Press Release Urges GW Bush to intervene for Terri

Press Release
For Immediate Release – 03-10-05 5.00 PM (GMT-5)

President Bush urged to intervene in Terri Schiavo Case

Healthcare advocates demand the President back up his Culture of Life stance by working to protect Terri Schiavo in Florida.

Clearwater, FL – Healthcare and Eldercare advocates in Florida are urging President George W. Bush to take a stance in the Terri Schiavo case in Florida.

Schiavo is the brain-injured woman whose husband has successfully won, through the courts, the authority to remove her tube-assisted nutrition and hydration beginning March 18, 2005. This action will cause the 41 year-old woman’s death by dehydration and starvation over the course of 7 to 14 days.

Terri’s parents, Bob and Mary Schindler have asked the courts for the authority to care for her, provide her with therapy, the ability to conduct updated neurological tests, the ability to offer her food and water naturally and the ability to try new forms of therapy that could improve Terri’s ability to accept nutrition naturally. The judge has denied them in these and other efforts to protect their daughter’s life, even though there is evidence that doing so is contrary to Florida’s long settled guardianship laws.

In 2003, Governor Jeb Bush of Florida and the state’s lawmakers intervened with what would be called Terri’s Law, only to be struck down by the Supreme Court. A group of advocates, organized by Cheryl Ford, RN of Tampa, Florida, is now asking for the intervention of the President.

Citing the President’s “Culture of Life” address to the March for Life in Washington in recent months, Ford and her supporters are demanding that the President back up his words with swift action to protect the innocent, disabled woman. Activists have arranged an intensive email campaign to the Whitehouse and are asking for both the President’s words and action on behalf of Terri Schiavo.

Statement of Cheryl Ford, RN: We are asking President Bush to make a firm statement against the euthanasia of our country’s elderly and disabled citizens. We are also asking that he come immediately to Florida, where Terri has been held captive in a Hospice House for five years so that he can meet her personally and decide for himself if this innocent woman should be put to death by Florida’s out of control judiciary.


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Contact: Cheryl Ford, RN – Healthcare Advocate
813-695-0870