by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
Dover, DE (LifeNews.com) -- The family of Lauren Richardson continues to press her case and is now calling on the governor of Delaware for help to save her life. Richardson has become the next Terri Schiavo as her parents engage in a massive legal and philosophical debate about whether she should live or die.
Richardson is a 23-year-old woman who overdosed on heroin in August 2006 while she was three months pregnant with a baby girl.
Doctors kept Lauren on life support until she delivered her baby in February 2007. Shortly thereafter, her parents began a fight that is reminiscent of the battle over Terri's life and death.
Edith Towers, Lauren's mother, wants to remove her feeding tube and starve and dehydrate her to death in the same manner that Michael Schiavo subjected Terri.
On the other side is Randy Richardson, Lauren's father, who is fighting to save her life and wants to be appointed as her guardian to ensure she receives appropriate medical care and treatment.
Richardson recently said the fight to save Lauren continues and that he is "totally committed to a path that includes rehabilitative treatment and therapy with the hope that Lauren can recover significantly from her disability."
He hope that, one day, Lauren may be able to "participate in the raising of her daughter that she gave birth to while in her current condition."
Randy Richardson says, "Lauren’s mother, after convincing one Delaware judge to declare that she should be Lauren’s guardian, remains resolute in her assertion that Lauren is vegetative and cannot recover."
"Her mother has withheld authorization for any rehabilitative medical treatment and therapy for Lauren, and intends to have Lauren’s feeding tube halted" if his efforts to save her fail.
"We cannot understand her reasoning in refusing a path of hope, healing, and restoration for Lauren, and insisting on causing her death by withholding food and water from her," he added.
"The issue in Lauren’s case is the eternal truth that all people, no matter what their medical condition, bear the image of God and deserve basic care and an opportunity to be restored to health," he said.
Richardson's family is calling on Delaware Gov. Ruth Ann Minner to intervene and save Lauren from an expected court order dictating her euthanasia death.
As in the Terri Schiavo case, physicians have been quick to label Lauren as having a persistent vegetative state -- something Terri's family called dehumanizing and medically inaccurate as patients have recovered from it.
Noted attorney and author Wesley Smith has written about Lauren's case and he says he viewed a video Richardson's father released and he says she seems reactive particularly when her father attempts to interact with her.
"Whether she is conscious or not is irrelevant to her equal moral worth as a human being," Smith adds.
"The fight in this case is over whether she lives as a profoundly disabled woman or is made to die slowly over two weeks by dehydration--as Terri Schiavo did," Smith explained. "If we did that to a dog, we would go to jail. Do it to a disabled woman who needs a feeding tube and it is called medical ethics."
ACTION: Contact Delaware Gov. Ruth Ann Minner at governor.minner@state.de.us and ask her to help Randy Richardson save his daughter's life.Related web sites:
Life for Lauren - http://www.lifeforlauren.org
