I'm glad to see you on this thread, I usually shudder to get involved in these threads because there's so many who clearly don't get it. I'm glad that for many, these appear to be esoteric issues they've never been smacked in the face with in real life.
The truth is, though I've had to lose a lot of family members and these issues are more real to me, I've not had to suffer the unimaginable torment of a family member who was close to Terri's situation. I'm blessed, I guess in that my family has suffered only plain old disease and old age. While the experience was heart wrenching, to see my formerly strong and optimistic mom pass into choking unconsciousness and death, I'd have traded all hope of inheritance to have had her able to wake again and live. But we knew she would not. This was it, all the lives around her could come to a halt and be there because it would not last.
I can't imagine the torment of a situation remotely like Terri's, where I or someone young like me might have lost all real consciousness through some accident or trauma, and be left lying in a state of suspended animation potentially for decades without consciousness. And for the record, I'm not talking about someone merely disabled or partially functioning... I'm talking about permanently vegetative. I'd expect there'd be lots of time and effort spent on the possibility of ~some~ level of recovery, but when that hope fades, would it be right for any of us to want to be kept alive indefinately in a brain-dead state, consuming all the time and resources of our family to tend, pay for, and revolve around the one family member who is unable to respond to our energies? It would not only be emotionally devastating for the living, it would consume the savings and futures of the entire family. When there is hope for recovery, any family would pay it. When there is no hope for recovery, it is cruelty to do prolong them inevitably until there is nothing left of any of them.
That's the way I see it anyway... no cult... just common sense.
I've often wondered whether the divide is between the young and the not-so-young -- not necessarily senior citizens, but old enough to have been around the block a bit. Certainly those who have had experience with aging parents or grandparents tend to be more realistic.
Ultimately with "logic" like this you end up indulging the comfort of the relatives not the disabled person.
Those anti-terribots should ask themselves why did it take a creep like George Felos to counsel this to fruition, a guy who unashamably acts like an Erl-King trying to coax his subjects into his netherworld? Why not some dishwater dull barrister?
Anyone who could deny a living human being food and water for WEEKS and sit and watch them die is a monster.