Land, Gibbs in two-part documentary on Terri Schiavo

AGOURA HILLS, Calif. (FBW)—Two thirty-minute television programs to air June 12 and 19 will explore the debate surrounding the death of Terri Schiavo and feature, among others, Richard Land, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention and David Gibbs, head of the Florida-based Christian Law Association.

Joni Eareckson Tada, whose ministry, The Christian Institute on Disability—a division of Joni and Friends International Disability Center—has produced the programs which will be broadcast globally via Trinity Broadcasting Network. Terri Schiavo is the severely disabled Florida woman who died of starvation and dehydration in 2005 after her feeding tube was removed as a result of a court order.

“For the first time in the U.S., society has been given the ability to put to death a profoundly disabled person,” Eareckson Tada said according to a news release. She makes the point that Schiavo needed to be treated as a person with a disability and not as a terminally ill person.

Land, who as president of the ERLC is a champion of pro-life issues and also serves as the vice chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), said he believes people like Schiavo deserve protection.

“As human beings we don’t have the right to take on god-like qualities and start deciding for others when the quality of their life has diminished to the point that they no longer deserve protections that we give to more healthy, more productive people,” Land said.

Gibbs, who served as legal counsel for Schiavo’s parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, said during the show he believes Schiavo should have been given a chance to live.

“Whether [Terri] would ever get better or not, in the condition that she was in, she was as alive as any person watching this show,” Gibbs said.

The show also features an interview with Pat Anderson, the Tampa attorney who fought on behalf of Terri Schiavo, and photographs provided by Florida Baptist Witness taken by its managing editor, Joni B. Hannigan, who reported on the case for more than two years and for the last 13 days of Terri’s life from in front of the hospice in Pinellas Park.

This two-part expose on the life and death of Terri Schiavo will be broadcast on TBN Thur., June 12 at 7:30 p.m. EST, and Thur., June 19, 7:30 p.m. EST. For more information, go to www.joniandfriends.org.