Did you ever stop to consider the possibility that Terri did not want to be maintained in that state? And, IF that was the case, would you not agree that the circus would be an astounding trampling of her wishes?
That's what it all comes down to - if she wanted the cessation of life-sustaining care, is there anything wrong with anything the government did in this case?
I don't know if she wanted it any more than you do. But we have procedures in place to make those determinations, and they were applied in this case with more effort, more second-guessing, more evidence than any similar case in history.
That's the entire point for many folks - was this truly her wishes? IMO Michael had too many potential conflicts of interest to be treated as the final authority. The law gives final word to the husband - and, in this case, to a man in a de facto common law marriage with another woman. The law needs to be changed.
No, they weren't. Taking the mere word of a man who "suddenly remembered" something she said 7 years after the fact is not "making more effort"--Heaven help those who make little off-hand remarks ("I'd rather die than wear a dress like that" or "I wouldn't want to live past 30, ewww, that's ancient" etc.), lest someone hold them to it with the same tenacity as Michael Schiavo did.