I don’t undertand everyone’s strained and elaboate arguements here. To me this is very simple, with very few factors to consider.
The permanent, untreatable, and unrecoverable dameage, and the resultant persistant vegetative state have been accepted as facts in a court of law, and are undisputed AFAIK by her attending physicians.
Her closest family member has the legal right to make decisions about her treatment, barring her assigning that right to someone else while still competent. Terri did not do so. Therefor her husband has the legal right to make such decisions.
Removal of nutrition and hydration are legally and medically acceptable options in such cases. IOW, had the family agreed with Michael, the tubes would have been removed and none of us would ever have heard of any of them because the state wouldn’t have dragged anyone into court on a murder charge.
What this amounts to is a family waving a Christian flag to be granted special rights to control the fate of their daughter, rights to which they have no legal entitlement.
Frankly I believe it’s the spouse’s moral obligation to make such decisions, and not to cede them to others. They partnered for life and death, theoretically at least. I would expect my spouse to fight for control rather than concede to my batshit crazy family. After all, you choose your spouse, and that should in itself be evidence of who you choose to vest with ultimate responsbility should the case ever arise.
And IMHO this would go double even if, or expecially if, there WAS some small remaining spark of awareness or sensation. What if she DOES feel discomfort, or gets some kind of sensory input, but is forever able to respond. Persinally I’d rather be dead than in that situation, and would hope a spouse would make that happen.
Your point Boyo Jim was also well expressed by Mighty_Girl. Unfortunately, there are other parties to the case who do not respect the position you two have presented.
Is it really necessary to refer to whatever is left of the poor woman in the most callous terms possible? I understand that she will certainly never be aware of this conversation (or, depending upon who you believe, any conversation), but I don’t think that even those who regard Ms. Schiavo as being persistently vegetative should refer to her as a thing.
The funny thing is that I continuously waver back and forth in my opinion of the case. I am absolutely NOT a practicing Catholic or a pro-lifer. (I was baptized and confirmed Catholic, but I regard that as an accident of birth.) I firmly believe that I would not want to live in the state that Ms. Schiavo appears to be in. I acknowledge that NONE of us can read her husband’s mind and know definitively whether he is motivated by compassion, selfishness, practicality, guilt, greed or exhaustion. I admit that I find the video clips of Ms. Schiavo confusing rather than convincing – it is clear that she is responding in some fashion to the world around her, but my knee also responds when it is hit by a reflex hammer. Does that make my knee sentient? I think not. In fact, the clips make me suspect that poor Ms. Schiavo probably has just enough of a tiny scrap of cerebral cortex left that she may be wordlessly aware of her misery, though almost certainly not of too much else. I doubt she remembers her life as a functioning woman. (Forgive me for putting it this way, but her behavior reminded me of the fact that even brine shrimp are able to respond to simple stimuli.) I think Ms. Schiavo is present almost the EXACT degree that it would be unethical to put her through the pain of starvation ***even though ** * her very life appears to be extraordinarily painful.
In a situation where BOTH alternatives are painful, where the facts are unclear and there is no living will, I don’t think the husband has the right to take the pro-active step of having a feeding tube removed. I say this as someone who (using a living will), had the only person she has ever loved taken off a respirator.
It’s the first time I’ve referred to her in anything but the most respectful terms. No matter whether you can or cannot make up your mind about the situation, she is just a bag of skin and half-functioning organs. Unfortunate but true.