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.
In this case, the government DID decide. Had the judge simply applied the law--no living will, nothing in writing: no case--we wouldn't be having this discussion. The presumption should always be to err on the side of life in the absence of other evidence. (BTW, are you aware that Terri was spoon-fed (another artificial method) for the first few years of her disability?)