ONE EVENING, during the second term of President Ronald Reagan, Terri Schiavo and her husband Michael decided to watch a television movie about Karen Ann Quinlan. Quinlan, as most readers know, had a tragic life. After overdosing on a combination of drugs and alcohol, she fell into unconsciousness and never awakened. Her parents won a lawsuit in the New Jersey Supreme Court allowing them to disconnect her ventilator. Karen didn't die immediately--she lived on for 10 more years before finally expiring from pneumonia.

While discussing the movie, Michael claims that Terri stated she would not want to live hooked up to a "machine" (she's not), or be a "burden" (her parents don't consider her a burden and want to care for her). Michael's brother, Scott, backs up his claim, while his sister-in-law, Joan, told the court that Terri had approved of pulling the life support from the dying baby of a mutual friend and said that if she ever wrote a "will" she would say that she didn't want "tubes."

Little did Terri know that these purported statements, uttered under very casual circumstances, would become the justification used by her husband in his six-year drive to remove her feeding tube and end her life. Indeed, based on these casual statements, Judge George Greer of the Sixth Judicial Circuit in Clearwater, Florida ruled that Michael had established "by clear and convincing evidence"--the highest evidentiary standard in civil law--that Terri would rather dehydrate to death over a period of 10-14 days than live on

THIS ASPECT of Terri's case deserves far more attention that it is receiving. Most of us have undoubtedly made similar casual statements in response to the death of a relative or the emotions generated by a movie. But shouldn't much more be required to justify the intentional ending of a human life? At the very least, shouldn't we demand a well thought out, informed, and preferably written statement that not only indicates what is desired, but also shows that reasonable alternatives have been fully considered?

For example, if Terri did say she didn't want tubes, did she know that it would include a feeding tube and that it could mean a dying process that involved seizures, heaving, nose bleeding, cracked lips, parched tongue, and the extremities becoming cold and mottled? If she did, would that have made a difference to her? And would her opinion have changed if she knew that the statements made to her husband and in-laws would be stretched by Judge Greer to refuse her parents' reasonable request that before being dehydrated, she be allowed access to rehabilitation that many medical experts believe might permit her to be weaned from the feeding tube altogether?

And what does the statement, "I don't want tubes," mean anyway? Perhaps Terri was thinking about the stark atmosphere of a neonatal intensive care unit in which babies may be kept alive by battalions of beeping and buzzing medical machines. But she isn't in that condition. Or, if she was thinking of Karen Quinlan's circumstance, she might have conceived of herself spending years on a respirator, which was the treatment at issue in her case. But Terri isn't on a respirator. The only life support she needs is food and water.