Toward the end of the article:
"Today Terri Schiavo is on death row, along with many vulnerable people like her, awaiting the outcome.
The Jewish and Christian traditions, which, despite their detractors, in fact lie firmly at the base of Western civilization, do not praise civilizations according to their military power, their wealth or their prestige. Rather, they judge a society by their treatment of the hopeless, the helpless and the desolate - the people that the Hebrew Scriptures refer to generally as "widows and orphans."
Terri Schiavo has been effectively widowed by an uncaring, unjust and cruel husband. Will she be orphaned by an equally uncaring, unjust and cruel society as well?"
POWERFUL!
I think legally it is known as Abandonment.