In Terri's case, who says you have to recover? She could not recover, but that does not mean you kill her.
If recovery is the criteria - all of us are there. You don't recover from blood pressure, heart conditions, cancer, diabetes, ms, parkinson's on and on. But you live with it.
Which is why we need to leave dying to the Lord. Man can not be trusted because the world is made of imperfect humans. Why would we be willing to turn over our life or death to imperfect humans to rule on.
We do not murder other people and I'm beginning to think it is time that doing so carries penalties. A few murder cases might remind the medical, hospice, end-of-life panels that man is not given the authority to murder Americans- no matter how they justify it, no matter how they sell it, no matter how desperate the need to kill others is.
No, I'm not a pagan (Aristotelean) fatalist; I'm a Biblical Christian. God gave me a mind to use. It is that mind that is the very 'image of God'. When that mind is gone, I don't just 'live with it' -- or more accurately, 'live without it.'
Which is why we need to leave dying to the Lord. Man can not be trusted because the world is made of imperfect humans.
Although by styling your fatalism as 'leaving dying to the Lord, because men are too imperfect' you try to give it a vaguely Biblical ring, that's a little too close to the crackpots who kill all their little children while spouting Bible verses and then say it is because 'the world is too imperfect' to allow them to live in it. Yes, The Bible tells us we have a sin nature, but no, that does not prevent us from living and making decisions in this world -- including the decision as to the proper time to leave it.
We do not murder other people ... no matter how desperate the need to kill others is.
I agree. But ending our own life, at the appropriate time, is not 'murder' (except in the weird world of RCC dogma) and it is certainly not 'killing others'. All the florid and overwrought words cannot change it. If you find the fatalistic world of paganism comforting, you may have it. Just don't try to force me to go there with you.