Terri Schiavo’s family joins fight to prevent starvation of teen declared ‘legally dead’ by hospital



OAKLAND, Calif., January 2, 2014 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Terri Schiavo’s family has thrown their weight behind an Oakland family’s effort to save their daughter’s life from doctor-ordered starvation after a routine tonsillectomy left her brain-damaged and unable to breathe on her own.

Jahi McMath, 13, was declared “brain dead” by doctors at Oakland’s Children’s Hospital on December 12, after a Dec. 9 procedure went horribly wrong and she suffered cardiac arrest in the recovery room.  Since then, the hospital has been fighting to remove the eighth-grader from all life support, even going so far as to persuade a judge to declare her “legally dead” in the eyes of the state of California, where the law defines death as an absence of brain activity.

Jahi’s family has fought back, hiring an attorney, Christopher Dolan, and issuing a cease-and-desist order to the hospital while they try to find a different facility to treat her.

Jahi’s family has fought back, hiring an attorney, Christopher Dolan, and issuing a cease-and-desist order to the hospital while they try to find a different facility to treat her.  Together, the family and their attorney succeeded in securing a restraining order against the hospital, which was originally set to expire last Monday but has now been extended until January 7.

“I want her on [the ventilator] as long as possible, because I really believe that God will wake her up,” her mother, Nailah Winkfield said. She also said she wants the hospital to provide a feeding tube to keep Jahi nourished as her body tries to heal.

“To watch my daughter just sit there and not have food ... I'm just so happy that she is kind of a thick girl so she still looks good,” Winkfield told ABC’s ‘Good Morning America.’ “I tell her every day, ‘Jahi, you losin’ weight girl, but you still look good.’ I just think it's inhumane to not feed my child, to not refer to her by her name, and stop us in our tracks.”

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