The Terri Schiavo Life & Hope Network upholds human dignity through service to the medically vulnerable.
We express this mission through public advocacy of essential qualities of human dignity—which include the right to food and water, the presumption of the will to live, due process against denial of care, protection from euthanasia as a form of medicine, and access to rehabilitative care—as well as through 24/7 Crisis Lifeline service to at-risk patients and families.
Complete our Crisis Lifeline Questionnaire if you or a loved one is in need of service (click here).
Our 24/7 Crisis Lifeline for at-risk patients and families
Every day, patients and families find themselves at-risk of their human dignity being violated due to a physician, medical institution, or insurance company with differing views about what sort of treatment they deserve. In the most extreme cases, patients face the prospect of someone in a position of power denying them food and water through forcible removal of a feeding tube.
In more common cases, patients and families face other forms of denial of care that lead to poor, sometimes fatal, outcomes. The Terri Schiavo Life & Hope Network's 24/7 Crisis Lifeline connects at-risk patients and families with the medical and legal advocates they need to ensure the best outcome possible at a difficult time.
If you or a family member is at-risk, contact our 24/7 Crisis Lifeline for assistance:
- Call: 1 (855) 300-HOPE (4673)
- Email: [email protected]
Patient & Family Advocacy
Every patient and family deserves the strongest, most life-affirming advocacy they can get. For every few great physicians, medical institutions, and insurance companies that do provide excellent care, there are others who do not serve patients and families in a manner consistent with their human dignity. We can step in to be the advocate that a patient or family is missing, helping navigate a crisis medical situation in a positive, life-affirming way.
Attorney & Physician Crisis Referrals
There are times when advocacy alone is not enough to uphold the human dignity of an at-risk patient. The Terri Schiavo Life & Hope Network can step in to understand the basics of the situation in order to provide first-rate referrals to life-affirming attorneys and physicians willing to liaise with relevant physicians, medical institutions, and insurance companies to foster a positive outcome for those at-risk.
Spiritual & Emotional Support
It's often surprisingly true that, "where there's a will, there's a way." It's with this in mind that the Terri Schiavo Life & Hope Network offers spiritual and emotional support to patients and families in their time of crisis, helping bolster the will to fight for life, and for life-affirming outcomes in the face of sometimes difficult prognoses. Faith as well as simple friendship can be the rock upon which an improbable personal recovery is built.
Advanced Directive Guidance
There are two main types of Advance Directives. There are "Living Wills", which can be a potentially dangerous document. The other is a "Durable Power Attorney for Health Care", a much better document, which appoints someone of your choice who will ensure your life-affirming wishes are respected in moments of crisis. The Terri Schiavo Life & Hope Network provides guidance for setting up the most durable, reliable forms of Advanced Directives, and equips patients and families with total knowledge about the strengths and weaknesses of these documents.
Ethical Guidance
Whether your or a loved one is facing an unexpected, potentially life-or-death set of decisions about medical care, the Terri Schiavo Life & Hope Network serves through ethical guidance for life-affirming care. In this way, we serve families who have to consider potentially life-saving or death-hastening decisions on behalf of an incapacitated loved one.