“Food and water are not “life support.””
Is he getting his food and water orally or through IV’s? Is he even cognizent of his surroundings? What kind of life is he living? Is there any hope of a recovery?
It is a tough decision for a relaive to have to make. I had to do it with my mother. My wife has had to do it with both parents. My neighbors have had to do it with one just yesterday with her mother. It is a tough decision to have to make.
Basic human rights are basic human rights and have nothing to do with so called “quality of life” or whether the patient is awake and alert. Food and water are basic human rights. They are rights independent of the quality of life of the patient. Withholding food and water causes the patient to die by dehydration, a painful merciless death for which people are jailed if they do it to a pet. How did we get to the point of excusing it in human cases?
Its just food and drink either way. A drink of water is a drink of water whether a person pours themself a glass and drinks, a mom puts it in a bottle and holds it for a baby, it's mixed with thickener and delivered through a straw for an elderly patient with difficulty swallowing, or through a couple inches of tubing through a feeding tube or IV. It's still just a drink of water, a basic human right that cannot be arbitrarily withheld based only on method of delivery or someone's subjective evaluation of "quality of life." Human life is precious and sacred regardless of ObamaCare's or anyone else's evaluation of how much that life is contributing to society.
No one can really tell whether people are cognizant or not.
There are plenty of examples of people who were declared brain-dead by the doctors only to wake up later and tell of being trapped in their own bodies and being fully cognizant of their surroundings. See: overhears doctors talk about organ donation and woman comes out of coma, organ donation