Schindler: Schiavo was not in a vegetative state

Schiavo died in 2005 at age 41, two weeks after doctors, following orders from a federal judge, removed a feeding tube that had kept her alive for more than a decade.

Schiavo had previously suffered brain damage following an incident of cardiac arrest, which had deprived her brain of oxygen.

“There is no such thing as a person who is a non-person. There is no one so disabled that they have lost their value or dignity,” Schindler said, adding that classifying individuals as “non-persons” would be akin to “walk[ing] down the same path that led to the Nuremberg trials.”

Schindler denied the claim that Schiavo told her husband prior to her collapse that she believed in euthanasia.

“There’s no doubt in my mind that Michael [Schiavo] fabricated the [death] wishes and that his brother and sister did as well and that they perjured themselves in front of the judges,” Schindler said.

He also dispelled the notion that his sister was in a vegetative state.

Though “much confusion still exists about Terri’s condition, Terri was not terminal or dying, and her brain injury was not going to cause her to die,” Schindler said.

At the request of Schiavo’s husband Michael, the feeding tube was removed, though her parents had strongly opposed the decision to end their daughter’s life and had sought to take guardianship of their daughter from her husband.

Congress passed a bill that put the decision of whether to remove the feeding tube into the hands of a federal judge, who ruled to remove the tube. Schiavo died two weeks later.

Terri was “needlessly and barbarically killed by a judge,” Schindler said, adding that the judge did not have “the dignity to see the woman he had sentenced to death.”

“He would have seen how alive she really was,” he said.

“Once you achieve emotional distance from people who are ‘different’ from you, it is easy to look the other way while they are being killed,” he added.

Get the best of the ‘Prince’ delivered straight to your inbox. Subscribe now »

Schindler also reproached the three leading presidential candidates for their statements and actions regarding his sister.

He criticized Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) for not opposing a bill that would give a federal judge the final say in whether the feeing tube was removed, Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) for blaming Republicans for the passage of this bill even though it had garnered bipartisan support and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) for his “insensitive and callous comments.”

“We worry about Ms. Schiavo before we worry about balancing the budget,” McCain had said at the time.

“This is not a Republican or Democratic issue. It is a human rights issue,” Schindler said.

Schindler and his parents have since started the Schindler-Schiavo Foundation to oppose euthanasia.

“We need to fight today to protect those among us who need our care,” Schindler said.

“It’s our dream in the future that legal bigotry against the disabled will be as taboo as insulting someone’s ethnicity,” he added.

The lecture was sponsored by Princeton Pro-Life, whose president, Roscoe Cafaro ’09, said that he “wanted for people to realize that the right to life is not just a fight for a cause, it’s a fight for people.”