Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- The brother of Terri Schiavo, the disabled woman whose former husband subjected her to a painful 13-day starvation and dehydration death, is speaking out against a guide the Obama administration is distributing to veterans that critics say promotes euthanasia and assisted suicide.
The Department of Veterans Affairs is currently promoting a guide called "Your Life, Your Choices" that was first published in the Clinton administration.
The VA's National Center for Ethics in Health Care brought back a 52-page end-of-life planning document that was suspended during the Bush administration.
A worksheet on page 21 lists various scenarios and asks users to then decide whether their own life would be "not worth living."
One section of the guide titled, "What Makes Your Life Worth Living?" asks veterans to check boxes such as "I am a severe financial burden on my family" and "My situation causes severe emotional burden for my family."
Bobby Schindler, Terri's brother and a spokesman for the foundation the Schindler family established to help disabled people like her, told LifeNews.com the booklet is a disservice to military personnel as well as disabled, ill and elderly persons.
“It is quite clear that the language used in Your Life, Your Choices is encouraging individuals to make life and death decisions based on a ‘quality of life’ judgment," he said. Instead, they should be made based on the "Constitutionally supported position that the value of all citizens is equal and each has a right to live."
Schindler says the guide "encourages the idea that people with chronic health issues, disability or advanced age are ‘burdensome to society.’"
"I found it very disquieting that the Department of Veteran’s Affairs would publish any document that speaks to the legal and very personal issues of deciding what medical treatments or therapies are appropriate to the individual," Terri's brother said. "This booklet even uses the term ‘vegetable’ to describe those individuals living with a cognitive disability or neurological injury.”
Schindler continues: “The terminology used elicits the extreme prejudice that now exists towards people with disabilities or other complicated medical issues."
"It serves to demonstrate how widely misunderstood brain injuries continue to be. The language isn't simply offensive, but it is also particularly dehumanizing when directed towards the men and women who have given their lives, their bodies and their well-being in defense of this country," he told LifeNews.com. . .
