Schiavo Brother To Speak For Pennsylvania Pro-Lifers
Posted on Sunday, 18 of October , 2009 at 3:19 pm
SCRANTON, PA— Bobby Schindler, brother of Terri Schindler Schiavo, the disabled woman who died in Florida in 2005 as the result of a court-ordered death, will be a keynote speaker at the day-long 2009 Pennsylvania Pro-Life Conference on Saturday, Oct. 25.
His topics will be “Remembering Terri Schiavo: My Family’s Battle To Save My Sister’s Life” and “Threat To Life Post Terri Schindler Schiavo”.
The program will be held at the Hilton Scranton and conference center in Scranton.
Michael Schiavo was born in 1963 in Levitttown, PA. Terri Schindler was born the same year, She and her siblings, brother Bobby and sister Suzanne, grew up in Huntington Valley, PA., a suburb of Philadelphia.
Schiavo and Terri met at Bucks County Community College in Newtown, PA., in 1982 while both were students there and five months after meeting, Michael Schiavo proposed. Michael and Terri were married on Nov. 10, 1984, in Southhampton, PA. In 1986, they moved to St. Petersburg, FL, and Terri’s parents, Mary and Bob Schindler moved there for early retirement. Terri had worked for Prudential Insurance Co. in Pennsylvania and continued with the company in Florida, employed by Prudential at the time of her collapse in February, 1990.
Bobby’s sister, who sustained brain injuries in suspicious circumstances in 1990, died on March 31, 2005, 13 days after Pinellas County Court Judge George Greer not only ordered that her feeding tube be removed but that she not be fed orally. Florida Statutes prohibit the withholding of food and water from any individual.
Terri was placed at the center of a bitter, decade-long courtroom battle between her estranged husband who was determined to kill his wife, and her parents, who wanted to take her home and care for her.
The Schindlers fought to save Terri’s life, arguing with the support of nearly 40 neurologists and physicians that Terri could improve with new testing and rehabilitation, that she was alert, cognizant and responsive, certainly not terminal. The Schindlers disputed Michael’s self-serving hearsay, saying that Terri never would have expressed such a desire to die.
Bobby now works full-time for the Terri Schindler Schiavo Foundation. He has been a passionate and outspoken pro-life advocate, specifically in opposition to the euthanasia movement, activist judges and pro-death lawyers and doctors. He believes that laws that set the groundwork for his sister’s death were motivated by the expense of caring for the disabled and elderly.
“My belief is that we have shifted from what once was a ’sanctity of life’ mentality to now what is a ‘quality of life’ mentality, whereas a nation we are deciding based on a person’s quality of life when it’s okay and not okay to kill someone, based on the disability.”
Since his sister’s death, Bobby has left his teaching position and works as executive director of Terri’s Foundation, traveling across the country, appearing in numerous speaking engagements, devoting himself to protecting other people with disabilities and raising public awareness about the growing threat of euthanasia.
The Foundation was established by the family in 2002 to fight for Terri’s life. Today, its goals are to educate the general public regarding current guardianship laws and state laws on death by dehydration and starvation, and on end-of-life issues and threats as well as provide support, both legal and material, and referrals to individuals with disabilities and their families. www.terrisfight.org
“It still astonishes me that we fought for 15 years because we simply wanted to bring her home to take care of her”, Bobby says.. “Society has taken a monumental shift to accept a quality of life standard…..thousands have been killed. It’s happening every day”.
Registration for the conference is still open. For more information, see http://www.paprolife.org/events/2009ConferencePDFbroFINAL.pdf 10-18-09
Special subscription rate through Nov. 11, 2009. See http://www.northcountrygazette.org/2009/10/11/changes_coming/
Category: Schiavo
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