Andy, I fear you have, as Robert Morley says in Around the World in 80 Days, “abandoned yourself to rhetoric.”

You write: “Consider, say, a month ago, before Terri’s plight took center stage, if you had asked someone in the abstract: ‘How would you feel about starving and dehydrating a defenseless, brain-damaged woman?’ The answer is easy to imagine: ‘Outrageous, atrocious — something that wouldn’t be done to an animal and couldn’t be done to the worst convicted murderer.’”

Why try to imagine the answer? The people of Florida were asked that in 1999. See here, for example:

“In 1999, in response to a Florida Supreme Court ruling, the Florida legislature updated its ‘end of life’ statutes, which were first put into place in 1990. The House and Senate voted unanimously in support of a number of changes to the text. One of those changes added to the list of ‘life-prolonging procedure’: including artificially provided sustenance and hydration, which sustains, restores, or supplants a spontaneous vital function.

“Governor Jeb Bush signed the bill in June of that year.

“So in 1999, the entire Florida legislative and executive branch voted for a law that authorized the withdrawal of sustenance to a PVS patient at the request of an appointed guardian or a licensed social worker, in the event that no interested relative was available.

“The 1999 bill wasn’t unusual in any way and is consistent with many other states–in fact, it is considered a model for state law. Withdrawing sustenance is standard procedure for PVS and comatose patients, even though they can’t speak for themselves. The St. Petersburg Times covered a few local cases that occurred in March alone.”

Terri Schiavo’s situation has been considered, in its generality, by the deliberative bodies of the State of Florida. Whatever is happening to her now is happening with all the levels of approval of which a democratic state is capable. Is is as well authorized as anything can be under our Constitution and laws.

I understand that you feel strongly about this; and it is of course possible that you are right and the people of Florida wrong. (In which case, you should agitate to have these laws, and the similar laws in many other states, changed.) Still and all, some token word of respect for the democratically expressed will of We the People would not go amiss.