Groups Opposing Active Euthanasia For Robert Wendland :: Euthanasia Physician Assisted Suicide

Groups Opposing Active Euthanasia For Robert Wendland   On September 29, 1993, Robert Wendland, then age 42, was involved in a vehicle accident. He was in a coma for 16 months. In January 1995, Mr. Wendland came out of the coma, but he remains severely cognitively impaired. He is paralyzed on the unspoilt side. He communicates using a Yes/No communication board. He receives food and fluids through a feeding tube. During rehabilitation, he has been able to do such activities as grasp and release a ball, operate an electric wheelchair with a joystick, move himself in a manual wheelchair with his left hand or foot, balance himself momently in a standing frame while grabbing and pulling thera-putty, draw the letter R, and choose and replace requested deform blocks out of several color choices. The Probate Court appointed Robert Wendlands wife, Rose, as conservator of his person under the Probate Code. Rose sought authorization from the court to remove the feeding tube, thereby s tarving him to death. Roberts mother (Florence Wendland) and sister (Rebekah Vinson) objected.   Various groups opposed to active euthanasia became involved in the case with amicus briefs   Not Dead Yet is a national grassroots organization of people with disabilities formed in response to the increasing popularity of, and laws permitting, physician assisted suicide and euthanasia in the United States and nearly the world. Not Dead Yets mission is to advocate against legitimateization of physician assisted suicide and euthanasia, and to bring a hinderance-rights perspective and awareness of the effects of discrimination to the legal and sociological debate around euthanasia and physician assisted suicide. Formed in 1996 in Illinois, Not Dead Yet has worked to educate, support, coordinate and lead the disability communitys effort to stop the right to die from becoming a duty to die or a right to kill. While it is impossible to determine how umteen people with disabilities , family members and allies, call themselves members of Not Dead Yet, members have undertaken specific activities in the name of the organization and in support of its mission in at least(prenominal) 30 states. Not Dead Yet has given invited testimony ahead the U.S. Congress three times, once before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee and twice before the Constitution Subcommittee of the U.S. House of Representatives. When Not Dead Yet members attended the long awaited 1999 trial of Jack Kevorkian (the first after three years of non-prosecution, and rafts of assisted suicides of people with non-terminal disabilities) and silently demanded the equal protection of the law, he was convicted.