Terri Schiavo's Brother: Misinformation About Her Euthanasia Death Remains

Princeton, NJ (LifeNews.com) -- Terri Schiavo's brother Bobby Schindler has been on a speaking tour this week that's taking him to colleges and universities across the country. Schindler was at Princeton University on Tuesday and he told students there that misconceptions still exist about his sister's euthanasia death.

Terri died in March 2005 after her former husband won a court order to take her life despite requests from the Schindler family to provide her with medical and rehabilitative care.

Though more than three years have passed since the Schindler family's lost their years-long legal battle to save her life, Schindler says the public still wrongly believes some of the misnomers that appeared in the media.

Though Terri was not on artificial respiration and not in a persistent vegetative state, Schindler told the students many Americans still think that was the case and that Terri had no interaction with his family and that she had some sort of terminal illness.

Though “much confusion still exists about Terri’s condition, Terri was not terminal or dying, and her brain injury was not going to cause her to die,” Schindler said, according to a Daily Princeton report.

He said Michael Schiavo, who is now remarried to the woman he dated during the debate over Terri's life, also made up his mind about Terri's condition without basing his opinion on the facts.

“There’s no doubt in my mind that Michael [Schiavo] fabricated the [death] wishes and that his brother and sister did as well and that they perjured themselves in front of the judges,” the newspaper said Schindler said.

Schindler told the students he's worried about the long-lasting effects of the debate surrounding his sister and that more Americans will see disabled people like Terri as a "non-person."

“There is no such thing as a person who is a non-person. There is no one so disabled that they have lost their value or dignity,” Schindler said. He said such a view would be akin to “walk[ing] down the same path that led to the Nuremberg trials.”

“Once you achieve emotional distance from people who are ‘different’ from you, it is easy to look the other way while they are being killed,” he added.

Ultimately, according to the Princeton newspaper, Schindler said Americans need to stand up and fight for the disabled, terminally ill and others who are in jeopardy of becoming the next victims of euthanasia.

“We need to fight today to protect those among us who need our care,” Schindler said. “It’s our dream in the future that legal bigotry against the disabled will be as taboo as insulting someone’s ethnicity."

Related web sites:
Terri Schindler Schiavo Foundation - http://www.terrisfight.org

Likewise for those who consider the removal of life support akin to murder.

She was not on life support, unless you think helping a person eat and drink is not normal nursing care.

She had a feeding tube that was put in to help the nurses. They were having to hand feed her.
After the court ordered her feeding tube removed, the judge also ordered that she not be given any food or water by mouth. Guards were posted in her room to make sure she was given no food or water.

I do consider it murder to not feed or water an invalid.

I am not sure she suffered. My Dad refused all food and water when he learned that Mother had died. If he showed any pain or suffering, I could not tell it.

My wife is a registered nurse and she's discussed with me how the process is very different with those who are terminal or want to die compared with those who are trying to survive. Especially with terminal patients, the body has certain protective processes that prevent pain and even some of the nastier consequences of starvation...but that proccess doesn't kick in when someone isn't terminal, and Terri wasn't.

It was a private family matter. It’s none of anyone else’s business; yours or mine.

So, if this person was directing your care...

Michael Schiavo has been acting so weird he makes Hunter S. Thompson look like Joe Friday. If we believe his court testimony, the timeline goes like this: Some years prior to Terri’s collapse she told him that she would never want to “live on a machine” or be a burden. Yet in 1992, his lawyer told a jury Michael might need enough money to take care of her for another half-century. Michael proclaimed from the witness stand that he would become a nurse and take care of her “for the rest of [his] life.” By 1993, he had stopped rehabilitation (which was showing promising results), had put a “Do not resuscitate” order in her chart, tried to deny her antibiotic treatment for an infection, melted down her wedding ring and euthanized her cats. In other words, he ignored what she said about being a burden, then swore in court to take on the burden, but decided a few months later it was too much of a burden.
Source.

...you would consider it none of my business if I thought he might be trying to murder you?

I think it’s time to coin a phrase to describe those of you whose life is totally dedicated to this case and are so obsessed with it that you can’t let this poor woman rest in peace. I think Schiavonistas does nicely.

I've often thought that we need a new word for the folks (some of whom are here on FR) who favor euthanasia and provide cover for it. Something like "necrophiliac" but without the sexual connotation.

BTW, do you have some belief in the mystical power of the Internet to reach into the next world and poke Terri Schiavo with a stick, or something? I mean, you're getting pretty hyped up about how discussing her case is preventing her from resting in peace, but I really don't think FR threads are going to have any effect on her in the great beyond.

"Probably some who work in the medical profession and see those who should be allowed to go from their misery everyday.

The real 'purest' would say those of ill health shouldn’t receive medication either, or as the JoeWitnesses believe blood!"

Most of the people wanting "the vegetable" put to death are just members of the death cult who resent "the useless eaters" aka the disabled. There were a few craven members of the medical profession, ones that seem to enjoy the opportunity of pulling the plug, who should find another line of work as the rigors of medicine has fried their brains and hardened their hearts, and made them less than human.

As for your "purest" comment, I can only say, HUH? in response as I haven't the faintest idea what that is supposed to mean.

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