Brother of Schiavo still upset over death

Bobby Schindler says his memory is seared with images of his sister, Terri Schiavo, after courts approved removal of her feeding tube in a high-profile right-to-die/right-to-life battle he says wasn't always fairly portrayed in the media.

"Fresh in my mind now is how they tortured her to death, how terrified she looked prior to her death. . . . That will be an image that stays with me and my family the rest of our lives," Schindler said in an interview. "She was beautiful, she was alive, she was a human being and had a family willing to . . . show her compassion as every human being deserves. But the courts decided she would be better off dead."

About six months have passed since Schiavo died. And Schindler is on an international speaking tour of sorts, criticizing the right-to-die movement and, through the Terri Schindler Schiavo Foundation, pushing for changes in federal and state laws to protect the lives of the elderly and people with disabilities.

He addressed about 150 people at Westminster College Wednesday night and spoke with the Deseret Morning News beforehand. Student leaders had invited him after learning he had spoken to another university, free of charge. His Salt Lake speech also included no honorarium, he said.

"I think society . . . has been confused over what compassion is. We're here to love and take care of these people and not kill them," Schindler said in an interview. "Everything's been flip-flopped here. What's right is wrong, what's wrong is right. And anything I can do to shed light on what's happening, God willing, I'm going to try and do.

"She would be doing the same thing for me today."

Terri Schiavo collapsed in the wee morning hours on Feb. 26, 1990. Oxygen deprivation before paramedics resuscitated the 26-year-old resulted in severe brain damage.

A couple years later, Michael Schiavo prevailed in a medical malpractice lawsuit, resulting in a more than $1 million judgment. But a feud ensued between him and Terri Schiavo's family in 1993, Schindler said, after the family questioned when the money would be spent on Terri Schiavo's promised rehabilitation and therapy. It deepened when Michael Schiavo had children with a live-in girlfriend in the mid-1990s, Schindler said.

In 1998, Michael Schiavo petitioned a Florida state court to remove life support, which in this case was a feeding tube.

The judge sided with doctors' testimony that Terri Schiavo was in a "persistent vegetative state" incapable of thought or emotion and Michael Schiavo's testimony that his wife had said on several occasions she would not have wanted life-prolonging measures.