NRL News
Page 4
April 2009
Volume 36
Issue 4

The Terri Schiavo Story: We Will Not Forget
BY Dave Andrusko

As we watched The Terri Schiavo Story, NRLC State Organization and Development Director Jacki Ragan remarked solemnly, “This story is one that pro-lifers ought to review once a year.” The story is, of course, that of Terri Schindler Schiavo, whose brave parents and courageous siblings fought with uncommon valor and incredible determination to save Terri from a grotesque death by starvation and dehydration.

Made available by Franklin Springs Family Media (www.franklinsprings.com/films/schiavo), the hour-long presentation is a special two-part episode of the Joni and Friends television show. Joni and Friends is hosted by renowned author and speaker Joni Eareckson Tada, who has spoken several times at NRLC’s national convention.

A diving accident in 1967 left Joni a quadriplegic in a wheelchair. In the years since she has created a worldwide ministry. Not surprisingly, Joni took a keen, personal interest in Terri’s dilemma.

In 1990, at the age of 26, Terri suffered a mysterious cardio-respiratory arrest. As the official web site of the Terri Schindler Schiavo Foundation explains, Terri was diagnosed with “hypoxic encephalopathy—brain injury caused by oxygenation starvation to the brain” (www.terrisfight.org).

She was profoundly brain-injured but not “brain dead.” Nor was Terri, according to her family and any number of medical experts, in a “persistent vegetative state.”

As Joni explains in the DVD, Terri was a disabled person, like tens of millions of other Americans. That Terri’s injuries were more massive than most did not make her any less a human being.

The DVD does an excellent job summarizing Terri’s life and the titanic legal struggle that eventually broke out between the Schindlers and Terri’s husband. The husband’s attorney is given a chance to outline the reasons, from their perspective, why Terri’s feeding tube—and only source of nutrition—ought to have been removed.

But the viewer will also be reminded of a couple of facts. The assertion that a death by dehydration and starvation is “easy” even “pleasant” is as absurd as it is cruel. And even for the viewer who only casually watches The Terri Schiavo Story, it is clear just how unjust was the death sentence meted out to Terri.

That death sentence is summarized on the foundation’s web site: “On February 25, 2005, Judge George W. Greer sets feeding tube removal date for March 18, 2005. He further orders that Terri may not receive hydration or nutrition by mouth. ... On March 31, at approximately 9:05 am, after almost 14 days without nutrition or hydration, Terri Schindler Schiavo dies from severe dehydration.”

Take a moment to go to www.franklinsprings.com/films/schiavo. You can view trailers from the video, which was the Jubilee Award Winner, Best Documentary, at the 2009 San Antonio Independent Christian Film Festival.

You will likely want to buy your own copy and purchase one for your chapter as well.