Yet I don't think we know enough medically to really know what Terri's quality of life was. Was she there or not? Nobody did any tests on her this century.
A living will or a medical power of attorney will keep most of these cases from ever becoming controversial. It's not a matter of choosing either PULL THE PLUG or KEEP ME ALIVE NO MATTER WHAT. A thoughtful decision can be made at any point in between.
The forms aren't complicated, and as much as this pains me to say it, you don't have to pay an attorney to fill one out assuming you have reasonable comprehension skills.
Most, but not all.
The forms aren't complicated, and as much as this pains me to say it, you don't have to pay an attorney to fill one out assuming you have reasonable comprehension skills.
I urge people to NOT sign them. While they are uncomplicated on the surface, the terms in art in them have some unexpected ramifications (e.g., what constitutes "life support?"), sometimes the choices are not rich enough (the model form doesn't have checkboxes for the combination of "If I have terminal cancer, feed and water me, but if I am in a coma, stop feeding me but keep watering me"), and the terms of art can change over time, beyond the signer's control.
For example, in Schiavo's case, if she saw granny hooked up to respirator and kidney machine, and said "I don't want to be on life support," even statutory law at that time held that food and water were not life support. If she'd provided a (now 13 year old) written directive that said "no life support," how is that to be correctly construed as to food and water?
I've seen some model advance directives that are confusing, in particular, the Georgia model signed by Mae Magouirk. I think a significant fraction of readers (at least 10%, and maybe a third or more) being critically confused by that one, and checking off "including food and water" thinking they were asking to HAVE food and water. Bwahahahahahaha.
Anyway. To each his own. We're all on this planet on a temporary basis, and in the immortal words of Mick Jagger, "You can't always get what you want." Some of us will be killed against our wishes. So goes the war.