The Terry Schiavo Controversy

Ours is a culture, after all, where human worth is often measured by the capacity to impersonate a character or to accurately hit, kick or throw a ball... things that may no longer be possible in the confines of a hospital bed under tangles of tubes and monitors

It's been five days since the feeding tube was removed from Terri Schiavo. By the time this article is posted, it will either have been reinstated, or she may already be dead...

Can a human life be assigned a relative "value" based on its quality? And if it can, where does it end?

Imagine that the story had been in the reverse--that the parents wanted to remove the feeding tube and the husband was the one who insisted that he would take care of her and keep her alive. Realistic?