Posted on 03/30/2016 8:06:27 PM PDT by Morgana
WARNING: This article from Terri Schiavo’s brother Bobby Schindler contains a graphic image, below, that may be unsettling for readers.
On March 18, 2005, my sister, Terri Schiavo, began her thirteen day agonizing death after the feeding tube – supplying her food and water – was removed. Terri was cognitively disabled and had difficulty swallowing and therefore needed a feeding tube. Terri was not on any “life support”, nor was she sick or dying. Nonetheless, she received her death sentence ordered by Circuit Court Judge, George W. Greer of Pinellas County Florida.
Greer’s order to remove Terri’s feeding tube was in response to her estranged husband and guardian, Michael Schiavo, requesting permission from the court to kill his disabled wife. This was after Schiavo began cohabitating with his fiancée and stood to inherit Terri’s medical trust fund, which at the time was close to $800,000.
However, more disturbing was that the judge ruled to kill Terri, despite her mother and father pleading with Schiavo, and the court, to allow them to take her home. In fact, a guardian ad litem urged Judge Greer to refuse the dehydration request. Instead, this legally-required protector of Terri was dismissed from the original case by Greer and no replacement was ever appointed.
March 31st marks a very sad day; and this year, it will be the ten year anniversary of Terri’s death. Rush Limbaugh described it this way, “the day our country hit rock bottom”.
Terri’s case divided the nation and it will be discussed in high schools and college medical ethics classrooms for years to come. It is the anniversary of the death of a young woman who simply had a disability and needed basic and ordinary care to live, and a family who wanted to love and care for her just as she was.
With it being the 10 year anniversary, calls from the media have increased. Most of the articles are excoriating Governor Jeb Bush for his defense of Terri when he was the Governor of Florida back in 2005. But I have noticed one question has been asked more than others – “What, if anything, has changed since Terri’s death?”
Yes, things have changed – they’ve gotten worse. Exactly how many persons are being killed like Terri every year is difficult to know, although I think the numbers would shock us. What we do know is that we have a very active and aggressive right to die movement.
There are many dynamics involved to successfully convince our general public that it’s “okay” to dehydrate and starve a human being to death. If I had to point to one of the major accomplishments, it is how the right to die forces have been able to reclassify feeding tubes as “medical treatment”. However, just as effective is how they’ve influenced the masses to buy into the notion that some persons are in fact, not persons. Consequently, these human “non-persons” have no “value” and can be killed.
This should be frightening to read. But it is true. Even more frightening is how this ideology has impacted and been accepted in our culture, in particular, our health care community.
This, along with changes in public policies, now puts life and death decisions in the hands of physicians, hospitals boards and ethics committees – basically strangers – in the place of family members.
After Terri died, my family’s experience, contesting this powerful right to die movement, led us to establish the Terri Schiavo Life & Hope Network, which seeks to raise public awareness of the looming culture of death, and to educate the public about care potentialities. Most importantly, however, is to help families in situations similar to what we experienced – loved ones in danger of being killed, like Terri.
Indeed, the calls from families for help have increased, and increased significantly, as the years have passed.
Why is this? How has the right to die agenda been able to efficaciously shift our attitudes to the point that is has become everyday practice to starve and dehydrate a person to death. The issue may see complex, however it seems to me that the answer is very clear. It is because they lie.
I saw it in my sister’s case and I see it in the stories from the families who call us. And one of the most pathetic lies out there is that killing someone by denying them food and water is a “peaceful” and “painless” experience, and the patently absurd notion that it is a “death with dignity”.
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.
terrischiavo10Nonetheless, 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 (right) 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.
Death & Plunder…the calling cards of socialists/criminals. R.I.P. Terri
Condolences to Bobby Schindler and the remainder of Terri’s family and friends.
Let me introduce you to the Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, Roy Moore.
Justice Moore was elected back into his office after being removed from office.
Moore was removed from office the first time he served as Chief Justice by the liberal Republican governor when Moore refused to obey a federal court order to remove a Ten Commandments monument from the Supreme Court building in Montgomery.
Bush could have been a hero like Roy Moore by refusing to obey a court order but he chose a different path.
Neither am I
The ugly thing is that repeats of Schiavo happen daily all across America, just without the publicity...people insisting that their son left brain-dead after a car accident or their 90 year old grandmother or their wife who’s been in a coma for years will somehow pull through despite having odds so bad that winning Powerball is a cakewalk in comparison. And then the sad job of convincing the desperate to quit ‘beating off angels’ falls to the doctors and nurses who’ve seen it before many times and to relatives and friends that have to pry the desperate away (sometimes literally) and let the empty shell of a person finally expire. It can easily take months or years.
Schiavo’s case was the one in a million that got a blitz of media attention due to slimy business on both sides: her parents in their desperation brought up a medical expert who’d been disciplined for fraud, while her husband’s live-in girlfriend was hardly the ideal of morality, all thrown together with panic and too much money. (at one point IIRC some group offered her husband a 6 or 7-figure sum to literally walk away from her, which to his credit he refused)
such a horrible thing to have been done to her and her family. May God help the survivors to find peace, and yet continue the fight.I have not felt the same about Florida since this outrage was perpetrated
He’s zotted.
And the mayor of the city, govenor, and ordinary citizens did not intervene to save her. Not surprising since 50-60 million preborn babies have been legally murdered since 1973. Why not do it to physically handicapped? People in this country get in trouble with the law for not feeding and carrying for their dog, but can kill preborn babies and invalids.
Thank you. I am still furious that bush was never confronted about this. He lost my respect and vote that day along with sharp tongue and the corrupt media. God bless her memory and your family bad karma to all those who aided in her murder.
Well that’s good, I don’t think I’ve ever actually called a person a name before, but I was angry.
Thanks for letting me know, saves me a road trip heh.
Okay 11 years...time gets by but still things have only gotten worse since this happened not better.
I have my hands full, caring for my husband. As some of you know, he had a stroke in ‘08. He had a period of strong recovery, followed by a long period of slow recovery. He peaked, and is now declining. He’s still in the crosshairs of the utilitarians. He’s consuming healthcare that they think should go to more useful bodies.
LJ, I freepmailed you the current White Rose Ping List (Terri’s List). Wagglebee has been pinging it, and has a copy. If one of you would ping the list, that would be great.
I haven’t read the comments here, but I glanced at a few. The troll was already zotted, and its comments wiped, but my hat is off to all the wonderful FReepers who scrubbed the floor with its body, before and after it rode the lightening. God bless y’all.
That funny in a way. That a “Ping List” has to go though congress around here before it gets posted.
The White Rose Ping List has always been private, because of the death threats made against our members.
I no longer have a PC. I FReep from an iPhone. It’s difficult and time consuming for me to ping the list. It was difficult enough to FReepmail the list. The html required for the ping is even harder to do.
I hear my husband on the monitor. Sorry if I’m letting FR down, but I have other priorities right now.
Have a blessed day.
Hat tip to GG2. Love love LOVE your comments on this thread.
:-)
A prolife ping gets people death treats? who knew? Oh wait....
Bush could have been a hero like Roy Moore by refusing to obey a court order but he chose a different path.
...
You could have been a hero, too, or any of the others who like to throw stones at Jeb. Yet Jeb still did a lot more for Terri than you or anybody else.
I’ve been unable to find anything negative that Terri’s family has said about about Jeb, including this latest article by Bobby Schindler. Yet there is plenty of evidence that Michael Schiavo hates him.
You found no evidence that Terri’s family ever said anything hateful about Jeb, or anyone else for that matter.
In all their time defending Terri, and speaking out against what was happening to her, they never spoke ill of the people behind it.
Jeb helped Terri in 2003. Her family didn’t question his motives. They thanked him.
Their Christian faith probably has a lot to do with their tendency to speak positively about people, and direct their negative comments at events rather than the perpetrators of the events. It takes a lot of twisting to use that against Terri in defense of those who willingly failed her.
Where were you when Terri died? Why weren’t you breaking the law to save her. You failed her, too.
I was working to save her. You didn’t need to ask. You knew that, because you were working for the other side, trying to tear down support for Terri. When Jeb helped Terri in ‘03, you had nothing but criticism for him. You didn’t get on your knees for him until he turned against Terri. I have no regrets about my support for Terri. I was on the right side then, and now. You still have the opportunity to choose right, though I doubt you will.
That's an outright lie.
You still have the opportunity to choose right, though I doubt you will.
And lie like you while casting the first stone at others? Never.
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