20 years later: Terri Schiavo’s impact on the right-to-life movement

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Mar 20, 2025 / 17:35 pm (CNA).

It’s been 20 years since Terri Schiavo’s feeding tube was removed, initiating the process of dehydration and starvation that would lead to her death 13 days later.

With the approach of the 20th anniversary of her passing on March 31, 2005, Schiavo’s brother Bobby Schindler said “it doesn’t get any easier thinking about those events,” particularly “having to witness my sister die such a terribly unjust and inhumane death.”

“The only thing keeping her alive was the same thing that keeps us all alive, which is food and hydration. Terri had difficulty swallowing because of a brain injury and therefore needed a feeding tube in order to receive her food and hydration. But it was removed.”

In an interview with “EWTN News Nightly” anchor Tracy Sabol, Schindler detailed the inhumane way his sister passed. He said: “It’s something if we do to an animal, it would be criminal.”

Following Schiavo’s death, Schindler created the Terri Schiavo Life and Hope Network, which “upholds human dignity through service to the medically vulnerable” and assists people who experience similar situations to Schindler and his family.

The network offers help through “public advocacy of essential qualities of human dignity — which include 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 — as well as through 24/7 crisis lifeline service to at-risk patients and families,” according to the organization’s website.

The organization strongly advocates that food and water be classified nationally as “basic and ordinary” care. Food and water that is delivered by a feeding tube is often called “medical treatment” or is treated as an “end-of-life” issue, but Schnidler and his network advocate that they are just basic human needs.

“We only get the hard cases,” Schindler told Sabol. “It seems to me these past 20 years, decisions are being made awfully quick, particularly when someone experiences a brain injury, to stop treatment.”

“Sometimes days, sometimes even hours, pressure is being put on families to terminate treatment,” he continued. “They need time.”

“We certainly will stand with families that call us when these decisions are being made so quickly and use our resources, doing anything we can to help the family get the time they want and the treatment they want for their loved ones,” Schindler said.

Recalling the circumstances of Schiavo’s case, the Terri Schiavo Life and Hope Network recounts that “at the age of 26, Terri experienced a still unexplained collapse while at home alone with Michael Schiavo, who subsequently became her guardian. After a short period of time, Michael lost interest in caring for his brain-injured, but otherwise healthy, young wife.”

“Terri was not dying, and did not suffer from any life-threatening disease. She was neither on machines nor was she ‘brain dead.’ To the contrary, she was alert and interacted with friends and family — before her husband … petitioned the courts for permission to deliberately starve and dehydrate her to death.”

After years of legal battles between Schiavo’s husband and her family, a judge ruled in Michael Schiavo’s favor, allowing Terri Schiavo’s life to end.

“The fact that Terri’s case was not isolated and it’s happening every single day across countless hospitals and nursing homes and hospices is just troubling,” Schindler emphasized.

“It happens every single day. And that’s why we’re doing the work that we’re doing, trying to help other families that are confronted with similar types of situations.”

Since its founding two decades ago, the Terri Schiavo Life and Hope Network has advocated for and assisted more than 3,000 medically vulnerable patients and families.

Catholic World Report