Michael Schiavo has threatened to sue Terri Schiavo’s family because they named their non profit after her–the “Terri Schindler Schiavo Foundation.” (MS claims he owns the name. ) And, true to form, an ever compliant media fronted his cause with an unfair attack on the family. From the story:
Schiavo’s widower, Michael Schiavo, says the family should be ashamed of what they are doing. He adds if Terri ever knew this was happening she’d be horrified. Michael Schiavo is talking about the Terri Schindler Schiavo Foundation. While Terri Schiavo’s brother Bobby says the organization is set up to help families in similar situations, Michael Schiavo says he doesn’t believe it. Instead Schiavo says they are using their deceased sister’s name to make money.
What Michael Schiavo “believes” is irrelevant and beside the point. Had the reporters wanted to find out the kind of help the foundation offers others, producers could have called me or a myriad of others active in this field, who are quite aware of the selfless giving and effort each surviving member of Terri’s family offers to others. Indeed, I have personal knowledge of case after case in which the Schindlers worked selflessly–and without financial compensation of any kind–to assist family members save their cognitively disabled loved ones from suffering the same dehydration fate as Terri. The Lauren Richardson food and fluids dispute and the Andrea Clarke futile care case are just two that come to mind.
And as for profiteering–Bobby Schindler’s salary is $37,500 annually, and all speaking fees he receives go to the foundation. His sister Suzanne, makes less and is 14 months in arrears in receiving her compensation. It is also worth noting, that after receiving complaints, the IRS investigated the foundation and gave it a clean bill of health in 2008.
The hatred of this family is pathological and obsessive.
On a personal note: I know Bobby Schindler very well and consider him one of the most decent human beings I have ever met. His sister Suzanne is a peach, and mother Mary doesn’t have a vindictive or nasty bone in her body. Father Bob gave everything he had to save his daughter’s life, and seeing her die slowly by intentional dehydration when the family was prepared to love and care for her the rest of her life, destroyed his health and eventually took his life. I stand wholeheartedly and unreservedly with the Schindler family and against the continual calumny mounted against them.
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Media Attack on the Schiavo Foundation: Let’s Make Disability Go Away
Killing defenseless people with disabilities is not very difficult. They can’t fight back and, in many instances, either they have no advocates, or those advocates are overwhelmed in the unrelenting drumbeat for death.
It’s this latter point that Terri Schiavo’s family has had to live with since her untimely and completely unnecessary legal execution in 2005.
They fought as hard as they could, and were helped by many people who knew how dangerous the situation was. There were several disability organizations as well as faith-based groups who all saw that what was happening, and then did happen to Terri.
They all knew that it was a precursor of very bad things to come.
Terri’s family did everything they could, everything they knew how, but the pro-deathers prevailed.
Since Terri’s death, her family have lived and breathed her memory in a constructive and positive way – by establishing a small foundation to spread the word and also to help others in similar predicaments.
No good deed goes unpunished, apparently.
A TV station in Florida ran a piece yesterday headed “Terri Schiavo’s Family Profiting From Foundation.”
Now, with a lead like that, which way do you think the story was going to go?
Natch.
All innuendo and spin. Why would we expect anything else? Even all these years after her death, Bobby, Suzanne, and Mary spend countless hours trying to correct misleading reporting about the circumstances of Terri’s death. This is just one more media attack in a long string of animus posing as “news” and comes just a few weeks after Fox’s The Family Guy made horrible fun of Terri and her disabled condition.
Now this.
Let’s be clear – the media and others with less than unbiased interest are hammering the Foundation for one reason and one reason only: Its existence reminds them that people with disabilities are worth less than the rest of us and are easily disposed of. They’d rather not be reminded of their part in shaping this view, now widely held across the country.
At another level, they understand that it takes only a split second for any of us to be in the same state as Terri.
And that they, too, could be legally executed.
The Schiavo Foundation reminds them of their own fragile mortality.
They’d rather not have to be reminded about it.
