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Small side note - I have an issue with the comparison of Ashley to Terry Schiavo.
I believe that a lot of the issues that arose from the Schiavo case came from the fact that people remembered her running around, laughing, walking, talking - being truly alive and lively. Her family knew her when she could sing along with the radio, bake cookies, stuff like that. To watch a person go from functional to completely non-functional is difficult enough without remembering what that person was like before. People look for hope in these circumstances where there might not be any - they look for ways that her smile might be like her "old" smile, when the similarity is only occurring because of the shape of her face.
Terry Schiavo was in a persistent vegetative state for years stemming from an undetermined event that severely damaged her brain. Ashley has also been "stopped" by an unexplained brain event. But she is not vegetative.
Ashley's case is different. She stopped at 3 months. She responds to stimuli the way that any normal 3 month old would, but that's it. Her family has no history of her baking cookies or driving a car or anything like that. That kind of hope is lost to them - there is no "old" Ashley. Ashley has no autonomy, and she never did.
I'm not posting to register an opinion, just pointing this out.
