Terri Schiavo's brother to speak on legalized killing of the disabled.
“Please make no mistake, this was a court-ordered murder issued by Circuit Court Judge George Greer,” Bobby Schindler says of the “right-to-die” movement’s agenda to kill the disabled. “Terri’s life ended after two weeks of suffering without food and water and without receiving ice chips to help ease some of the pain she was suffering.” Devoting his life to educating the public about end-of-life issues and offering support to those with disabilities, Bobby Schindler, the brother of Terri Schiavo, will speak on campus Wednesday, March 7, at 7:00 p.m. in Goldwin Smith’s HEC Auditorium. Hosted by the Cornell Coalition for Life, he will tell “Terri’s Story” followed by a question and answer session. With new laws defining the subjective diagnosis of the persistent vegetative state (PVS), this diagnosis is now being used to determine whose life has value to society, and more troubling still, whether or not an individual has the right to life.
The tragic story of the Schindler family began when Terri, as a young vibrant woman of 26, collapsed in her home under mysterious circumstances while she was alone with her husband. Although her husband, Michael Schiavo, won a $1.2 million medical malpractice suit stating that Terri’s collapse was caused by undiagnosed bulimia, this was determined not to be the case at her autopsy fifteen years later. After her husband collected the malpractice award which he vowed he would use for her rehabilitation, he “suddenly remembered” that Terri had once said that she would not want to live in such a condition.
This hearsay evidence from an adulterous husband with a known conflict of interest was readily accepted by the court. Living with another woman with whom he fathered two children, Schiavo refused to divorce Terri and give guardianship of her to the Schindlers who were willing and able to lovingly care for her. As Schiavo stood to gain financially from Terri’s death, he teamed up with doctors, attorneys, activist judges and the media to use Terri to promote the “right-to-die” agenda.
Bobby blames the media, in particular, for making legalized killing of the disabled acceptable to society. What the family witnessed as the barbaric and tortuous murder of their daughter and sister, the mainstream media portrayed as a peaceful act of compassion on the part of her husband who was only fulfilling the “wishes” of his beloved wife. It is a fact, however, that Terri never signed a Living Will or put any of her wishes regarding end-of-life issues in writing. None of her family or friends ever remembered Terri stating anything about the matter; in fact, her family argued in court that Terri, as a devout Catholic, would never willingly consent to death by starvation and dehydration since it was against the tenets of her faith.
Contrary to reports in the media, Terri was not terminally ill or on any means of artificial life support. She was disabled due to a severe brain injury and only needed a feeding tube to supply her daily nourishment. The media, in playing up Michael Schiavo’s compassion, never seemed to mention that after receiving the malpractice award for his wife’s rehabilitation, Terri received no therapy for the next thirteen years.
A quick search online readily exposes a bigger picture than that portrayed by the mainstream media. It is there that one finds numerous references to Dr. Ronald Cranford, the physician who diagnosed Terri with PVS, as having been one of the foremost activists in the euthanasia movement. Concerning Dr. Cranford, National Review Online states, “In published articles, including a 1997 op-ed in the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune, he has advocated the starvation of Alzheimer’s patients. He has described PVS patients as indistinguishable from other forms of animal life, and that PVS patients and others with brain impairment lack personhood and should have no constitutional rights.”
According to Stephen Drake, a research analyst for Not Dead Yet, a national disability rights group, “It’s always seemed to us that PVS isn’t really a diagnosis. When it comes to the hard science, no qualified pathologist went on the record saying she [Terri] couldn’t think or couldn’t experience her own death through dehydration.” National and local disability groups offered their support to the Schindler family in their effort to stave off those who thought Terri’s life held no value and who promoted her starvation and dehydration death.
The 14th Amendment specifically states: No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. When the United States Congress attempted to offer Terri a review of her case, Florida’s Judge Greer ignored the subpoenas. Terri was denied the most basic right to life by those advocating a court-ordered murder because they perceived her life held no value to society, and yet, she was loved and cherished by her family and friends. Our country was founded on the premise that we are all endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights; the foremost among them being the right to life. Without the right to life, any other right is meaningless.