Terri Update

Terri_1First the good news: The Senate has passed a bill conforming to the "Palm Sunday Comromise" that would get Terri’s food tube reinserted.

More good news: President Bush has rushed back to Washington to sign the bill into law if it passes.

The bad news: House DemoEvilcrats (that is to say, members of the Democratic Party who are personally evil) have stalled passage of the bill by the House:


In a special session Sunday afternoon, Democrats refused to allow the bill to be passed without a roll call vote.


Under House rules, such a vote could not occur before 12:01 a.m. Monday
when at least 218 of the 435-member House must appear to establish a
quorum. Also, because it was an expedited vote, the measure needed
votes from two-thirds of those present for passage.

"Time is not on Terri Schiavo’s side," DeLay said. "The few remaining objecting House Democrats have so far cost Mrs. Schiavo two meals already today."

There is still hope, though

GET THE STORY.

Now the frustrating news: The "Palm Sunday Compromise" involves tailoring the bill such that it is directed specifically to Terri’s case and would have no implications for other cases. That’s bad

a) Because it won’t protect anyone else, and

b) Because on its face it violates the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection of the laws since it’s relief directed specifically to Terri’s parents, meaning that other parents of people in similar situations don’t get this relief, thus denying them equal protection, and so

c) It could be struck down by a  evil judgeSith  Lord on those grounds.

Now, I’m just a simple country lawyerapologist so relief of this narrowly-tailored nature may go on all the time and precedent may have already established that it’s "okay" to do this. I’d love for a real lawyer to tell me that for Terri’s sake, though it violates the way the law ought to work for Constitutional reasons.

I suggest, in view of these facts, that we all

KEEP THIS ISSUE IN PRAYER.

UPDATE: In an extraordinary session, the House passed the bill shortly after midnight East Coast time and President Bush signed. Her parents have subsequently filed a motion in federal court.

GET THE STORY.

PRAYER IS STILL NEEDED THAT THE COURT WILL RE-INSERT TERRI’S FOOD TUBE AND NOT STRIKE THE LAW DOWN OUT OF HAND.

Author: Jimmy Akin

Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live."

10 thoughts on “Terri Update”

  1. What irks me is how horribly uninformed people are, I keep hearing on (evil) mainstream media that Terri’s in a persistive vegitative state, and that “life support” is being removed, one of my non-ewtn/catholic media watching friends saw a picture of her and immediately said “I didn’t know she was awake”. ARGH!
    prayin’…

  2. Jimmy,
    The bill that will hopefully be passed very soon will most likely only buy Terri some time. According to Angus Dwyer, a law student at Yale who blogs at Mansfield Fox, it probably is a Bill of Attainder and thus unconstitutional (Patrick Sweeney at Extreme Catholic said the same thing basically). Hopefully either the U.S. Congress or the Florida legislature will effect changes in the law that will afford Terri and others like her permanent protection. If Darth Greer hadn’t ignored the subpoena, Congress might have had time to work on getting something more like the House bill through the senate.

  3. I’ve been watching the coverage on TV and I’ve just come to the conclusion that CNN is the anti-christ.

  8. I have long believed that the leaders of the DemonicRat Party are commited to evil, now they are really showing themselves. Jesus, have mercy on us. J+M+J

  9. For what it’s worth, after more thinking on the subject, I’ve come to the conclusion that this probably isn’t a Bill of Attaint.
    It has a lot of the problems of a Bill of Attainder – Congress, rather than proscribing general rules, is acting in a specific case – but the extent to which it monkeys with Michael Schiavo’s “right” to dehydrate his wife probably isn’t enough to make it constitutionally impermissable.
    Blog in haste, repent at leisure.
    (I’ll try to put up a update on my post later today, maybe when I get back from Mass.)

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