” I think they were deluding themselves, but it was harmless delusion, as long as Terri actually had no awareness”
Educate yourself.
Did you see the video of Terry Shiavo interacting with her parents? There was actually evidence that Terry had ALOT of cognitive function. She was awake, smiling and her mother and attempting to speak. She was being hydrated and fed artifically and that is all. The court wouldnt allow her parents to try to feed her or give her water by mouth. They wouldn’t even allow them to put ice cubes on her lips.
http://www.terrisfight.org/pages.php?page_id=37
That video where she sort of appeared to be aware of and responding to her parents was taken several years before the last round of courts order to withdraw her feeding tube. As to the wild tale you linked to, it’s just a wild tale, and with the sketchy Randall Terry as the source. Infants often make noises that could be interpreted as “I waaaaaaa” long before they’re even remotely grasping the idea of verbal communication. And even if she was trying to say “I want” and got no farther, she could just as well have been trying to say “I want to die” as “I want to live”, and couldn’t think of the words because the person coaching her hadn’t supplied the words she wanted.
As I said, I think the court decision was wrong, but not because she had any actual awareness. Given that SHE had no awareness, the awareness that mattered was that of her parents and siblings, who were unnecessarily put through a lot of emotional pain by the decision.
And as I’m fond of reminding people, Michael Schiavo is the ultimate poster child for getting government OUT of the marriage business. His possession of that meaningless piece of government-issued paper was the ONLY reason he was given the authority to make such weighty decisions for her, and have the court endorse his decisions over those of her parents and siblings.