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Quite frankly, if I was in Terri's state, I wouldn't want to be kept alive, and I've said so in my Health Care Proxy and Living Will. We have a cultural fear of death that is so strong that we have people who are terminally ill and either suffering or total unable to respond to or interact with the outside world, and were keep them alive for a few days, weeks or years just so their heart keeps beating. We don't do it for them. Don't kid yourself, we do it for the living, for their families who don't want to realize that their loved ones are already gone. Starving her to death would be terrible for everyone involved, and they should have been able to overdose her on morphine or some other drug.

I also want to say that the Florida Legislature was just plain wrong in giving Gov. Bush the power to review this case. It's terrible public policy to legislate for one special case. Special cases are for the courts. If we can change the law in a day, on a whim, then we don't have rule of law. Rule of law made America great and it was the backbone of everyone of our freedoms. We try and establish rule of law in other countries, because it's vital for economic growth and personal liberty. More and more, we've moved away from the rule of law, and it's dangerous. You can't have a society where the rules that you live by can change any day, and can change retroactively.

Since you've made a written record of your intentions, then it's entirely your business. That's entirely different from a situation where someone else, with obvious self-interest, insists that you be killed.

And legislatures pass laws that benefit individuals, or individual companies, all the time. It's just part of the way our government runs these days.

One of the founding fathers said that obedience to a bad law was evil.

I agree heartily.

Just because something is a law, or a court rules on it doesn't make it RIGHT. No man is God, and you only have to look at the boneheaded rulings from the courts recently to see they are completely off kilter.

I applaud the people who are forcing the court into accountability for their actions. They need to be reminded, often and hard that their ONLY duty is to see if things are constitutional and/or lawful, not make up stuff.

It is the court that has been out of line in this case all along, no big suprise for a Florida court.

You can't have a society where the rules that you live by can change any day, and can change retroactively.

It's interesting you say that. Did you know that before Terri's collapse, FL law did NOT consider a feeding tube to be life support? They could not be legally removed as such. So even if Terri DID say what her husband now claims she said, she couldn't have possibly meant a feeding tube.

The law was passed six months after she collapsed, but Judge Greer saw fit to apply it retroactively to her case, somehow divining that her wishes against being kept on life support were meant to include the law which did not exist when she allegedly verbalized those wishes.

I also want to say that the Florida Legislature was just plain wrong in giving Gov. Bush the power to review this case. It's terrible public policy to legislate for one special case. Special cases are for the courts. If we can change the law in a day, on a whim, then we don't have rule of law. Rule of law made America great and it was the backbone of everyone of our freedoms. We try and establish rule of law in other countries, because it's vital for economic growth and personal liberty. More and more, we've moved away from the rule of law, and it's dangerous. You can't have a society where the rules that you live by can change any day, and can change retroactively.

This is so right that it bears repeating over and over!

We have a cultural fear of death that is so strong that we have people who are terminally ill and either suffering or total unable to respond to or interact with the outside world, and were keep them alive for a few days, weeks or years just so their heart keeps beating. We don't do it for them.

Speak for yourself, please. Don't indulge in this 'we' stuff. You do not speak for me or many others on this forum.

As for whom 'we' are doing this for, before you write this smug platitude again, please read the New York Times magazine article linked in post 66.

It will be a revelation to you.