October 24, 2003

By Jacquelyn Stager

Tallmadge, Ohio

Jacque481@...

What nags me at me, regarding people who have a living will -- it usually says something like they don't want to be kept alive by artificial means.

If Terri had something like this, undoubtedly she would have been killed a long time ago, don't you think? Because the feeding tube is considered artificial life support by some.

What about people you see all the time carting around their portable oxygen, without which they could die? (I know this firsthand because my close friend had to take it everywhere she went and once, on my watch, she forgot to turn it on and turned blue on me.)

How can you, in a living will, possibly foresee every potential situation?

All of us say we would not want to live like Terri has lived for the past thirteen years.

None of us want to be a "burden" on our loved ones.

Yet the higher belief in the sanctity of human life must somehow prevail.

We don't always get what we want in life. My husband has been as irate about all this as we have been. The good that has come out of it for us is we have talked a great deal about it.

There is a big difference, in our minds, between keeping someone alive who is truly has no brain function and whose breathing cannot be sustained at all without a machine -- and starving someone to death who is severely disabled.

The degree to which Terri is disabled is unbelievably tragic. But starve her or anyone else in that situation to death? NEVER!

And her personal circumstances only compound the tragedy.