ALEXANDRIA, VA---Kansas Senator and Republican conservative Sam Brownback's presidential bid received an endorsement Tuesday from Bobby Schindler, brother of the late Terri Schindler Schiavo who died two years ago this month in Florida from starvation and dehydration after a court mandated the removal of her feeding tube at the behest of her estranged husband.

The Schiavo case sparked a nationwide bipartisan effort to save her life, an effort led by Brownback who said that "Ultimately, the debate over Terri Schiavo is not about state's rights or medical ethics or end-of-life decisions. It's about whether we measure life by a subjective or objective test. Is life a test of sufficient value or is it precious and sacred per se in all its various conditions?"

"My family will never forget Sam Brownback's valiant efforts to save my sister's life," said Bobby Schindler. "Sam Brownback is the pro-life conservative we can trust to stand for all life, regardless of political calculations."

This endorsement comes one day after Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney stated his opposition to the efforts of Florida Governor Jeb Bush and the Florida legislature to save Terri from her court-ordered starvation and dehydration: "I think it's probably best to leave these kinds of matters in the hands of the courts," Romney told to Bay News Channel 9 in Florida on Monday.

"Mitt Romney's alleged pro-life conversion evidently does not to apply to all human life," said Schindler. "The pro-life movement needs a leader we can trust in 2008 and I know Sam Brownback is that leader."

The first Rasmussen Reports telephone survey gauging general election support for Brownback shows him trailing Democratic Sen. Hillary Clinton among likely voters by the narrow margin or just five percentage points with Clinton at 46% to Brownback's 41%.

In 2005, Brownback joined the family of Terri Schiavo to launch the Terri Schindler Schiavo Foundation, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to ensuring the rights of disabled, elderly, and vulnerable citizens against care-rationing, euthanasia, and medical killing.

"Terri's plight highlighted the core question about the protection of human life", Brownback said, "Does the dignity with which we treat individuals depend on their physical or mental status as human beings? If a person's dignity depends only on his or her physical status, then life and death decisions about the most vulnerable among us become relative matters to be determined by doctors, judges, lawyers, and legislatures. Once we go down the path of valuing some lives more than others, of saying that people with disabilities don't have the same dignity and right to life as others, there are very few means not justified by the sinister end of a disability-free society. The way a society treats individuals with disabilities is a measure of the greatness of that society."

"While many in the media have attempted to portray the events leading to Terri's death as politically motivated", Brownback said, "it is much more significant than this. Ultimately, one's position on the matter of Terri Schiavo depends on one's view of the human person.

"Few cases have evoked such an emotional response as this one" Brownback said after Terri's death on March 31, 2005. "I think this is because of the fact Terri's plight highlights the question at the core of every issue related to the protection of human life. Is the value of an individual dependent on their quality of life, their level of sentience, their physical or cognitive abilities, or is the value of an individual inherent in the fact that they are fearfully and wonderfully made in the image of their Creator, possessing a unique, immortal soul, and therefore of infinite worth, regardless of physical condition or mental state? Is human life sacred per se, or does the dignity we treat individuals with depend on their physical or mental status as human beings?

"If the latter, utilitarian notion is true, then life and death decisions about the most vulnerable among us-the unborn, those with mental and physical disabilities, the aged and infirm-become relative matters to be determined by doctors, judges, lawyers, and legislatures.

"If a subjective judgment of quality of life is what determines the value of an individual or the protections accorded to that individual, this has enormous implications for every one of us: both for the way we conduct our own lives and for the way we order our society. If we have a fundamental mandate to protect the most vulnerable among us-not just those with social or political influence or those who are regarded as productive-a reordering of our priorities, and our laws, becomes necessary. Terri's struggle becomes apparent for what it is: the forced starvation of a living human being with a diminished quality of life for the sole reason that her continued existence has a quality that is below some subjective standard put forth by a judge. If this can be true for any living person, then God help us all.

"Even with the advances in medical technology of recent years, this is a debate that has been with us for a long time, much longer than many Americans are aware. Early in the 20th century, the euthanasia movement began to spread the doctrine that quality of life was the determinant of human value, and some lives-the defective, the racially inferior, the sick-were not worth preserving and protecting. The first government to widely implement this doctrine of doing away with "life unworthy of life" was Germany between 1938 and 1945, when the Nazis were in control. During those years, the German government collaborated with "progressive thinkers" in the medical community in terminating the lives of thousands of what they called "empty shells of human beings"-the terminally ill and mentally retarded, as well as individuals with brain damage or psychiatric conditions. After World War II, German doctors who worked on this program to eliminate "useless eaters" were judged guilty of crimes against humanity.

"We should be aware that some of the same ideology is being debated today. Recent changes in state laws allowing the withdrawal of ordinary means of sustenance-food and water-in cases of persistent vegetative state have been driven by ardent euthanasia advocates. Judicial decisions denying the legislatively-mandated review of the finding of fact that Terri Schiavo was in a persistent vegetative state are an explicit violation of Constitutional guarantee that individuals cannot be deprived of life without due process of law-simply on the basis of quality of life judgment.

"Thankfully, there were many on both sides of the political aisle-including half of the Democrats who came back to Washington to vote in favor of the bill to save Terri Schiavo-who understood that this was not a political issue".
3-13-07

© 2007 North Country Gazette