Hopefully her death results in people writing down their wishes on what they want done the last moments of life. My wife and I have living wills and had them for at least 20 years now. Terri was dumb in not having a living will that spells out exactly what you want done. She wasn’t that young either. A total shame that it happened but hopefully most Americans have become more responsible in their wills and things.
She was 27 years old when her husband called her brother to report her “collapse”.
One would hope, yes. Terri’s story shows what happens when politicians have the final say.
At the time of Terri’s mysterious collapse, so-called living wills were only for people who didn’t want to live. For people like Terri, who wanted to receive the normal care which was routinely given by default, there was no reason to put those desires in writing.
The practice of requesting deprivation of routine life saving procedures was new, but not unknown. It was not yet legal to request death by starvation and dehydration, but since that clearly wasn’t her desire, that’s a moot point.
Terri was not dumb for not requesting depravation of care. The overwhelming majority of people, then and now, did not/do not make such a request.