We should care because many of us have written directives that direct our loved ones to do EXACTLY what Michael Schiavo did if we are in the same condition as Terri. That makes us not scum - that doesn't make our families scum - and that certainly doesn't deserve the constant attacks from people who are not involved in that situation.
When you face a loved one in that situation, you tell me how you feel. For your Googling fun, where Cruzan's parents scum?
I suggest that you put your own spouse or children at terrifying moral hazard to have such a "will". It is a death contract, nothing less.
And logic and survivor sense both compel me to reject completely your claim that I or anyone else have no interest in what you and your family so contract. There are illegal contracts, illegal compacts made between consenting adults, as well there should be. Gambling, contracts for kidnaps, etc, etc. Death contracts -- contracts to murder, or to assist suicide, or even to take a pound of flesh for some monetary value have when society is most sane been illegal. The Florida Hospice Industry, the Florida Bar, Greer, Felos, and all families such as yours who bring us into a era where such contracts are considered actionable under law -- they put us all at risk.
One Freeper, as best I can tell, gone already under those new terms of "life ceasement" -- JudyB1932. Her family acted under best regard of this new social order you speak of. Even my own grandmother, a similar way to Terri -- drugged and withheld water, as best I have heard. I am afraid to ask the full details -- maybe the situtaion was she did get water. Her own loving granddaughters, at the bedside. A big family we are -- she has close to a hundred of descendants already. Yet at her last -- and ravaged by altzheimer's -- not a death without a push into the pit, instead of a pull out of it.
Such as his denying Terri ANY therapy or rehabilitation from 1992 on? Is that what your written directive calls for -- 13 years of medical neglect followed by your execution?