I appreciate your reading me post thoughtfully. You are courteous to do so. Please reconsider your objection to my last sentence in light of this, which I did not write in my post: part of the reason living wills are a good idea is that drafting them forces a person to confront the possible consequences of putting one's wishes in writing. Even if Terri made all the remarks Michael Schaivo attributes to her -- and there's reason to be skeptical of Michael Schiavo -- she never made those remarks with any awareness of what they could bring about. Specifically, no one asked Terri if she would want to be cut off from food and water even though her parents would have to watch at least the physical effects of starvation and dehydration. These types of questions are wrestled with when people actually draw up living wills. That is why Terri's comments of years ago should not be controlling.
What could that mean EXCEPT "I'm young with my whole life ahead of me, I don't want to be old and sick". That would be a universal emotion, not a significant medical directive. How in the world could a "judge" misinterpret such a thing (even if it were actually said) as meaning "starve me to death in ALL circumstances"
"I wouldn't want to be legally blind like Judge Greer" -- does that mean I can die now?
Specifically, no one asked Terri if she would want to be cut off from food and water even though her parents would have to watch at least the physical effects of starvation and dehydration. These types of questions are wrestled with when people actually draw up living wills. That is why Terri's comments of years ago should not be controlling.
I guess it must be a pretty terrible thing to see someone dying of dehydration. What I think you're saying (correct me if I'm wrong) is that Terri wouldn't have wanted her parents to see her dying. Wouldn't that also apply to removal of a ventilator, if she were dependent on one?
My understanding of Terri's past statements is that she didn't want to think of herself as a useless lump of flesh hooked up to tubes and wires, as her grandmother was. And referring to the man in a coma on the TV show, she said that if that ever happened to her, she would want the tubes and everything taken out. Living as a vegetable was probably her definition of a living hell. If she could see herself as she is now, she would probably rip out that feeding tube herself. At least that's my opinion.
There's another Free Republic thread on the subject of living wills that made some excellent points. Terri Schiavo: Living wills can't cover all possibilities In it, a health care scientist says at the end "We really need to emphasize that there is a right to refuse treatment," Fagerlin said. "It would be a terrible outcome of this case if we don't let surrogate decision-makers make decisions to remove treatment." I'm afraid exactly that is going to happen, though.