke of his own father’s struggle with cancer and his apparent irritation that his father did not wish to die. “Unfortunately he wanted to live,” Soros stated. “I was kind of disappointed in him… I wrote him off.”

In 2002, Project Death gave $1.2 million to fund the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine, whose position states: “Were euthanasia and PAS [physician assisted suicide] being practiced in a regulated fashion, the hospice and palliative care approach should be that of non-interference in the receipt of these services, and non-abandonment of the person seeking assistance in suicide.”

Similarly, the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation has given the Hemlock/Partnership for Caring and Last Acts merger, now known as Last Acts Partnership, over $1 million. According to the foundation, a longtime supporter of Planned Parenthood and euthanasia, Last Acts was the launching pad for an $11.25 million grant to “elevate awareness” and “inspire improvements” on end of life health care. The Johnson foundation stated, “The program works at a number of clinical sites to encourage doctors to introduce palliative care earlier in patients’ diagnoses and to change the culture of medical institutions, which often focus exclusively on cure.” In other words, promote euthanasia, but do it deceptively.

The Connection

The stage was set; the monies were in. The pro-euthanasia groups had new names. Many board members of Last Acts Partnership also served on the National Hospice and Palliative Care’s (NHAPC) board, which proclaims itself “the largest nonprofit membership organization representing hospice and palliative care programs and professionals in the United States.” Enter Mary Labyak, CEO of the Hospice of the Florida Suncoast, who also was on the boards of Partnership for Caring, Last Acts and the NHAPC. While there are over 100 Hospice Corporations in FL, the Suncoast Hospice directly operates Woodside Hospice, where Terri Schiavo spent the last five years of her life. If you don’t smell a rat yet, keep reading.

The cast of characters in Terri Schiavo’s case who had direct ties to Suncoast Hospice is astonishing and frightening. Remember, Terri never should have been in hospice at all, since it is a federally funded program for dying patients. But the court decided she was PVS and, therefore, terminally ill, meaning a patient can be brought to hospice for feeding tube removal while the government pays the tab. How very convenient.

And when Terri was placed there in April 2000, Michael Schiavo’s attorney George Felos was an active Suncoast Hospice board member and former chairman. No conflict there, right?

Now enter Everett Rice, Pinellas County Sheriff from 1988 through 2004, who was charged with investigating Terri’s 1990 collapse, but neglected to turn the case over to the homicide division. Sheriff Rice, a close friend and campaign backer of Judge Greer, was also a Florida Hospice board member.

Was it mere coincidence that John Lenderman, brother to Woodside board member Martha Lenderman and fellow judge of George Greer in the Sixth Judicial Circuit Court, also served on the advisory board for Suncoast Hospice in 2000—the same year Terri was admitted? He was a key member of the Pinellas County Domestic Violence investigation committee, but surely he would not have hindered an investigation into complaints against Michael Schiavo, or would he?

Perhaps we should question Martha Lenderman herself, who served on the Suncoast Hospice board with Felos in 2000 and later became Chairman in 2002-03, during Michael’s second attempt to starve Terri.

Ms. Lenderman was a consultant with the Florida Department of Children and Families, putting her in a position to influence the DCF investigation on Terri’s abuse and neglect.

And what about the glaring collusion between hospice and prominent Florida lawmakers?

Not only do both state Rep. “Gus” Michael Bilirakis and Senator Jim King tout themselves as former board members of Florida Hospice, but also both lobbied for the fateful 1999 legislation that ruled feeding tubes were artificial life support. During pro-life pressure over Terri’s case in the 2004-05 legislative sessions, Florida lawmakers scrambled to amend that, but Senate president King quashed the motion. “As soon as you put something on the floor, as well-intended as it may be, anybody can amend it,” King stated. “Then all of a sudden I’m sitting there facing a bill or bills that can dismantle what I consider to be my legacy.”

That “legacy” began in 1998 with King’s creation of the Florida Panel on End of Life Care for the purpose of amending Florida statutes on end-of-life issues. Among the notables on that panel was Suncoast Hospice’s CEO, Mary Labyak.

Project Dis-Grace

In the background another quietly sinister group became formal advisors to the End of Life Panel. Known as Project Grace, their board members include none other than Mary Labyak and Schiavo attorney George Felos.

Project Grace’s motive was to use religion and the clergy to convince the patient or family that withdrawal of medical care, including food and water, was morally acceptable, even in non-terminal patients. Project Grace Advance Directives were being promoted at Catholic parishes around Terri’s St. Petersburg Diocese. But when staunchly pro-life RN Jana Carpenter discovered a scheduled seminar at her own parish, she advised her pastor that Project Grace did not conform to Catholic teaching. Despite assurance that the project had Diocesan approval, Carpenter persuaded him to postpone the workshop.

Their contention was that Fr. Kevin O’Rourke, a bioethicist at Loyola University in Chicago, enthusiastically supported Project Grace. But Fr. O’Rourke is the same priest who called the Vatican statement requiring artificial hydration and nutrition “irresponsible.” According to O’Rourke, “If a person does not have the potential for cognitive-affective function it means that the person cannot pursue the friendship of God, the purpose of life, through his or her free actions. Therefore, the moral imperative to help the person toward health and existence is no longer present.”

O’Rourke was also outwardly hostile toward pro-lifers in the Terri Schiavo case, calling their actions “despicable” for interceding. “The government of Florida is a laughingstock for the rest of the country,’’ O’Rourke said in a November 2003 statement to The Miami Herald. “Anyone who knows the law knows this is an abuse of personal rights.”

Using such statements from “Catholic” ethicists, Project Grace member and euthanasia author Lofty Basta, M.D., who openly campaigned for Terri Schiavo’s death, described how they convinced the End of Life Panel to include PVS in legislative amendments. More disturbing, Project Grace held that advanced directives requesting medical treatment should not oblige the physician to provide it, a position heartily endorsed in Fr. O’Rourke’s own writings.

With a program so blatantly in opposition to Catholic tenets, both the Catholic Medical Association and the National Catholic Bioethics Center quickly denounced it. But that did not stop the Diocese of St. Petersburg from continuing to promote the program to its parishes and Catholic healthcare facilities.

More appalling, despite pro-life pleas, the diocese refused to encourage Catholics to “get out and vote” during Greer’s reelection, even though his opponent openly supported the Vatican position to provide nutrition and hydration. Instead, the diocesan attorney firm, Devito and Higham, shelled out maximum financial contributions to Judge Greer’s reelection campaign.

Without question, Terri’s fate was sealed as the deposits hit the bank and the co-conspirators basked in their success. Meanwhile, a chilling pattern has descended on America. From Griswold to Roe to Browning to Schiavo, the legal precedent for “privacy” has swelled into an ugly demonic entity that has launched the right to die movement into full-blown euthanasia in this country. The effects of Roe v Wade took less than eight years to legitimize abortion on demand in all fifty states and it will happen again with euthanasia. The question remains: will we be able to stop it?

© 2013. Debi Vinnedge. All Rights Reserved.

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5 thoughts on “Oh What A Tangled Web They Weave”

  1. Starving a prisoner, POW, a able child is abuse or against the Geneva convention. But a disable child or person then starvation is mercy. My God have mercy. This is so stupid but somehow these people got in power.

  2. Death is a fact of the primate life cycle, as is birth….there is an unchanging natural continuum of life events. Death can be a “good death” or a “bad death.” No primate should be required to deal with intractable pain, with unrelenting suffering, with opiate resistant agony, especially when the patient is unquestionably terminal and death is shortly in sight. We all have the ability to legally draft “advanced directives” for our care when approaching death. I do not want to suffer with excruciating pain unrelieved by opiates; I do not want to be maintained on a vent or a g-tube. These are my choices. If I know that I am dying shortly, I would welcome assistance to hasten the process. God would not deny me the right to choose an end to suffering….perhaps, a suffering far exceeding a few hours on a cross. He would understand because he is a compassionate god. And so we can all write “advanced directives” and in a few and increasing number of states request assistance in a good death.
    You are right Soros funds much effort for the euthanasia movement. On the other hand, the MA Death with Dignity Act which lost 51-49 and was initially approved by large number lost because of a huge infusion of monies by anti-gay groups.
    Please do not conflate disability with Death with Dignity initiatives. The totally disabled, like my son, are not terminal…there is no movement in the USA to euthanize the disabled (notwithstanding the Schiavo debate). To conflate the two concepts is to ascribe to the “slippery slope” argument which by definition is an epistemological fallacy. A choice of a “good death” is a right of conscience.

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  4. All of this is just a logical extension of the cultural acceptance of artificial contraception. Pope Paul VI predicted it all.

    If man can determine when life begins, then why can’t he determine when it ends? In effect, it makes man his own god, apart from the God of the universe! Oldest sin on the books. When the serpent tempted Eve, he told her that should she eat of the fruit in the garden, she could be “like God” in determining what was truth or not.

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