Terri Schiavo’s Brother Exposes Role of
Biased Media in Sister’s Death
Warned Terri’s death “was about a very
strong and aggressive euthanasia movement”
By Luke Jalsevac
ANCASTER, ON., April 24, 2006
(LifeSiteNews.com) – In a moving talk Saturday at a conference organized by
Alliance for Life Ontario, Bobby Schindler, brother of the late
Terri Schiavo, fingered the mainstream media
as having a frightening influence upon the value of life in today’s culture.
Schindler said, “What happened to Terri is an
attitude of non-person, this whole attitude of quality of life which has taken
hold of our country. It is really frightening, and I think it is going to get
much worse before it gets better. Leading the charge is a very strong,
influential, slanted media.”
The still grieving brother, who says that he
will accept speaking engagements anywhere to warn about the travesty that
happened to his sister, emphasized that her death “was about a very strong and
aggressive euthanasia movement that has taken hold of our country. Our family
was blindsided. We had no idea what we were up against.”
Bobby told his listeners they must not naively
believe that Terri’s case is unusual. “Although Terri’s case made international
headlines, this type of thing is happening each day, quietly across the
country.” “The underlying issue here is money,” said Schindler. “As Ken
Connor (the lawyer for Jeb Bush) said: We are living in a culture where the
sanctity of life ethic is being eroded and we begin to look at the net worth of
an individual based on cost-benefit ratio.”
Although he never spoke with bitterness,
throughout his talk Bobby had little positive to say about the popular media’s
handling of his sister’s illness and their role in propagating this quality of
life mentality.
“It is fascinating to see the ways they can
report a story to over-simplify it. The media misreported and didn’t report an
enormous amount of facts in the case.”
He stated it was rarely reported, for example,
that there were 25 national disability groups standing with the Schiavo family
trying to stop the killing of Terri, for the media did not want to recognize her
as a disabled person.
Instead, he said, they consistently applied
the label of Persistent Vegetative State to her condition which he considers
absolutely false. “We never for a moment believed that Terri was in a PVS
condition.”
“PVS is something that needs to be abolished…
It is a completely subjective diagnosis, based entirely upon the interpretation
of the doctor.” To drive this point home, Schindler referred to a recent British
study which concluded that PVS is misdiagnosed 43 % of the time.
The media also repeatedly referred to Terri as
being on artificial life support. “This confused the public” said Bobby. “They
never said that she was receiving food and water. In the eyes of the law in our
country, food and water are now considered medical treatment, extraordinary
care. Feeding tubes are now seen as other than basic care.”
Schindler also slammed media polls before and
during Terri’s slow, forced death by starvation and dehydration. “There were
polls released about my sister that were slanted and so general that if they had
asked me I probably would have voted in favour of killing my sister too. It was
ridiculous the way some of these polls were worded.”
It was the total misrepresentation of the
autopsy report that caused Bobby and his family the most grief. “It [the media]
constantly reported that the autopsy report confirmed that Terri was in a PVS
condition.” Yet the report states very clearly that PVS cannot be diagnosed from
a post-mortem state.
“The media used the autopsy report to do
nothing but justify and rationalize Michael killing my sister. In fact it got so
bad that the media was actually asking my family to apologize to Michael Schiavo
for what we put him through” he stated.
Fr. Frank Pavone, head of priests for life
stated after Terri’s death that “Terri did not die from an atrophy of the brain,
she died from an atrophy of compassion.”
“We in America have gotten things completely
backwards,” said Bobby, “where the media now reports what Michael did as the
compassionate thing to do. We are even giving awards to Judge Greer and Michael
Schiavo for their courage and compassion.”
“Yet we watched my sister die in a horrific
and barbaric manner. This notion that her death was peaceful and painless is the
most offensive and appalling thing that I’ve heard spoken from the other side’s
mouth. But is it something that they have to say because they can never report
the truth, just like they would never allow videos being shown of abortions
taking place.”
Bobby also spoke of his disappointment with
the local churches. “We got very little support from our Catholic Church in our
diocese. There were very few Catholic bishops that spoke out about my sister’s
case, which is allowing this movement to move forward. The church needs to speak
out about what is happening in America.”
He did, however, speak very highly of Pope
John Paul II and his excellent statement at the end of 2004 on end of life and
palliative care.
Bobby ended his moving presentation with a
challenge to the pro-life community to build a coalition with the disabled
community. “The pro-life community has been fighting so hard against abortion
that this euthanasia movement has been flying under the radar and changing laws,
and they are in place now and now we have to go back and try and change them
back to what they once were.”
The Schindler family has started a foundation
to fight to prevent these atrocities from happening to other vulnerable
Americans. (See
www.terrisfight.org website)
2006
Clippings
