Bobby Schindler

My friend Bobby Schindler, the late Terri Schiavo’s brother, is one of the kindest, humblest, most decent people I know. And yet, because he dared to stand up for the inherent value of his sister’s life and against the injustice of her court-ordered dehydration — and has continued to fight on behalf of brain-injured people and their families — journalists and bioethicists often look down their noses at him as someone just beyond the pale of sophisticated society. But in a story in this Sunday’s New York Times Magazine reciting how many allegedly unconscious patients are actually aware — I refuse to use the term “vegetative” as it is a dehumanizing denigration of intrinsic human value — much to my Read More ›

For those who may not remember, Terri Schiavo was a profoundly cognitively disabled woman who became the subject of a legal and cultural battle that made international headlines. The case became a bitter and protracted conflict between Michael Schiavo, Terri’s husband who wanted to pull her feeding tube, and the Schindler family that fought to save their child and sister’s Read More ›