Terri's family keeps fight alive

Bob and Mary Schindler (NRLC.org)

One year after the death of Terri Schiavo, her family who fought for seven years in court to keep her alive is not giving up its battle against euthanasia.

Parents Robert and Mary Schindler, along with brother Bobby Schindler and sister Suzanne Vitadamo have developed two separate organizations devoted to activism on behalf of the disabled.

Bobby Schindler is running the Terri Schindler Schiavo Center for Health Care Ethics in Washington, D.C., and his parents and sister are in charge of the Terri Schindler Schiavo Foundation.

The Schindlers sat down for an interview recently with Anita Crane, editor of Celebrate Life magazine.

"I want to bring pro-life groups and disabled groups together – like they came together for my sister – to change public policy," Bobby Schindler said. "The disabled community has such powerful influence on public policy that we have to have them working with us."

Bob Schindler speaking at pro-life rally

Robert Schindler said that as Catholics, the ordeal with his daughter only made the faith of family members stronger.

Bobby Schindler added: "Our faith was tested because we had little to no support from our bishop and because of that we were getting little support from the priests. When the bishop and priests didn't openly support us, people on our own home turf were confused. So very few of our fellow parishioners supported us."

Mary Schindler said the family's pastor at the time did support them, but Bobby added they were told their bishop, Robert Lynch, had "instructed diocesan priests not to mention Terri's name from the pulpit."

"A few friendly priests told us that," he told Celebrate Life. "And the lack of support continues to this day – we just found out that the Diocese of Saint Petersburg let Michael Schiavo marry in the Catholic Church."

Schiavo, while still married to Terri, lived with fianc? Jodi Centonze for 10 years before Terri's death and had two children by her.

Bobby Schindler said it's "scandalous" for Michael Schiavo to be married in the Catholic Church after that and his denial of Terri's right to receive Holy Communion.

"We got tens of thousands of condolence cards from people, but none from bishops," he said.

The family's new book, "A Life That Matters: The Legacy of Terri Schiavo," documents the family's struggle through Mary.

"It's the story of a family who fought – like any family would – to keep our daughter alive," Mary Schindler said.

Bob and Mary Schindler in court (courtesy Bay News 9)

Bobby Schindler charged Michael Schiavo used his legal guardianship of Terri to "inflict pain" on her and her family.

"Any decent person would've sat down with my parents and said he wanted to move on," he asserted. "But [Michael] completely severed the relationship between my parents and Terri with correspondence from his attorneys. They first found out he wanted to remove her feeding tubes through an attorney."

Robert Schindler claimed that after Terri's collapse in 1990, the family told Michael they would take care of her and not stand in his way if he wanted to leave her.

Said Mary Schindler: We told him that he was a young guy and if he wanted to move on with his life, we would take care of her."

Bobby Schindler contended mainstream media aided and abetted the "people who went after my sister" by putting out false information.

"It was difficult to listen to the way they spoke of her – to listen to their lies," he said. "She didn't have to be confined to a bed. She was bedridden because Michael wouldn't allow her to leave her bed – all she needed was a wheelchair. You don't know how many people we've met who are in worse condition than Terri was, but they came to the hospice, they came to the court room."

Terri Schiavo responding to her mother in video clip available
on terrisfight.org

Prior to Michael Schiavo winning his malpractice claim, Terri was mobile and would be brought home, Robert Schindler pointed out.

We took her everywhere," Mary Schindler added. "We brought her home every holiday. We got her hair done."

But after the money was received, "her whole life changed," Robert said.

Michael Schiavo put a do-not-resuscitate order on her and would not allow caretakers to give her basic care such as brushing her teeth.

"She got no therapy, nothing," said Mary Schindler. "The nurses said they were feeding her and she ate Jell-O."

Bobby Schindler noted Terri was talking in 1991, a point documented by medical professionals.

"Even Michael wrote it – he wrote how much Terri was improving in his own diary," he said. None of that was ever reported. That's why 25 disability organizations were fighting for her."

Bobby Schindler said people should read Diana Lynne's book ""Terri's Story: The Court-Ordered Death of an American Woman."

It exposes everything that happened to Terri – how the hospice, the judge and the county officials were all connected," he said. "It's a racket. She exposed it and it's getting no media attention. We shouldn't be sitting here – I shouldn't be going around speaking about what happened to my sister. It's so outrageous to me that this was allowed to happen. It just blows my mind."

Mary Schindler called it "outrageous" that the family has to defend itself.

Starving someone to death, she said, is "the most horrific, unbelievable thing you could see."

"I would hope that parents with disabled children just love them and keep them home and take care of them," she said. "That's all we wanted to do. Terri was the light of my life; she lit up every time I walked in the room. What happened to Terri allowed the world to see what's happening to disabled people all over the world."

Robert Schindler at press conference in October 2003 (photo: Gary McCullough, Christian Communication Network)

While the Schindlers pour themselves into the Terri Schindler Schiavo Foundation, an advocate for the disabled, Michael Schiavo has formed a political action committee called Terri PAC, which says it aims to "restore personal freedoms and individual rights."

Schiavo says on the website, "Politicians in Washington, D.C., and Florida abused their public trust by forcing the government in the middle of my family tragedy."

Says Bobby Schindler: "It's vulgar for him to claim on his website that politicians trampled over the sanctity of marriage, and I can't believe he said that when he desecrated his own marriage."

Schindler said if Schiavo "wants to dedicate his life to killing the disabled by getting involved in politics, that speaks for itself."

"I pray to God that people can see through him and what he's doing," he continued. "He's using Terri's name to further his own motives."

Bobby Schindler said that after the astonishing number of people who contacted the family, "we had to get the foundation organized."

Said Robert Schindler: I don't care about Michael Schiavo or what he does. The only thing that connected us to him before Terri passed away was Terri. Now he's out of our life and he's just one of a hundred other people advocating euthanasia. We got together as a family because we don't want any other family to suffer what happened to Terri."

The foundation was established in June 2005.

"We decided we'd dedicate our foundation to preventing euthanasia – and like the Jewish motto regarding the Holocaust, we say, 'Never again,'" said Robert Schindler

He said his recent encounter with a disabled girl illustrated the need: "'Mr. Schindler, may I talk to you?' Her name was Ann and she couldn't speak clearly, but I listened carefully and she said, 'I keep praying that somebody does something because I'm frightened that people will come and kill all of us.'

"I almost broke out in tears because she was absolutely frightened," Robert Schindler said. "So I told her, 'Don't worry, we're going to do something to protect you.' And I mean that."

The family's ultimate objective is to establish facilities to care for disabled people who have no one to care for them and to set up a network of doctors and lawyers to protect the disabled.

Bioethics committees in some hospitals are saying they won't treat people and those people are dying, Robert Schindler pointed out.

"Some people are being starved to death in hospitals or they're thrown out on the street, and they have nowhere to go," he said. "So we'd like to be able to take those people in."

Said Bobby Schindler: "We're trying to live according to what Jesus said. We're trying to care for the vulnerable, care for the weak and promote the Gospel of life. You asked about Michael Schiavo and if he's going to do everything to kill, then I want to do the opposite."

Be sure to get your copy of "Terri's Story: The Court-Ordered Death of an American Woman."

For background on the 15-year saga, read "The whole Terri Schiavo story."

WorldNetDaily has been reporting on the Terri Schiavo story since 2002 – far longer than most other national news organization – and exposing the many troubling, scandalous, and possibly criminal, aspects of the case that to this day rarely surface in news reports. Read WorldNetDaily's unparalleled, in-depth coverage of the life-and-death fight over Terri Schiavo, including over 150 original stories and columns.

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