The Legacies of the Terri Schiavo Case

Like many other Christians, I followed the Terri Schiavo case very closely. I wasn't as active as many others in protesting for her life, but I did sign petitions and send emails about it, and debate the case with people. Her death when it came was highly disturbing and troubling, and not only because of her personal tragedy, but because of the disingenuous public debate that the media created, and recognizing that the case would be used to legitimize doing even more evil on a bigger scale.

It certainly has seemed to do that, bolstering the false narrative that most people are pro-euthanasia and would rather be dead than severely disabled.

But beyond pro-life ramifications, something else it seemed to do, too, is to drastically embolden liberals and the liberal media. At the time of the firestorm over the case, I wasn't working, and I spent most of that time following the non-stop coverage. And where liberal politicians and commentators treaded lightly coming into the situation, so that even Barack Obama, who certainly would have opposed any measure to save her life if he'd felt that he could politically, they were gloating and sanctimonious by the end.

Liberals, as I'm sure people recall, claimed victory in the polls, but I know myself from looking at those polls closely, that as pro-life people pointed out, the reporting on the polls was nothing short of dishonest.

And two other things liberals used to their advantage besides the polls were the media firestorm itself, and "science." I recall this was still the time when liberals were insisting on the word "progressive," and were afraid to be associated with the word "liberal." When commenting on television, for example, they'd be afraid of going out on any limbs that might make them be seen as liberal. And typically they'd have to show some lip-service respect, at the least, for conservative beliefs.

When the Schiavo firestorm came along, though, there were so many people talking at once that it provided safety in numbers for liberals to speak their minds, and they "won," so to speak, so that emboldened them more. And it hardly needs to be said how they disingenuously brought the "faith versus science" element into the case to cast Christians as backwards dolts who needed a basic lesson in the requirement of bowing to scientific authorities.

In short, the Terri Schiavo case was a personally tragic case that has also had more far-reaching tragic consequences. It gave a big hand to the media's suppression of Christian beliefs and viewpoints as fringe positions, and if Christian views are ever to have weight again which the media can't ignore, as they're doing right now in their biased coverage of Indiana's religious freedom restoration act, then continuing to fight to bring out the truth about the case and about how the media itself deceptively presented to the public, is needed. Rather than the Terri Schiavo case being seen to be about "government intrusion," as Time magazine just called it, it has to be seen for what it really was, an extreme and tragic case of the liberal media abusing its power.

I Will Never Forget the Look of Horror on My Sister Terri Schiavo’s Face the Day She Died

Bobby Schindler:

"It’s important to differentiate that Terri’s condition, and countless others like her, is quite different from a situation where it may be medically appropriate to withhold food and fluids because a person is actively dying and their bodies are shutting down, no longer able to assimilate their food and hydration.

Nonetheless, the never-ending propaganda about the peaceable nature of forced dehydration compelled me to make public this image of my sister created from my memory. This (picture below) is what Terri looked like just before she died. It was horrible to see.

And yet, Schiavo’s attorney falsely told the public during a press conference, just days before Terri’s death, that she looked “beautiful”. This is what they want you to believe, not the harsh truth about the madness of what we permit in the rooms of hospitals, nursing homes and hospices every single day across this country.

These are the hard facts my family and I will have to live with for the rest of my life: After almost two weeks without food or water, my sister’s lips were horribly cracked, to the point where they were blistering. Her skin became jaundice with areas that turned different shades of blue. Her skin became markedly dehydrated from the lack of water. Terri’s breathing became rapid and uncontrollable, as if she was outside sprinting. Her moaning, at times, was raucous, which indicated to us the insufferable pain she was experiencing. Terri’s face became skeletal, with blood pooling in her deeply sunken eyes and her teeth protruding forward. Even as I write this, I can never properly describe the nightmare of having to watch my sister have to die this way.

What will be forever seared in my memory is the look of utter horror on my sister’s face when my family visited her just after she died.

Those pushing this agenda will certainly deny this, they have to. But there was a reason the court ordered that no cameras or video be permitted in Terri’s room while she was being killed. They claimed privacy issues. My family knows otherwise. And they do too.

So when will this heartlessness end? When will the lies end? When will the American people decide this insanity has to stop?

I don’t know. But I do know this – the lies will never end."

Image drawn by Bobby Schindler

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I got pretty choked up as I read this today, my friends - and frankly I'm choked up again posting it again. I was standing outside the hospice in Pinellas Park when they were torturing Terri to death. Again and again, I saw her family - her brother, and sister, and mother, and father - exiting the building after having to watch what those murderous ghouls were doing to her inside that building. Their faces looked like the faces of soldiers who had just come from weeks of heavy combat. They had to walk past the beautiful fountain out front, with its waters bubbling up several feet in the air, under a flagpole flying Old Glory, But they wouldn't give her one single drop of that water. It reminded me of Nazi Germany, not the America I know and love.

It is honorable of you to remember.

But be comforted - Christ *will* ultimately put all things, including all his enemies, under his feet.

Romans 8
28 And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.

I wouldn’t want to be Michael Schiavo.

2 Corinthians 5
10 For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad.
11 Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we persuade men; but we are made manifest unto God; and I trust also are made manifest in your consciences.

1 Peter 4
18 And if the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear?
19 Wherefore let them that suffer according to the will of God commit the keeping of their souls to him in well doing, as unto a faithful Creator.

The reward for faithful, loving service will be *more* than worth it all.

Thanks for those words.

I still have difficulty believing that the United States sanctioned and carried out the gruesome murder of Terri.

Whether America learns from its mistakes as Germany did after Hitler or chooses to remain on the barbaric track of self destruction that America is on now, I am certain that decades from now history will view Terri's murder as a pivotal moment in American history. People speak of impact that other pivotal events have had like Pearl Harbor, JFK's assassination and 9/11/01, but those events took America by surprise and they were unpreventable (I realize that with proper intelligence and foresight all could have possibly been avoided, but the general public had no knowledge of them and the mechanisms for avoidance weren't in place), Terri's murder was announced in advance and publicly carried out with minute-by-minute coverage - America could have DEMANDED it be stopped, but it didn't.

Nazism's dehumanization of the Jews didn't happen overnight, it started slowly and built up to the point that by the time the German people saw cattle cars full of Jews many of them were already numb to it and didn't care. Since 1973, America has stood by as killing-for-convenience has permeated into the fabric of our lives, many are simply as numb to it as the Germans were to their Holocaust. Thus, when the end came for Terri it was something that most Americans simply wanted to forget about. Of course their were thousands of heroes outside the hospice pleading for Terri's life and tens of thousands more like me at home praying for a miracle, and there was also that portion of the population that has fully embraced evil and cheered her murder; but most Americans SIMPLY DIDN'T CARE, death-for-convenience had simply become something they accepted.

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