Some might contend that a person who is not conscious of his existence and incapable of making rational decisions is not truly alive and thus could be legitimately terminated by others. I disagree here again, though it is the subtle details that make this an issue of contention. Yes, reason and conscious choice are crucial aspects to a human being’s life, especially if he seeks to maximize the values gained. However, we should realize that the consequences of our rational decisions can be (and always are) delayed in time.  

Let us say that a person makes a conscious and rational choice to go to sleep after a day of hard work. The benefits of the choice are not simultaneous with the choice itself. When he is curled up in bed, enjoying the softness, warmth, and peace of rest, he is not thinking rationally about these benefits. He has almost no consciousness at all, for that matter. The delay in this situation is rather slight (several hours), but any decision has delayed outcomes, be it a matter of seconds or years (the only difference is degree).

From the example of sleep we can learn that to enjoy life and have a life worth living, it is not necessary to be either rational or conscious at every given moment. It is only necessary to have frequently been rational and conscious in the past and to make the best attempts to be rational and conscious in the future—given one’s capacities. That is, one should not spend all day in bed when one can rise and work. It is also necessary not to be irrational and not to try to act to the detriment of one’s consciousness. That is, one should avoid any deleterious habits.

Now, let us presume that a person has frequently been rational and conscious in the past, but a large fysical impediment prevents her from being deliberately rational or fully conscious in the future. Nonetheless, her body is still functioning. Her continued existence is the direct result of her past rationality and consciousness, which have kept her alive up to the point of the impediment. We may thus consider her remaining life as her payment—the delayed result of her past decisions to be rational and conscious. To disallow her the enjoyment of that reward, however scant it may be, is to sever reason from its consequences and thus render reason purposeless (since the process of reason does not have intrinsic value aside from the purposes it seeks and attains). This was the case of Terri Schiavo, who was tragically and unfortunately terminated in 2005. Terri Schiavo’s money—also earned by rational efforts—as well as her parents’ money, similarly earned, could also have its delayed consequences in the prolonging of Terri’s life.

If the reader wishes to avoid that particular case, let him consider any generic individual who has money left over due to past productive work. If he is let die now, he will not be able to use that money, period, thus preventing him from benefiting from some of his past rational decisions.

Those who favor the termination of the permanently unconscious mistakenly consider all states devoid of present explicit reason to be irrational or anti-rational. I do not think this to be true. The irrational (and anti-life) is whatever explicitly rejects or ignores reason when reason is accessible. There is a third state, the reason-neutral, in which an individual cannot survive consistently, unless supported by the consequences of past rational actions. However, this is not necessarily a bad state, as we all experience it to a degree and even hold it as a survival necessity (as in sleep, for example). This state in itself can be a value, however, as in sleep, which regenerates the functional capacity of the organism.

Furthermore—no matter what the state of an individual—improvement is always possible—though not immediately—given that one is alive, even if one is vegetative, like Terri Schiavo was. It matters little whether one could or could not recover given the present technological state, as technology is evolving rapidly, and we cannot possibly predict the opportunities for recovery that would be present in even five or ten years.

The logical extreme of the proposition that combating death is desirable is the proposition that combating death through any means is desirable. Moreover, this logical extreme entails the idea that it is desirable not only to try to cure conditions for which there is a chance for so-called “natural” recovery (a misnomer—all recoveries, technologically induced or not, are “natural”), but also conditions for which there is not. After all, prior to the development of modern surgical techniques, a bullet wound in the stomach was mortal. Prior to the advent of modern medicine, plagues and certain types of cancer were mortal. Should we have abstained from rendering these conditions easily curable? So, now, should we artificially draw the line at comas and vegetative states for some reason and declare that comas and vegetative states—which could be made curable through newly developed techniques in the future—should be allowed to continue to carry those afflicted by them away into oblivion?

Incidentally, the above was one argument used by the Schindlers— Terri Schiavo’s parents—to keep Terri on life support while waiting for modern medicine to develop more dramatic recovery techniques—not a long shot at all, as cell cloning could well lead to the regeneration of certain components of the brain within decades.

Life in any state always confers more values on an individual than non-life; life brings with it positive values, while non-life is an ethical zero. The values an individual is able to get out of life—even in a vegetative state—are the results of past rational choices that we are ethically obligated to respect to the extent that they have preserved the individual’s life. Furthermore, improvement is always possible for any individual who can be sustained indefinitely—however removed such improvement might be in the future. For these reasons, the length and quality of an individual’s life can never conflict, and nothing can justify artificially curtailing the duration of an innocent life.