Using Terri
The Religious Right's Conspiracy to Take Away Our Rights
Chapter OneMy Cousin Ros
I joined Michael Schiavo's legal team in March 2005 because I understood well his painful task. It is not easy to "pull the plug" on someone you love. I know from personal experience.
In 1998, my cousin Roslyn August suffered a devastating stroke that left her with what doctors called "global aphasia." As one of them put it, "Nothing is getting through to her, and nothing can come out." I spent days at her bedside trying to communicate. I held her hand and asked her to squeeze it. Nothing. I told her to blink if she could hear me. Nothing. I kissed her cheek. Nothing.
Yet she was not in a coma. Her eyes were often open, and sometimes they tracked me as I crossed the room. She seemed lost somewhere between life and death.
On one visit to her bedside, I brought my favorite photograph of her. The photographer had caught her standing in a grove of trees at the base of Yosemite Falls wearing a big, silly grin, facing upward with her arms held up to the sky, as if ... read full excerpt from Using Terri: The Religious Right's Conspiracy to Take Away Our Rights ebook
