Terri Schiavo

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 ›

I saw Dan’s comment on the repose of Jesse Jackson. I think he left a mixed legacy (don’t we all?), but I will always be grateful to him for lending his full-throated support to the Schindler family in opposition to the dehydration of Terri Schiavo — proving that those who worked so hard to save her life were not just religious conservatives (Ralph Nader also opposed the dehydration publicly). Jackson even traveled to Florida to literally stand shoulder to shoulder with Terri’s family. Terri’s brother Bobby Schindler issued the following statement of appreciation and mourning in the wake of Jackson’s death: My family is saddened to learn of the passing of Rev. Jesse Jackson. During the final days of my Read More ›

Twenty years ago today, Terri Schiavo’s feeding tube was withdrawn with court approval, commencing a cruel deprivation of sustenance that resulted in her death by dehydration 13 days later. For those who may not remember, the case became the most hotly contested bioethics issue since Roe v. Wade as Terri’s husband Michael fought in courts and in the media with her parents and siblings over his desire to remove all Terri’s food and fluids. In the end, he won — and Terri died. Now, two bioethicists on the influential Hastings Center blog decry the case as wrongly brought. They get some facts wrong and omit crucial information — like that Michael was living with another woman with whom he fathered 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 ›

When Terri Schiavo collapsed with a cardiac arrest in 1990, she could have had no idea that 32 years later people all over the world would know her name and care very much about the manner in which she died. What began as a private family tragedy ultimately exploded into an international cultural conflagration and what was perhaps the most Read More ›