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Friday, February 28, 2014

Medical Kidnap

Justina Pelletier managed to escape Medical Tyranny,
Alfie Evans got out when he died 

by Susan Fox
“On the other hand, if what the Apostle calls the form of Christ has not been produced in us, we abort ourselves. The man of God must reach maturity.” (Saint Gregory of Nyssa)

And so the state of Massachusetts and Boston Children’s
Justina Pelletier was kidnapped by Boston Children's Hospital
 for 16 months and put into a psych ward against her will
Hospital abort themselves while slowly murdering a 15-year-old girl named Justina Pelletier.

Getting the flu may seem like an ordinary thing, but for Justina, it became a death sentence. She is living now without proper medical care, and unless somebody can free her from the custody of the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families (DCF), she may not survive her ordeal. Some Massachusetts lawmakers this week began the process of asking DCF to return the teenager to her parents’ custody.  Join the Twitter campaign at #FreeJustina.

A year ago the girl suffering from mitochondrial disease was admitted to the Harvard-associated Boston Children’s Hospital and their doctors arbitrarily changed her diagnosis to somatoform disorder. Mitochondrial disease requires medical care. Somatoform disorder requires psychiatric care.

Justina, who is now confined to a wheel chair with all the symptoms of starvation, was an otherwise healthy young girl when she was admitted to Boston Children’s. Symptoms of her mitochondrial disease were successfully being managed
Justina before the Medical
Kidnap by Boston Children's
Hospital
by Tufts Medical Center. But the doctors at Boston Children’s decided they knew better. Her parents didn’t agree, and prepared to remove her from the hospital. But the hospital called in DCF, who successfully seized custody of the girl alleging “medical abuse.”

“And that is a blatant lie,” Justina’s father, Louis Pellitier told the Blaze in an interview with Glenn Beck on Feb. 21, “Everything that’s been done, and not that much has been done to her, has been medically verified, and insurance approved, and trust me -- do you think insurance companies will approve anything (not medically necessary)?”

Four years ago, they did exploratory surgery on Justina and found a congenital band --- 20 inches of cartilage wrapped around her colon and appendix.  Such a condition is almost always fatal, so the doctors removed it. Medical abuse has never been used before as an excuse to terminate parental rights.

Ironically, Justina did not suffer “medical abuse” until she was taken into custody by DCF.

Many, many people are grabbing their heads and asking how such a thing can happen in the United States of America. But the doctors at Boston Children’s are literally thinking with the precision of a Nazi materialistic mindset.

“If man can decide by himself, without God, what is good and what is bad, he can also determine that a group of people is to be annihilated,” wrote Pope John Paul II in his last work, Memory and Identity, “Decisions of this kind were taken, for example, by those who came to power in the Third Reich by democratic means, only to misuse their power in order to implement the wicked programs of National Socialist Ideology . . . Likewise all those who were “inconvenient” for the regime were persecuted.” 

I’ll never forget reading about a group of nuns in Nazi Germany, who loved and cared for mentally disabled children. (Abortion: the Silent Holocaust)   The Nazis showed up at the convent one day and grabbed the healthy, happy children and packed them up  “like a sack of potatoes.” They were frightened, unloved and they were never seen again.


Death formally introduced himself and entered the United States in 1973 when the Supreme Court legalized abortion in
Roe v Wade. But I remember my mother in 1965 – hands on her hips standing in our living room – warning me that if they legalized abortion, euthanasia would be next.

I was just a young girl in grade school then, and I remember becoming quite frightened that I would witness this holocaust. I have!

In the 1990s, when I regularly took young members of the Legion of Mary to visit the elderly in the nursing home, the children and I were denied the opportunity to visit one of our “regulars” because her family was busy starving and dehydrating her to death. “But don’t worry,” the nurse told us, “the priest has been here to give her the last rites.” In other words, the priest gave the nurse the impression that the Catholic Church approved euthanasia. The Church doesn’t. And it was not even legal in Washington State until 2008.
Terri Schiavo: Another beautiful girl slaughtered
by medical and judicial fiat.
"I want to live," she said.  

It was 2005 when Terri Schiavo, a handicapped Catholic woman, was starved and dehydrated to death while her mother and father were prevented by the presence of state troupers from giving her water and pudding – both things she could swallow. She did not enunciate her words clearly, but I distinctly heard her plead, “I want to live,” on video.   Both President Bush and the Congress tried to save her, but were thwarted by the courts. It was a case of judicial tyranny.

The universal Catholic Church defended her. Bishop Elio Sgreccia, president of the Catholic Pontifical Academy for Life, said that the brain-damaged Florida woman "must be considered as a living human person" in spite of her disabilities. The bishop added, "Her juridical rights must be recognized, respected, and defended."

“To withdraw food and water from Terri Schiavo -- as her husband proposes to do, with the help of a court order-- would be "a way of killing that person," Bishop Sgreccia said, adding that the provision of food and water “is basic care, to which any patient is entitled.” But against her will, Terri – a handicapped woman – was executed anyway while the world watched.
It is happening to a lot of people.

About 2001, a “devout” Catholic man sat down with my son and I while we were eating a hot dog at Costco in Covington, Washington. For some reason, he began the long story of his 50-plus year marriage with his deceased wife. We politely listened. He explained painstakingly how he had cared for her during her life. Then at the end of the story, he showed us how his wife had silently begged for food before she died.

But he seemed to think that starving her was necessary to “care” for her as he had always done. I made a mild remark about praying to a saint, and he jumped up and accused me of heresy! Poor man, what he told us was matter for confession, and he must not have availed himself of the sacrament, or he would not need to tell strangers.

So what terrible blanket of darkness has settled down upon our country to make doctors so coldhearted toward their patients, families ready to murder Grandma and men so uncaring for their wives? Why have the rights of good parents to determine what is best for their children been so completely abrogated?

“Thou shalt not kill,” Pope John Paul II answers the question in the Gospel of Life. “It is often claimed that the life of an unborn child or a seriously disabled person is only a relative good: according to a proportionalist approach, or one of sheer calculation, this good should be compared with and balanced against other goods.”

There are three goods: the just, the useful and the pleasurable. If one chooses the just good, the means to the end are just and the end is just. The goal is conformed to the very essence of the object chosen. So Justina, whose very name means “just,” has a right to live and receive the best medical care available for her condition. Providing her such care is a “just” good.

If one seeks a useful good, the idea is to use the object to your benefit. “The question of the morality of the action remains open: only when the action bringing the advantage is just and the means used are just, can the subject’s goal also be said to be just,” according to Pope John Paul II in Memory and Identity. So holding Justina against her and her family’s will in a non-medical facility while forcing her to deal with a number of hostile psychiatrists is a utilitarian goal. The doctors at Boston Children’s act so that their theoretical diagnosis is proved to be correct. It is a matter of selfish professional honor. Such a solution is unjust, and will result in Justina’s death if she can’t be freed.    

“Utilitarianism ignores the first and fundamental dimension of good, that of the bonum honestum (just good). Utilitarian anthropology and the ethic derived from it set out from the conviction that man tends essentially toward his own interest or that of the group to which he belongs,” the pope wrote. Can we place the name, Boston Children’s Hospital, in the place of “the group”? Indeed, we can. 

Accomplishing a just good is always accompanied by an interior joy – the joy of doing good. But in utilitarianism, "good" and "joy" have been replaced by the search for "advantage" and "pleasure." In this scheme, according to the pope, the pleasurable good is an end in itself. Man actually seeks pleasure above all else. The utilitarian thinker calculates the pleasures, and uses as his goal “the greatest happiness of the greatest number.”

Sounds nice. But what happens when the individual like Justina needs medical care and the group decides the greatest happiness is giving her psychiatric care, guaranteed to kill a person with the diagnosis of mitochondrial disease?

She dies. That’s it.

They don’t care.

The one lost sheep? Let the wolves eat him. Tell the Good Shepherd to adopt a new persona, that of the uncaring shepherd. Rewrite the parable and protect the 99. The Bible is fungible anyway. Welcome tyranny.

Pope John Paul II would say Justina’s death warrant was written in the 17th century, the beginning of the Age of the so-called “Enlightenment.”  That’s when mankind began to abandon Faith in favor of Reason Alone. The two are not opposites. They are complementary.

"I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in Me, he is thrown away as a branch and dries up; and they gather them, and cast them into the fire and they are burned. (John 15:5-6)

In the Enlightenment, humanity split from the True Vine and became a dead branch. Faith was thrown out. Reason remained.

Like Justins'a parents, Alfie's parents fought to get him released from
Alder Hey Hospital in Liverpool, England, so he could receive
life-saving medical care in Italy. But the hospital would not discharge him
until after he died. 
But now another revolution is taking place. It is Reason’s turn to die. For even without faith, one could reasonably determine that a sick child needs medical care using old-fashioned common sense. But not in Justina’s case. Not in Terri Schiavo’s case. Not in the case of toddler Alfie Evans, who died at 2:30 a.m.  April 28, 2018 in a hospital caught selling children's organs in 2001. Not in the case of infant Charlie Gard, who died in July 2017  after his parents sought to get him moved to the United States for experimental treatment. Again, the Great Ormond Street Hospital in London refused to release him. 

Without Faith and Reason, what moral ground is left? Pleasure. Potty train the liberal cat. Rub their faces in it. I wish them much Pleasure.

So what is left for us who still hold to Faith and Reason? What’s left besides prayer and Twitter protests?
#AlfiesArmy was the Twitter protest for the involuntary incarceration of
Alfie Evans in Alder Hey Hospital in Liverpool. 
Civil Disobedience. 

“Abortion and euthanasia are thus crimes which no human law can claim to legitimize. There is no obligation in conscience to obey such laws; instead there is a grave and clear obligation to oppose them by conscientious objection,” wrote the prophet Pope Saint John Paul II in the Gospel of Life.

“Human law is law inasmuch as it is in conformity with right reason and thus derives from the eternal law. But when a law is contrary to reason, it is called an unjust law; but in this case it ceases to be a law and becomes instead an act of violence,” he concluded.

The pope’s not advocating murder. Just disobedience. It could start with Justina’s caregivers or the state trouper guarding her room. They could refuse to continue to serve in that capacity. I should caution you, however, that to disobey will result in martyrdom, and I think that’s why Justina is still incarcerated against her will. People fear to lose their jobs. We used to be the home of the brave and the land of the free, but Americans have become so cowardly that they would let a young girl die so they can keep their jobs. The same thing happened in Nazi Germany.

Justina’s father did begin a war of civil disobedience on her behalf by going public with the situation. He was under a gag order. He disobeyed and I applaud his actions.

But Pope John Paul doesn’t leave us with a message of hopelessness in Memory and Identity. He reminds us that God places a limit on evil. The Nazis were only given 12 years to wreck havoc on the world.

And in some situations, evil is useful. “It creates opportunities for good,” the pope said. Satan is the agent of the First Cause. Where he treads, people wake up and repent! “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” (Rom 12:21)

Not only that, but Pope John Paul II would declare victory over evil even in the ashes of the Nazi Holocaust, which he personally lived through:  “If we look more closely at the
The beautiful short life of Charlie Gard
history of those peoples and nations who have endured the trial of totalitarian systems and persecutions on account of faith, we discover that is precisely where the victorious presence of Christ’s Cross is most clearly revealed . . . To those who are subjected to systematic evil, there remains only Christ and his Cross as a source of spiritual self-defense, as a promise of victory. Did not the sacrifice of Maximilian Kolbe in the extermination camp at Auschwitz become a sign of victory over evil? And could not the same be said of Edith Stein . . . who perished in the gas chamber of Birkenau, thus sharing the destiny of many other sons and daughters of Israel? How many others in that tragic history stand out among their fellow prisoners for the strength of the witness they bore to Christ crucified and risen!” Father Maximilian Kolbe offered to die in place of another prisoner. Edith Stein, a Jew and a Catholic nun, gladly went to die with her people and for her faith.

“To the question of how this unhappy situation can be overcome, Christians reply that all these human activities, which are daily endangered by pride and inordinate self-love, must be purified and perfected by the Cross and Resurrection of Christ.” (Vatican II)

So Justina is about more than just Justina. She suffers in her prison created by DCF, but the whole world groans in agony from the prison of its own utilitarian thinking. There are countless other Justinas and Alfies dying right now. But to help them we MUST change the world’s mind.

“The evangelical harvest in today’s world is great indeed. We have only to ask the Lord, and ask insistently, that he send laborers for this harvest that is ready and waiting to be reaped,” Pope John Paul II wrote in Memory and Identity.

Everyone has to decide. Will you embrace Pleasure, or will you embrace the Cross?

Editor's Note. This piece was written Feb. 28, 2014 and updated in 2018. Justina was released from Boston Children's Hospital, but her ordeal should not be forgotten. The quotes from Pope Saint John Paul II also apply to the situations of Alfie Evans and Charlie Gard of Great Britain, who were held in British Hospitals while potentially life saving treatment was available elsewhere.  Cardinal Vincent Nichols of Westminster has weighed in on the side of the Alder Hey Children's Hospital in the Alfie Evans case. He says the courts must decide a child's fate. I would argue his position is not Catholic and directly opposes that of Pope Saint John Paul II and the Catholic Church. Cardinal Nichols comments about the British courts are in  direct opposition to the Charter of the Rights of the Family, which the Catholic Church defends. The charter says, "The family, a natural society, exists prior to the State or any other community, and possesses inherent rights which are inalienable." The family and society are supposed to work together in an organic and complementary manner. But nowadays because of the totalitarian thinking that has invaded  government institutions in many nations, children are not safe when the courts are in charge. The states have adopted godlike powers. It is the same as when Jesus Christ was crucified:   But they shouted, "Take him away! Take him away! Crucify him!" "Shall I crucify your king?" Pilate asked. "We have no king but Caesar," the chief priests answered. In effect they took Caesar as their god instead of the one true God. Carol Tobias, the president of the National Right to Life Committee, told LifeNews, "Alfie Evans was sentenced to death by Britain’s National Health System and the High Court. Their intransigent commitment to the country’s faulty single-payer health system led them to conclude it was better for Alfie to die than leave the country and receive potentially life-saving treatment elsewhere.” 


Before Boston Children's Hospital kidnapped Justina and after. Her health deteriorated
Justina Pelletier spent 16 months in Massachusetts State Custody most of it locked in a psyche ward. In 2016 she sued Boston Children's Hospital for Medical Kidnap. When she arrived at Boston Children’s Hospital, she had the flu, but when she left she was in a wheelchair. She can't walk. She is still angry at the way she was treated. 

Justina Pelletier is Catholic. She was denied the sacraments and a visit from a priest during the last 13 months! This is outrageous! This Press Conference is electrifying:
 Connecticut Press Conference on March 5 regarding Justina Pelletier

Justina Pelletier joyously carried home by her father
after 16 months held captive in a psyche  ward without proper medical care. 









4 comments:

  1. What is disturbing to me is what are Justina's lawyers doing? Don't they know how to appeal this monster, evil judge's ruling? All court decisions can be appealed. I don't understand why Christian lawyers with a conscience step in to help this misguided family. One of their lawyer's license was revoked for stealing a client's funds. I mean really? Unless they secure good counsel Justina will continue to suffer.

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  2. I understand your frustration, but as I understand it, Justina's lawyers are not being paid. They are working pro bono. What regular American family could afford legal costs for something like this? Also the court shut out one of her expert lawyers in the beginning. I don't think the best legal counsel could save anyone if the judge is prejudiced. And how do they afford an appeal? The case is stacked against them. Someone somewhere is trying to establish that family doesn't have any right in the say of the medical care of the loved ones. Once that is established we get wholesale forced euthanasia in the U.S. Soaring medical costs problem? Solved. Kill the patient. It started over 20 years ago. It is gaining the steam. No one is safe. Pray for America. God bless you. Susan Fox

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  3. What a horror! Maybe we need Congress to take this on, as an emergency highest priority issue! Drop everything else, discuss, and legislate to solve this without delay! What issue could be more important for them to address than the lives of these children, babies, and patients of any age, who are becoming the "forgotten victims of this new holocaust!"

    ,

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  4. Yes, in the UK they are considering Alfie's Law which would secure parental rights in the case of a child's illness, but we need something similar in the U.S. since Massachusetts thought it had the right to take over Justina's established care against her own and her parents' wishes. God bless you Rita. Susan Fox

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