Terri Schiavo’s Brother: Liberals, Democrats, Disabled Supported Terri 
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by Bobby Schindler
July 17, 2006
LifeNews.com Note: Bobby Schindler is Terri Schiavo’s brother and works with the Terri Schindler Schiavo Foundation to make sure elderly and disabled patients receive appropriate medical care and rehabilitative treatment.
Stephen Goldstein, in his July 5 column, "Drum the culprits out," overlooks that it was not just the "radical right" and Republicans who were "having their way" when it came to supporting my family’s efforts to stop my sister Terri Schiavo’s brutal death from occurring.
Michael Schiavo — and most in the popular media, for that matter — have conveniently forgotten that there were more than 20 local and national disability organizations that were supporting my family’s efforts to keep Terri alive.
These are hardly the type of organizations that anyone would label "radical right." In fact, the disability organizations involved in my sister’s case outnumbered the so-called radical right groups that were also supporting my family.
Mr. Schiavo is not being honest regarding the Republicans in Terri’s case either.
When Congress got involved in Terri’s situation, not one Democrat objected in the Senate’s voice vote to pass "Terri’s Law," and 47 Democrats voted in favor of the House bill.
Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin said in a press conference on March 18, 2005: "Where there is a genuine dispute as to what the desires of the incapacitated person really are, then there ought to be at the end some review by a federal court outside of state jurisdiction. You might say, `Why a federal court?’ State courts vary in their evidentiary proceedings and in their process — fifty different ones. … In a case like this, where someone is incapacitated and their life support can be taken away, it seems to me that it is appropriate — where there is a dispute, as there is in this case — that a federal court come in, like we do in habeas corpus situations, and review it and make another determination."
And although it was a Republican governor who tried to help Terri, ultimately it was Republican state Sen. Jim King and eight other Republicans who blocked a Senate bill in the final days of my sister’s life, ending our hopes of stopping Terri from being starved and dehydrated to death.
In addition, Goldstein and many in the ill-informed media continue to give Mr. Schiavo a free pass when it comes to insulting comments about my family and as to his conflicting specifics and statements, which can easily be disputed by reading court documents or referring to his previous interviews. Unfortunately, this basic effort has been continually overlooked by the journalism profession.
