Not Dead Yet, News Item

Not Dead Yet the resistance in Black Gothic Lettering

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Day Three of the Current Fight for Terri Schiavo's Life:

As I pulled up in the paratransit van to the old courthouse for today's session, I saw Terri supporters with sign boards already lined up on both sides of the street in front of the court house. Some said things like "Disability is Not a Crime!" and "No Execution by Starvation!"

I immediately went to talk to them and see if I could do a needed food or fluid run to the convenience store on the corner.

One of them then shared the sign she was going to write and share but has not done so yet. It was going to simply read, "O.J. Schiavo." When I asked why, she responded that I obviously had not stayed until the very end of the court session the night before. When I told her that was true, this is what I was told and later confirmed with others.

Late Monday night, Dr. Hammesfahr, the neurologist, testified that in all of his past experiences he has only had one other patient who suffered a neck spinal cord injury similar to what he had found during his examination of Terri.

The family's attorney asked Dr. Hammesfahr how that injury occurred to the other patient who was not Terri. The doctor emphatically stated that the neck spinal injury to the second patient was incurred by strangulation.

The husband's attorney completely avoided challenging the statement.

The large crowd on Monday was primarily people with disabilities. Today, the majority of the supporters there were from various religious communities. I was very proud of the respect shown between the denominations.

While taking notes at the noon rally in support of Terri's family I heard this all at one time:
The Orthodox Rabbi Yehuda Levin from Brooklyn, New York talking to the press, A large intergenerational group of Catholics audibly praying together, and vehicles honking in support of the ever present signage supporting Terri.

I saw:
the salad colors of school clothes,
the black of the Rabbi's suit and prayer shawl,
the brown wood sculpture of Jesus and many shades of religious symbols and family pictures shared by support rally participants.

Members of Terri's family were there. They could taste and touch in their heart of hearts the deep level of support so obviously present for them here. And their responses were every bit as legitmate as those of Terri on the videotapes in the courtroom.

While, I spoke as a representative of Not Dead yet, the "draw" of the rally was Rabbi Levin. As a representative of over 1200 Orthodox Rabbis in the United States and Canada, what he said went right to the heart of the issue, as in:
"What happens here will have a profound effect on what happens to life and living in America."

"If death by electric chair is 'cruel and unusual punishment,' what is death by starvation? A party? A bar mitzvah?"

"How many hoops do you have to jump through in the United States to earn the right to be fed?"

"Terrorists will not get death by starvation, why Terri?"

After explaining the newly minted and used term of "minimal brain function" beyond coma and persistive vegetative state, he said: "As a Jewish person I am particularly sensitive to what is going on here...Where are our leaders?"

He closed with, "If two people argue and living is at stake, then we have to err on the side of life for the good of us all." and "I want my co-religionists to understand this is the next great accomplishment -- to establish the right of the disabled to live."

Cut to the afternoon:
After a too brief time with the Rabbi, I had to return to hours of the husband's attorney, George Felos, citing previous answer after previous answer by Dr. William Maxfield about Terri's responsiveness.

Basically, Felos was trying to get Maxfield to agree with Dr. Ronald Cranford's assessment that Terri was not "with it" enough to be allowed to continue. Maxfield repeatedly had to tell Felos that the answer was correctly his but that the attorney has changed the question it was supposed to be answering.

At one point, Dr. Maxfield chatised Felos with: "You're trying to nitpick the individual points and you can't do that when you are doing a medical diagnosis. You have to look at the whole person."

Another time, the family attorney had to offer to stipulate that Dr. Maxfield was not every kind of doctor there was in existence. Felos seemed to be trying to prove that the physician on the stand was not board certified in every single field of medicine at the same time.

The husband and his attorney are trying to spark fights the size of gnats --- like over the fact that the size of the 1996 and the 2002 CAT scan pictures do not exactly match. Terri's family continue to fight for the big picture -- the saving of her life.
Rus Cooper-Dowda