To all: Yes, I understand the enormous differences between Susan Torres' medical condition and Terri Schiavo's. But there we go again: making distinctions to suit us. My belief is that after delivering her baby, Mrs. Torres' should have been maintained on life support until even the life support no longer supported her life. Otherwise it seems that we're just playing God for our own convenience.
The problem here is arriving at an honest definition of death.
If you say that death is the total and irreversible cessation of all brain activity, Susan was dead. If you say it's the total and irreversible cessation of heartbeat, I suppose you could keep every heart beating in every cadaver, if you hooked each and every one of them up to the right kind of electrical gizmo. Nobody would ever die. The hospitals would be stacked with thousands of corpses whose tormented cardiac muscles would still be going lub-dub, lub-dub til the Lord comes again.
But why? This is worse than "playing God" --- it's failing to play human.
Important note: this does not refer to feeding tubes, since feeding is our moral duty toward all who are helpless and entrusted to our care. It does refer to ventilators and other machines whose use becames futile when the patient's brain activity has ceased and his/her organs and systems have failed. This is death. There's nothing left but to say goodbye.