I was in extreme pain and extraordinary discomfort, completely terrified -- yet deep in there was a made more awake than ever -- an incredible desire to live, no matter what that "living" meant.
You want to beleive you know or that medical experts and scientists know, that without the "higher" brain there is no consciousness, no desire for live. At least I hope that is what you'd want to believe.
For otherwise, we are back to the "off Terri because she's such a damn burden on the rest of us" camp. Not a camp I can tolerate.
So on the basis of your last post and that optimistic expectation of why you'd think it's okay to let her go -- I'd say you are wrong in that belief, and so to are the scientists who so rashly claim. Know at the least that it is a belief and not a hard fact!
And even if your hubris -- like theirs -- that overwrought false confidence in what you and they think you know -- does not allow you to differientiate desired imagined belief from hard knowable fact -- even then consider an argument on appearances and the dangers of engendering callousness to life.
Terri looks human. She looks alive. Allowing -- for the sake of this argument -- her soul is long gone (which it is not) and she has no sense of pain (not really knowable) -- then consider the general effect of offing such decaying bodies of mere meat. Becuase that meat looks like a living human, by slaughtering it we train ourselves to be callous to humans to human life. The psychological and sociological effects are inescapable.
Consider the raw sociology and psychology of family and nursing home economics. Once the accounts are emptied or near emptied , both have an economic motive to see a human as mere near-dead meat. Of course, the demon of econonmics says "She's brain dead -- she's really, really dead, already."
The line of what is called "brain dead" will ever be lowered, as each new piece of meat is slaughtered.
Not the case at all......
Your fears about future changes, and a trend toward legalized active Euthanasia could only occur if the legislature is forced to deal with this issue.
The reason they would need to intervene is because of public unrest as a result of over the top arguments and interventions that may include lawlessness.
That would indeed force them into a one size fits all typical government action.
But they would only do that if the issue was out of control and out of the private family arena and into the public and the media.
But, that seems to be exactly what is being created here!
It is so often true that there is a law of unintended consequences that result in the things you were trying to prevent.
It is exactly what may well happen in this case.
Unfortunately I find I have repeated myself. I don't like to do that, but in the face of repetitions I have no choice.