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 MANHATTAN---Bobby Schindler, brother of Terri Schiavo and executive director of the Terri Schindler Schiavo Foundation, was one of two honorees feted at the Tenth Annual Awards Celebration held earlier this month by Good Counsel Inc. in Manhattan.
Also honored was Archbishop Celestino Migliore, Permanent Observer of The Holy See to the United Nations.
The Good Counsel Inc. helps the disadvantaged and in particular, single pregnant women on the streets, offering food, clothing and shelter, life skill programs including parenting classes, nutrition, career guidance, spirituality and budgeting. Daycare is available in each home so that a mother may work or return to school to complete her education. Good Counsel Homes has been helping single mothers and babies since 1985.
Good Counsel, headquartered in Paramus, NJ, operates five homes in New York, the Bronx, Staten Island, Spring Valley, Poughkeepsie and Harrison. www.goodcounselhomes.org
Bobby now works full-time for the Terri Schindler-Schiavo Foundation (www.terrisfight.org). Bobby 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. Bobby is also a staunch supporter of the pro-life movement's battle to end abortion.
"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."
He modestly says that he's doing nothing extraordinary, that any family would do what his family did to try to save the life of his sister.
"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".
Bobby explained that the evolution of the euthanasia movement has led to the legality of killing brained damaged patients who were expensive to care for by classifying their condition as terminal and non-interactive and their care as artificial life support.
Since his sister's death on March 31, 2005, 13 days after her feeding tube was removed by court order, Bobby has left his teaching position and as spokesman for the Terri Schindler-Schiavo Foundation, travels 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.
Terri sustained serious brain damage in an unexplained collapse in February, 1990, that left her incapacitated. In the years to follow as the Schindler family battled her husband, Michael Schiavo in the courts to keep Terri alive, Bobby became the family spokesman. He addressed the nation through countless television, radio and print media interviews---the mainstream media which misreported the situation and was "less than sympathetic. As the urgency of Terri's situation grew, so did Bobby's efforts". After the feeding tube was removed March 18, 2005, from Terri at Woodside Hospice where she had been for five years although not terminal, Bobby traveled to Washington to personally intercede with members of Congress to try to save his sister's life.
The proceeds from Bobby's appearances go to the Foundation, established by the family in 2002 to fight for Terri's life. Today, the goals of TSSF 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.
TSSF and the TSSF Center for Health Care Ethics recognize the dangers associated with end of life decisions and provides the tools that are necessary for families to address these decisions with the committed belief that all human life is sacred. 11-16-06
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© 2006 North
Country Gazette
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