If you've been paying attention, the argument I've been making is that IMO Terri's actual condition is irrelevant.

The fact is that her family has been caring for her, talking to her, and loving her for years. Physically, she has been as well and pain-free as could be expected. Whether her responses are real, or completely imagined based on brain-stem actions, the family has been taking hope and comfort from her continued existence.

If Terri is the breathing flank steak people here insist she is, then her existence is completely without mental harm to her. If she does have enough brains to abhor her own condition, then we are in a completely different zone.

Given the premise of her mental state, killing her is not a "mercy" of some kind, any more than chopping down a fungus-laden tree is somehow "merciful" to a "suffering" tree. I don't understand what is to be gained by these actions, all legal questions aside, and probably never will.

I frankly don't give a flying rat's ass what off-hand statement she might have made many years ago about "not wanting to live like this." This is here and now. Had she been asked if she would want to live like this,* knowing her death would rip her family's hearts out, she just might have given a different answer.

I would have.

Heck, even the term "live like this" presumes a consciousness of some kind. There is no "Terri" in there battering to escape an inert body. This is as silly as people who are terrified of being cremated.

"But she owns her own body!" Crap. She no longer owns that body any more than my great-great-grandfather still owns his old farmhouse. Nobody sits around wondering what color "great great Grandpa" would want the drapes to be, or whether he would want them to paint the barn. Well, nobody with all their marbles, that is.

I'm tired of people shouting from the rooftops about how DEAD DEAD DEAD Terri is, and then turning around to justify her destruction based on what Terri "wants."

There's nobody IN there, folks. If her body can comfort an unhappy family, what's the problem?

When Terri dies, I see a lot of people losing something. Who the hell wins?