Kevin Fobbs
April 3, 2006
Constitutional amendment would have protected Terri Schiavo from starvation death
By Kevin Fobbs

Terri Schiavo would be alive today if the Founding Fathers had only thought to add to the Constitution "Food and Water" to the basic inalienable rights of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. There would be no need of an official Terri's Day. The Founding Fathers did not consider hydration and nutrition because it appeared no civilized nation at the time had deprived their citizens, not even their convicted criminals of that basic right, so therefore the thinking had to be, why include the obvious? Perhaps as Thomas Jefferson was at his desk laboring over crafting the correct wording for historic passages which would become the framework for our Constitution... food and water...just slipped his mind.

America's founders at its origin did not stumble over something so basic, because, the biblical basis respect for the life at the beginning and at the end was well grounded. It was sacrosanct to our developing American Culture.

Now, 230 years after America's founding and one year after Terri Schiavo's needless death, the nation finds itself stymied by a troubling dilemma. We must question just where does the Constitutional protection of "life" begin and end? Ask yourself, if your daughter collapsed in gym class at school and was comatose for a time but was not deathly ill, would you make a decision to deprive her of nutrition and of hydration because recent polls you read or saw on television that week, indicated starving your daughter to death is better because you won't see the same smile, or hear the same voice from her. Should the polls make your decision?

What about your son who's lying in a hospice bed and is now after 11 years is "unresponsive" to doctors or to his wife but he forces a smile for you, just around the edges of his mouth, and he blinks out a small tear when you talk about his old hockey games or reminisce about a young adult outing with three fishing buddies and how the big one nearly got away? The medical professionals are telling you to agree with his wife, and pull the plug by depriving his hydration and food. Whose quality of life is being measured here? Whose burden is being considered?

Where is the line? Where is the line when a wife or a husband has "moved on" and taken up with another person as a significant other? Where is the line when that daughter-in-law or son-in-law has moved on and even has one or two kids with the new person? Did we suddenly lose our common sense last year, or were we just willing to look the other way on Terri's rights? Is it always better to just simply turn the page on our basic rights, but suddenly become politically correct when it comes to protecting the rights of eleven to twenty million illegal aliens who have crossed over the border because they want our protection and our rights and because they "add value" to our nation's economy?

Would Terri Schiavo still be alive today if her right to eat and to consume water was tied to her usefulness in America's economy? Would Congressional leaders on Capitol Hill be giving stirring speeches about the anguish her family was going through and how our nation just could not subject her family — Mary, Bob, Bobby and Suzanne — to if only Terri's life had as much value as all those illegal aliens filling our nation's streets, many of them with unfurled Mexican flags?

Well, perhaps we should put the word out to our neighbors, colleagues, fellow parishioners or family members that the Culture of Life is worth campaigning for as well. The Founding Fathers may not have envisioned our need 230 years after our nation's birth to have a Constitutional state or federal law which protects a citizen's right to not be put to death by a judge, nor by a wife or husband's unsubstantiated words, or by popular polls that flourish in the Culture of Death because after all "everybody is doing it."

I said to Bobby Schindler and his sister Suzanne Schindler Vitadamo that Americans are willing to not only listen to the spirit of our nation's founders but to those who are willing to act when they understand how the war for the culture of life is inherent. It's not an entitlement left to the whims of America's contemporary version of the Roman coliseums where life and limb was literally torn from the victim because, after all, it was the "standard practice" used by civilized people at the time.

Up until March 18th of last year most Americans would have said that as a nation we had moved past the roar of the coliseum. Until March 31st last year, we probably would have said that a Pope, a President and a Congress would have gotten together to save the life of one defenseless American who should have had her life guaranteed by the Constitution but was denied it by a judge whose rulings were reminiscent of edicts from a Star Chamber from the Medieval times.

But it was not and the need for a Terri's Day that rallies Americans to the same passion to protect their loved ones that motivates millions of pledges to make clear for their families their "will to live" that champions the forgotten Constitutional Amendment that Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and all the other signers of the Declaration of Independence may have overlooked is necessary. The simple right to bread and water. We give it to prisoners but it was not good enough for an innocent, harmless American young woman, who loved animals, butterflies and life.

We value our loved ones and every moment they are with us. Make certain you take the first crucial step to insure they value you as well. The Schindler family — Bob, Mary, Bobby and Suzanne — would want you to join the crusade.

Encourage everyone you know to sign the pledge to support a resolution in every state in the nation declaring March 31 as Terri's Day and to help raise the funds the Terri Schindler Schiavo Foundation needs to work to make sure what happened to Terri doesn't happen to anyone else! Make Terri's Day an official day of "Remembrance and Celebration of the Culture of Life" (go to Terri's Day link at www.Terrisfight.org or www.kevinfobbs.com).

Perhaps one day soon with millions of signed pledges, millions of Americans will be able to stand up, march down the center of our streets and hold a good ole' fashioned "American Life Party" that the Boston Tea Party organizers would be proud of. March 31st is not the end but the beginning. Pass it around...America is waiting.

© Kevin Fobbs

 

The views expressed by RenewAmerica columnists are their own and do not necessarily reflect the position of RenewAmerica or its affiliates.
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Kevin Fobbs

Kevin Fobbs is founder and president of a policy organization called National Urban Policy Action Council (NuPac), www.nupac.info that supports conservative colorblind solutions to universal issues and domestic policies that impact urban America... (more)

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