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Herbert Comes Out of Ten Year Coma

After almost ten years, fireman Donald Herbert, brain damaged and mute from a roof collapse in 1995, suddenly spoke, and kept speaking. He had to catch up on the nearly ten years that he was out of touch and wanted to know everything that had been going on.

Firefighter Comes Out of Coma

This firefighter had received constant therapy—something Terri Schiavo was denied—but had still spent seven years in a Buffalo, NY, nursing home. His first words were, “I want to talk to my wife.”

Instead he got his thirteen year old son and said, “That can’t be. He’s just a baby. He can’t talk.” The son and father had an all-night conversation. The authorities, to contrast this story with the Terri Schiavo case, suggest Schiavo’s illness was far more severe. The fact is, if Terri had been allowed the kind of therepy Herbert got, she would probably have been talking, too.

Herbert’s doctors and staff say they have no idea how it happened. Scientists say such awakenings into normal consciousness are rare, but they do happen. It could have happened to Terri.

Parker on Parental Notification

Kathleen Parker in Wednesday’s Chicago Tribune writes on “Politics of pregnant girls and abortions.” She asks how you’d like for someone you may not even know taking your daughter without your knowledge to another state to have her appendix removed. You’d be outraged, right?

“Yet,” she continues, “in some states parents are supposed to sit quietly while their daughters cross state lines to get an abortion without even a vote on which noble soul provides transportation, much less an invitation to provide emotional support.”

She points out that in the U. S. House last week a bill passed to change the likelihood of that happening by making it a federal crime for any adult to transport someone younger than 18 across state lines for an abortion without parental consent. “The name of the legislation alone is enough to send shivers,” she writes, “the Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act.”

It still has to pass the Senate. If it becomes law it requires doctors who do the abortions on underage girls to notify the girl’s parents or pay up to $100,000 in fines or a year in jail— or both.

Parker points out that currently 23 states require parental notification, but that ten states allow other adults, such as grandparents, to be notified, while 17 states require no notification at all. These include New York, New Jersey and California.

Pro-aborts call the legislation an erosion of reproductive rights. While taking cracks at both pro-abortion and pro-life advocates, Parker at least conclude that no child should be operated on without a parent’s consent, no matter what the procedure. She makes this conclusion on the basis that most parents have their children’s best interests at heart.

“Mothers and fathers may be disagreeable at times,” Parker concludes, “but a pregnant girl needs her parents more than she needs a special-interest group or a politician or a lousy boyfriend none of whom loves her as much.”

Parker’s only real slap at pro-lifers is that we raise the specter of the “ickiest bogeyman in fatherdom, an abusive boyfriend, taking the girl for a concert with the devil.” To that observation any pro-lifer who has been out there could simply invite Kathleen to drop by an abortion mill of her choice, and see how close she has come to the truth without knowing it. Maybe someday she will.

George to Blago: Back Off

In Thursday’s Chicago Sun-Times we read that Cardinal Francis George has called on Gov. Rob Blalgojevich to back off his rule ordering Illinois pharmacies to dispense the morning after pill, a form of abortion. George told the Governor that people have a choice of what pharmacy they go to and that pharmacists should have a moral choice also.

George is quoted: “I don’t think the state has any business encroaching on the conscience of people. We haven’t done this in this country. We’ve respected individual conscience as something that is of great moral importance.”

Blagojevich issued the ruling after a Chicago pharmacist refused to fill a prescription for the pill, citing his moral objection. Blagojevich is trying to make his bill permanent. The Governor and Cardinal met Wednesday. The Legislature will vote on the Governor’s order May 17.

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