(LifeNews.com) – Terri Schiavo was my sister, but she also came to be a symbol of both the right to life movement and right to die movement. Terri was a disabled American who required love, care, and food and water by a feeding tube, since she had difficulty swallowing as a result of her brain injury.
She did not require artificial life support, and she was not dying of any disease or condition. Nonetheless, Terri’s life was intentionally ended in 2005 by her husband and an antagonistic court system that deprived her of food and water, causing her to die from extreme dehydration and starvation.
I have been advocating in my sister’s name ever since, through the Terri Schiavo Life & Hope Network, where our mission is to uphold human dignity through service to the medically vulnerable. Our National Crisis Lifeline exists to serve patients and families vulnerable to America’s increasingly indifferent, and even hostile, cultural attitudes toward persons who require treatment and care but are too often marginalized in fatal ways.
We advocate for essential principles in law and medicine, including the right to food and water, the presumption of the will to live, due process against denial of care, protection from euthanasia as a form of medicine, and access to rehabilitative care.
We frequently hear from patients and families in crisis, where individuals are seeking any means possible to save their life or the life of a loved one at-risk of denial or withdraw of basic care like food and water. CONTINUE