Reply #6: I disagree but not for the reasons you've put out there

[sui generis]

it's not black or white. Read this whole post and think before you reply.

I have in my mind the following things:

1. After fifteen years this whole discussion is absolutely absurd
2. If she really can't feel pain, why bother with the morphine
3. Why is pulling a feeding tube more acceptable than a morphine overdose?
4. If "she" really is just a vegetable, whose wishes are you honoring? I certainly don't think either side is doing anything for the "her" that is Terry in either outcome.

I agree that following the law, because it could be shown in court that her wishes would be in line with letting her go that it should be done. I also EXACTLY at the same time think that if she isn't really there, then let her parents have her.

Beyond an intellectual interest in this, I really don't care what happens to her either way - that's completely and basically emotionally honest on my part. It doesn't affect me at all and it's not "my" problem to deal with. I feel more pain for the husband and the parents than for Terry. Some people here have used the word ghoulish. I think both sides of the cultural debate on this are ghoulish for exactly the same reasons.

What I can say with 100% certainty is this:

If I were brain dead or unable to recover to a productive human life, I would rather be put down as soon as possible. If enough time went by and my parents or SO got it in their head that they wanted to keep my body around, then I love them well enough to let them have that bit of me. I would hope they would love me enough to do the right thing, eventually, but a day or a decade wouldn't make any difference to me if I were truly a vegetable.

Let me put it another way. If I truly believed my SO was a vegetable and would never recover and HIS parents asked to become his caretaker/guardian against his final wishes, AT THIS VERY LATE POINT I would let them. I would be more inclined to honor his wishes against his parents wishes BEFORE a surgical feeding tube was installed though.

Finally, my biggest problem with the DU side of the argument is that we want this one weird case to be the basis for every case and we want to generalize from this just as badly as the right wing nutjobs do. Each medical case is individual and has to be considered on its own merits.

So, now you see inside my mind. I'm a dualist. I think things can be both at the same time, right and wrong, and that I can be happy that Terry is finally getting what the courts have established her wishes to be, but entirely unhappy at the way we've gone about it both here, and on the other side of the fence.