You don't know what you're talking about.
I cared for my bedridden elderly father for 9 months before he died OF NATURAL CAUSES, and I fed him 3 times a day through a gastric tube because his disease had stopped his throat muscles from operating properly and he was choking on his food. There is no pumping involved in tube feeding, the liquified food is simply poured through a funnel-like insert and into the small rubber or soft plastic tube, and it passes into the stomach just as it would had it gone through the esophagus. After the food goes through, a glass of water is poured through to flush the tube and provide fluid for the patient. Several other times each day I gave him water or juice through the tube along with medicine.
The small incision in the abdominal wall soon heals, it causes no pain or bleeding, and after a day or so the patient doesn't even notice it's there. The skin around the incision should be cleaned each day with a mild disinfectant such as rubbing alcohol to prevent infection, but usually no other care is needed. Of course it certainly isn't the ideal way to receive food and drink, but it's a thousand times better than not receiving food or drink at all. My father lived comfortably and with reasonably good physical health with a feeding tube for 9 months until the Alzeimer's disease finally shut down his internal organs and he quietly passed away naturally and peacefully without pain or suffering.
The point of this long post is this; a feeding tube is no more an artificial life support machine than a bladder catheter or an IV drip for administering medication. And to say that Mrs. Schiavo is on life support, as is so frequently alleged by advocates of starving her to death, is a gross mistatement of the facts. According to everything I have read, she is simply fed through a tube. No big deal, really.
Very true. A feeding tube is not a very major device, it's just a plastic tube helping the food bypass the lungs on the way to the stomach. It's not close to something like a respirator.