Terri Schiavo's Brother Endorses Sam Brownback's GOP Presidential Bid

by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
March 13, 2007

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- Since Terri Schiavo was killed by her former husband via a painful euthanasia death two years ago, her family has largely avoided the political scene and preferred to build their foundation to help other disabled patients like her.

But a presidential race could have a significant effect on how patients like Terri are teated and her brother Bobby Schindler endorsed Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback's bid for the GOP nomination for president on Tuesday.

In a statement he sent to LifeNews.com, Bobby Schindler said “My family will never forget Sam Brownback’s valiant efforts to save my sister’s life."

“Sam Brownback is the pro-life conservative we can trust to stand for all life, regardless of political calculations," he said.

In 2005, Brownback joined the Schindler family to launch the Terri Schindler Schiavo Foundation, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to ensuring the rights of disabled, elderly, and vulnerable citizens against care-rationing, euthanasia, and medical killing.

In response to the endorsement, Brownback talked about the effects of Terri's death.

"Terri's plight highlighted the core question about the protection of human life: does the dignity with which we treat individuals depend on their physical or mental status as human beings?" he said in the statement LifeNews.com received.

"If a person's dignity depends only on his or her physical status, then life and death decisions about the most vulnerable among us become relative matters to be determined by doctors, judges, lawyers, and legislatures," he said.

"Once we go down the path of valuing some lives more than others, of saying that people with disabilities don't have the same dignity and right to life as others, there are very few means not justified by the sinister end of a disability-free society," Brownback explained.

Ironically, the endorsement comes just days after pro-life advocates criticized Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor who said he didn't think the Florida legislature or former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush should have gotten involved in trying to save Terri's life.

"I think it's probably best to leave these kinds of matters in the hands of the courts," Romney said yesterday to Bay News Channel 9 in Florida.

“Mitt Romney’s alleged pro-life conversion evidently does not to apply to all human life,” Schindler said in response. “The pro-life movement needs a leader we can trust in 2008 and I know Sam Brownback is that leader.”

Schindler made it clear that the endorsement was on his own behalf and not related to the foundation.

Related web sites:
Terri Schindler Schiavo Foundation - http://www.terrisfight.org