Terri Schiavo’s brother makes plea for a ‘pro-life’ culture

Bobby Schindler

For Terri Schiavo’s family, the frustrations haven’t ended.

Bobby Schindler, Schiavo’s brother and family spokesman during the media- and politics-laden battle for her life last year, arrived at Kansas University Wednesday to speak at a pro-life event – just as he has all over the country and elsewhere since his sister died after being taken off a feeding tube at her husband’s direction.

“It was disturbing to my family that it became a pro-life issue,” Schindler said Wednesday before the event.

It’s not that he isn’t pro-life – he certainly is – but to Schindler, the national battle that eventually ended in his incapacitated sister’s death was about more.

To him, it was about the rights of the disabled, which is how he viewed his sister. It was about living wills and the right to access health care when patients couldn’t pay medical bills.

A year after the media whirlwind has mostly settled, Schindler is still frustrated at politicians who preach life, then offer little support for national health care like Medicaid and Medicare.

“The Republicans aren’t helping the disabled,” he said, referring to recent heath care cuts on both the state and national level. “When I hear pro-life Republicans, I question if they’re really pro-life.”

He knows his sister’s death sparked a national awareness of living wills – documents that outline what someone wants to happen if he ends up brain dead, in a vegetative state or paralyzed.

He said he had nothing against the documents, although he didn’t agree with people “saying they want to starve to death.”

But if Schiavo would have handed him a living will stating she wanted to die in her condition, his life would have been different.

“I probably wouldn’t be sitting here right now if that were the case,” Schindler said.

Bobby Schindler, of Tampa, Fla., spoke Wednesday at Kansas University. Schindler is the brother of Terri Schiavo, who died last year after her feeding tube was removed following a lengthy court battle between her family and her husband. Schindler has been traveling the country speaking on behalf of people like his sister.

But now Schindler said he wanted things changed. He said he wanted people to view those with severe brain trauma as disabled, rather than as vegetables.

He wants taxpayers to pay for the health care of everyone, even those who need constant care to remain alive.

“We’re the wealthiest nation in the world,” he said. “To limit what we’re going to spend on life is very dangerous.”

For whatever it might mean to different people, Schindler said he and his family would do everything they could to encourage a culture of protecting the weak.

That dedication, he said, has helped ease the hurt.