I hope you are not making the mistake of thinking this is an end-of-life case. It is not. It is a right-to-kill case. If Terri's condition had been terminal, she'd be dead already, and this case never would have gone to court. No one here arguing for Terri's right to live her life is advocating interfering with the decision whether or not to end futile treatment for a dying person.
Yes.
Maybe "end-of-life wasn't the best choice of words, maybe "individual determinism" would be better but that sounds pretty pretentious.
What I am getting at is that many people consider chronic tube feedings to be extraordinary means, and request on their living wills that it not be provided to them. On the standard living will form is a little box about tube feedings. This is a very common decision.
Since many people don't have living wills, though, when they are disabled or incompetent it falls to the next of kin to decide what is extraordinary and what is not. The goal of the next of kin is to make the same decision the patient would make if they were able to make it.
Now I think Michael Schiavo has done a pretty crappy job as next of kin. But what is the solution? Let the government decide? As don-o points out the government is already too involved in our lives, why give more power to it?
The current system is imperfect, but I have not yet seen a solution that makes it better, just ones that make it worse.