Karen Ann Quinlan's doctors refused to cross that line. They took the trouble to wean her off the ventilator. Karen Ann lived for nearly ten more years, and died of pneumonia. Judge George Greer was ignorant of this fact and because he had it wrong, drew false conclusions about Terri's wishes to live. That should have been cause for a higher court to overrule him.
Now, with that perspective, you may see how it works with feeding tubes. For all those years, we resisted feeding tubes for our son, even removed them ourselves, when a facility put them in without asking. It highlights the darker side of why Terri was on feeding tubes.
First, they are not necessarily for the good of the patient, but are time savers for the medical staff. It takes far less time to feed them that way than to feed the patient by hand. In our case it always took one to two hours or longer each meal to feed our son. We could speed that up of course, as could the medical staff, but nothing is faster than the tubes.
Second, they are a habit difficult to break. Once a patient is “hooked”, it is more difficult by the day to retrain. Unused muscles and functions atrophy naturally. After a period, it would be very difficult to restart feeding. But one cannot ignore or underestimate the resiliance of the handicapped. Terri like our son, could have handled jello anyway. It has the dual ability to provide nourishment and hydration, as “solid water”.
So hooking up Terri to feeding tubes accomplished more than the perps even knew, I would suppose. And as a bonusto them, taking away a spoon is obvious cruel denial, but taking out a tube is almost seen as gentle.