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Terri Schiavo was starved to death because of an obsolete legal doctrine that automatically strips parents of their next-of-kin rights once their children marry, and then bestows all next-of-kin rights to their spouse. Such legal theory was conceived in a time when lifespans where short, and parents were expected to die soon after their children married. But now, with people commpnly iving with sound minds well into their 80s and beyond, the illogic of this practice is now obvious. If Terri Schiavo's parents had superior rights over her estranged husband, we would not even be having this discussion, and Schiavo might still be alive, if only in the most technical sense of the word. The only remedy to this is legislation that will leave the next-of-kin rights of parents paramount, even if their children marry. After all, marriages come and go, but parenthood is truly "until death do you part." And altough it's all too common for someone to have nefarious intent towards their spouse (and Schiavo was almost certainly a victim of domestic violence) nefarious intent of a parent towards a cjhild is almost unknown.

Terri Schiavo was starved to death because the law was turned on its head. Our legal default in this country has always been to life. In the case of conflict between parties, the state defaults to life until the dispute is resolved. She was starved to death against the conscience of the community and her parents' challenges which sought to come to her aid against a "husband" who had abandoned marital responsibility in a new relationship. He had a conflict of interest which stood to benefit him at her death. Her faith was such that she knew ending her life this way was contrary to the doctrines of the Church. Her testimony in her death was given by her estranged husband through hearsay.

Terri is dead because the state agreed with the proposition that her state of life was one not worth living.

I am in the financial services field. It used to be that people filed "living wills" to tell the state when it could change the default and allow them to die. Terri's case changed that. Now, people file living wills to tell the court when it is not allowed to end their lives. It's a shift brought to you by the culture of death through the court appointments and government sponsorship of the Democratic Party.