!!!!
Perhaps Ben Carson can’t see it, but between his flippant remark about the effort to save Terri Schiavo’s life being “much ado about nothing” and his FB post in the wake of Brittany Maynard’s death describing how to, in fact, administer drugs and then withdraw them in a way to bring about the death of the patient (with his or her permission), which is doctor-assisted suicide, he is in favor of both means of bringing about an early death for people. Here is his FB post about Brittany Maynard. Read it very closely and carefully. He is clearly describing a manner of administering drugs, then hastening their withdrawal to bring about death. That is not simply a matter of the patient refusing extraordinary care.
Ben Carson can’t see that the issue in Terri’s case was that a husband with an agenda allowed his otherwise healthy wife to be starved to death? She was in agony as she starved and dehydrated to death. Really, she was murdered. We put animals down with more compassion. And, the U.S. Supreme Court insists that we put criminals to death with more due process and with less pain.
Either way, Terri’s wishes were not known and the courts with the approval of the Bishop of Saint Petersburg, Bishop Robert Lynch, allowed her husband – who was hardly unbiased – decide to kill her when her family wanted to care for her. The death was by starvation and dehydration. This doesn’t seem to bother Carson at all? OUTRAGEOUS!
Carson absolutely disgusts me on this issue. I have had misgivings before , but his “much ado about nothing comment has caused me to reexamine his qualifications to be President of the United States. We certainly do not need him as head of our nation as we continue to grapple with government health care. Don’t forget he’s also on the record of supporting rationing health care for the elderly. He has said:
On end-of-life care, Dr. Carson wrote in 1992: “As our general population continues to age and as our technical abilities continue to improve we will find ourselves in a position of being able to keep most people alive…well beyond their 100th birthday. The question is “Should we do it simply because we can? It is well known that up to half of the medical expenses incurred in the average American’s life are incurred during the last six months of life….rather than putting them in an intensive care unit, poking and prodding them, operating and testing them ad nauseam, why not allow them the dignity of dying in comfort, at home, with an attendant if necessary?…Decisions on who should be treated and who should not be treated would clearly require some national guidelines.”
The article for that is here: http://absoluterights.com/ben-carson-should-not-run-for-president/
And, while I have trouble with Jeb Bush on a number of issues, I will always be grateful for how far he was willing to go to try to save this poor woman from an agonizing death preventing her husband from benefiting from her insurance money with his new girlfriend and children.
Also, Carson has said that in the case of rape or incest he’d “hope” that women would take RU-486. http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/melanie-hunter/ben-carson-cases-rape-and-incest-i-would-hope-women-would-take-ru-486
And I’m not even going into his use of aborted fetal tissue for which his explanations have been decidedly murky. A clear no has not been given and I can only reasonably assume that is because it cannot be given. http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/08/13/ben-carson-responds-to-report-he-used-aborted-fetal-tissue-in-1992/
If life is the preeminent issue, that’s about 5 strikes, and he’s out in my book. I hope others can see that as well. All of the candidates are problematic in one way or another, but Carson is especially problematic on the issues of life because he seems to have thought out very anti-life issues that he tries to couch otherwise. And this is especially the case with regard to denial of care and determination of futility and euthanasia/doctor-assisted suicide. His ability to be so vague and obscure up to now is disconcerting, but his callous remark “much ado about nothing” has cleared the smoke and mirrors !
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Ben Carson Voices Support for Deliberately Starving and Dehydrating Brain-Injured Patients
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, Terri Schiavo Life & Hope Network
PHILADELPHIA, Nov. 16, 2015 / — Dr. Ben Carson owes pro-life and medically vulnerable Americans an apology. Similarly, any pro-lifer supporting his campaign should take another look at the candidate’s values.
Speaking to reporters at a Florida Republican Party conference on Friday, November 13, Dr. Carson marginalized Terri Schiavo and other struggling and medically vulnerable patients.
Terri Schiavo, who died on March 31, 2005 from starvation and dehydration, was brain injured but otherwise healthy woman who was not reliant on life support. Michael Schiavo, her estranged husband and guardian, had led a national court case to remove her feeding tube—a means of nourishment which millions of patients rely on every day—in order to end her life almost a decade after warehousing her in a nursing home and suspending rehabilitative care.
When asked by a reporter whether he believed Terri Schiavo deserved Congress’s attempt to halt her court-ordered 13-day death by starvation and dehydration, Dr. Carson blithely responded, “I don’t think it needed to get to that level. I think it was much ado about nothing.”
Dr. Carson continued: “We face those kinds of issues all the time, and while I don’t believe in euthanasia, you have to recognize that people that are in that condition do have a series of medical problems that occur that will take them out,” explaining that “your job [as a doctor] is to keep them comfortable throughout that process and not to treat everything that comes up.
The Terri Schiavo Life & Hope Network condemns Dr. Ben Carson for these callous remarks that serve to marginalize an already underserved community of patients. Whether Dr. Carson understands that Terri Schiavo was not a terminal patient is unclear, but it is certainly clear that Dr. Carson’s advice to doctors “not to treat” brain injured patients is precisely the form of euthanasia that led to the suspension of Schiavo’s rehabilitation and ultimately her court-ordered death.
Bobby Schindler, president of the Terri Schiavo Life & Hope Network and brother of Terri Schiavo, issued these remarks:
“Every pro-life advocate knows how hard it is to argue for the Constitutional right-to-life from natural birth to natural death. Terri was denied a natural death from men who shared Dr. Carson’s hopeless views on the value of a life in need of love and extensive rehabilitation.”
“As both a Christian and a world renowned neurological surgeon,” Schindler continued, “Dr. Carson owes every pro-life advocate an apology. At best, he spoke from a perspective of personal prejudice and ignorance. At worst, he truly shares the perspective of so many euthanasia activists. Terri was denied the protections Congress attempted to afford her, which were the same due process rights that every death row prisoner in this country possesses. But for the brain injured, which include everyone from professional athletes to everyday Americans, their cases are often hopeless because of the attitudes Dr. Carson professes.
“If we get a President Carson, conservatives won’t need to fear Obamacare’s so-called death panels,” continued Schindler, “because Dr. Carson would himself represent a one-man death panel, content to ration care and decide who deserves a chance at life based on a warped sense of the ethics of medicine and humane law.”
According to Tom Shakely, executive director of the Terri Schiavo Life & Hope Network: “Traumatically brain injured patients need intensive rehabilitative care, period. Every day, shocked Americans learn they will have to fight their own doctors and medical providers just to afford their loved ones a shot at recovery in the face of a system increasingly driven by cost-minded MBAs rather than caring MDs. For Dr. Carson to align himself with the bureaucrats is devastating.”
“This isn’t about politics, concluded Shakely. “Dr. Carson’s remarks raise serious questions about the moral character of his allegedly pro-life candidacy. Pro-lifers can’t afford any more part time believers.”
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The Terri Schiavo Life & Hope Network, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, was established by the family members of Terri Schiavo to defend the rights of the medically vulnerable. These rights include the protection from the removal of food and water (via a feeding tube) which has been redefined as medical treatment instead of basic and ordinary care. The Life & Hope Network has communicated with and supported more than 1,000 families, and has been involved in hundreds of cases since Terri’s Death. To learn more about the work of the Life & Hope Network, please visit lifeandhope.com.
Media Contact:
Tom Shakely, Executive Director — tshakely@lifeandhope.com
ABYSSUS ABYSSUM INVOCAT / DEEP CALLS TO DEEP 
I am extremely pro-life, both for children in the womb, with medical problems or not, and for the very elderly who are fragile of health. My own mom lived to be 98, my dad to 86. I would never had done ANYTHING to hasten their death, or neglected their normal care to allow them to sicken and die. I always was looking for natural ways to optimize their health through nutrition, supplements, and physical activity. I wanted normal medical things to be done to allow their lives to continue if possible. So each decision about their care in their last months was about if was it extreme (like the suggestion by the doctor to remove my father’s colon because of a GI bleed, which we declined (the bleeding stopped by itself), or normal (like the option to give my mom a stomach feeding tube because dementia was causing her not to be able to swallow without aspirating her food (she died of pneumonia before the action could be taken). My experience is that doctors see a sick elderly person, and already have mostly given up, and start a discussion about withholding simple, normal, not risky or extraordinary care — care they would assume is basic care if the person was younger. That angers me. They are acting like doctors in a triage war zone – don’t treat the ones who will die shortly anyway, put your resources in those who are likely to live on. It makes sense in a field hospital or in a disaster. It’s cruel and heartless in a normal hospital setting. It was cruel and heartless what they did to Terry Schiavo.
The medical profession has lost it’s way when treating human beings like a commodity with a shelf life, and determine treatment based on some kind of cost benefit analysis.
I can’t see the FB post. I was supporting Carson, but if he is not really pro-life, I’d switch over to Ted Cruz. None of them are perfect.