Michael Schiavo seeks more attention

He has surfaced again. And as has been his track record, Schiavo goes about his public campaign for some personal gain in a terribly dysfunctional way that strains credulity and human decency.

If only the big name media were doing their job. There’s such a story in the whole Schiavo saga, and this is only the latest bizarre and disgusting twist.

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.

This is jarring. After the media circus went away when he succeeded in torturing Terri to death by dehydration and starvation with a concocted story, he has failed in an attempted political career and whatever else he’s publicly tried to do. Now this.

The snip Wesley Smith posted at his First Things blog is painful to read, so I don’t want to give it continued life here (an ironic choice of words). But this part must be addressed:

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.

Putting aside all the background I have on this story from the beginning and especially through the final months and particularly the legal and judicial malfeasance….at least for the moment, let me tell you something from personal experience.

Any media giving any attention to what Michael Schiavo believes about Terri’s family at this point has no merit beyond the crudely sensational. ‘Using their deceased sister’s name to make money’? I don’t want to dignify this deranged stab and incoherent blather with a response, but here’s a fact….

I hosted ‘America’s Lifeline’ with Bobby Schindler and Suzanne Schindler Vitadamo for a year and a half on the Salem Network, a weekly radio program dedicated to being a voice for the voiceless, advocating for patients’ rights and dignity for the impaired and disabled, giving information and resources and hope to people and populations relegated to fear and hopelessness by a social/medial system that marginalized the vulnerable. We had amazing guests on in the field of bioethics, medicine, social policy, government, pro-life advocacy, patients’ rights, personal witness and legal counsel. We were called ‘cutting edge’, ‘pioneers’, the only radio show out there dedicated to this prescient subject, and a necessary resource that cannot afford to go off the air because of the unique good our show and our guests were doing for human dignity.

Trouble is, we could not afford to stay on the air, because the Terri Schindler Schiavo Foundation relies on donations, and they could no longer even pay the studio rates for the Saturday show. We all worked virtually without pay, and still could not afford to keep the show on the air. So we suspended it for now, hoping to resurrect it and continue Terri’s legacy through the expanded platform that radio provides. Meanwhile, Bobby and the Schindler family works tirelessly to answer all the calls for help and guidance and information through the Foundation. It operates on a thread. We’re all to busy working to put together any kind of development or fundraising effort.

So the audacity of Michael Schiavo’s re-emergence on the public scene to make crass remarks and charges about the family and their work and Terri’s Foundation, is frankly beyond offensive.

Wesley, a frequent guest on ‘America’s Lifeline’, said:

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.

And I call upon all people of goodwill to speak out against this outrageous assault on life, family, and fundamental human dignity, as well as all that is true and right and good. Michael Schiavo should be marginalized, as the aggressive euthanasia movement (for which he and his attorney played a key role) seeks to marginalize the weak and vulnerable. He should be called out on this, and everything he has done to date against truth and life and constitutional law.

Enough is enough.