Jefferson, we knew there'd be another Terry. There was the elderly woman in GA and now this. Found this on WorldNetDaily.
Feeding Resumed for Mexican Woman in Vegetative State
Jorge Mederos La Raza
jmederos@laraza.com
Chicago - By the intervention of the State of Illinois government, feeding was resumed for Clara Martinez,a Mexican woman in a vegetative state. She had been 30 days without food per her husband’s decision.
Some forty people were brought together by the Hispanic Evangelical Church for a vigil of prayers and hymns. They were greeted with the news that she was once again receiving nutrition.
“Thanks be to God, our sister is being cared for,” said Bolivian Pastor Guillermo Espinoza.
Sources at the state’s Department of Human Services told the EFE wire service that the woman’s gastric feeding tube was ordered reconnected after the visit by an inspector to the house where she is being attended.
Authorities would otherwise have ordered her moved to a hospital.
According to Espinoza, the state’s intervention resulted from pressure by the press and right-to-life organizations in the US.
“Her husband could think it over, and now there will be more appeals at the legal level,” he affirmed.
Peter Farrel, Clara’s brother, followed the vigil from a distance and said he was grateful for the prayers.
Asked about his sister’s condition, he responded with “She’s fine” and no more.
Before the start of the vigil, Peter and other relatives approached Pastor Espinoza trying to dissuade him. The family has tried to keep the matter out of public scrutiny, although in private they have declared their opposition to the husband’s decision.
Clara Martínez, 39 years old and mother of children aged 5 and 7 years, has been brain-dead for a year and a half. For the previous 30 days she was taking only water.
After suffering a stroke, she was attended in a hospital, then in an intermediate care clinic, after which she returned to the hospital. A year ago she was taken to her home in Chicago’s southeast side.
Salvador Martínez, her 35-year-old husband and legal guardian, also Mexican, decided that his wife should not live artificially. He signed a “Do Not Resuscitate” order so she wouldn’t be revived by artificial measures and disconnected the feeding apparatus.
The case, made public by “La Raza” newspaper, had immediate repercussions in the community of almost a million Mexicans who live in Illinois.
Furthermore, several right-to-life organizations, especially the movement that emerged with the Terri Schiavo case, pressured authorities with threats of recourse to a restraining order for legal protection for the Mexican woman.
These organizations also offered legal assistance to the family of Clara Martínez to fight in court against her husband’s decision.
Schiavo, an American, was disconnected from her feeding tube on March 18 by judicial order. She died of starvation fourteen days later, after a drawn-out judicial and legislative battle between her relatives and her husband.
© La Raza