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LINCOLN, NEB---Terri Schindler-Schiavo's case should provide a wake-up call, her brother told about 3,000 people gathered in Lincoln Saturday for this year's Nebraska Walk of Life, sponsored by the Nebraska Right to Life.
Bobby Schindler, Terri's brother, told the group that the mainstream media misled the public with selective reporting and buzz words. He said that Americans like Terri are being killed by court order just for being disabled. Advocates for euthanasia who label the killings such as his sister's as acts of mercy are misusing terms such as persistent vegetative state, brain dead and right to die to further their cause, he said.
Schindler's sister sustained brain injuries in suspicious circumstances in 1990. She died last March, 13 days after the death order of Pinellas County Court Judge George Greer was effected. Greer had not only ordered that her feeding tube be removed but that she not be feed 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 Michael Schiavo, her estranged husband who was determined to kill his wife, and her parents, Mary and Bob Schindler Sr. who wanted to take her home and care for her.
Bobby Schindler said that death by dehydration is terrifying and ugly and has nothing to do with mercy. "This euthanasia movement has really been flying under the radar," he said. "There's a real attack on human life right now.
"My sister was very much alive. This was not an end-of-life issue."
Bobby said that the definition of PVS is broad, varying and often misapplied. He said it exists for only one reason and that is to make it easy to kill the elderly and helpless. He said the current actions of right-to-die activist judges and doctors are comparable to the events leading up to the Holocaust.
Schindler said the battle cry of the media became "if she's PVS, kill her. We have to stop describing people as being PVS", he said. "All humans, even the brain damaged, are children of God and they deserve life".
Bobby now works full-time for the Terri Schindler-Schiavo Foundation (www.terrisfight.org). 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 and believes that laws that set the groundwork for his sister's death were motivated by the expense of caring for the disabled and elderly. Bobby is also a staunch supporter of the pro-life movement's battle to end abortion.
"It still astonishes me that we fought for 15 years because we simply wanted to bring her home to take care of her", he said. "Society has taken a monumental shift to accept a quality of life standard…..thousands have been killed. It's happening every day". 1-29-06
© 2005 North
Country Gazette
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