If this is precisely correct, that they left the room right before their daughter died, at the prick husband's request, then it is a final failure for the final chapter of their lives with a living breathing child. Are there more submissive parents than Terri's? They get made fun of at hearing after hearing, complaining breathlessly about wanting to keep their child's lungs with oxygen, being humiliated and told their offspring wasn't worthy of living her life, and they, to the very very end, submit and again morally abandon their own flesh and blood. They were pinning their final hopes on an entity that continuously mocked them and degraded their child to the 'unfit to live' column. Can anyone act more contrarily to familial bonds? While I feel bad for their loss of a blood relation, I don't feel bad for their own personal anguish. It didn't have to be this way but their own inaction made it so. However, there are lots of lessons to be learned from this. One is reaffirmation that one cannot hope for society to help them or to make things right like they should be. Mercy comes not from the courts, or society, only from family. Blood relations. Right or wrong, blood is blood and you have no choice as to which side you want to take. Does this apply to anything and everything? Of course. No matter what. If a child kills someone, a parent should never turn them in to the authorities for them to deal with their child. If it's a particularly senseless or remorseless killing, then at most, a parent should do nothing to aid or abet them in any meaningful way.
Terri's parents, while acting according to what they felt was right, acted against their own blood, and when it results in their own blood's torturous death, that's unforgivable. Picture them meekly telling whoever that they want to stay with her for when she dies, and being told too bad you have to leave. Keep in mind that they knew Terri was on her 13th day with no food or water and that death had to be very very imminent. But no, they get up and leave their almost dead daughter to die alone in the room with the man responsible for making her starved and dying a torturous death and who never cared a whit to give her quality care. They get up, say they want to stay with their own flesh and blood when she died, their request was refused, so they actually leave and go tell people how mean this prick husband is. They don't make a big stink about it. They don't act like a tree hugger and require a forceful exit from her deathbed room, they don't even senseless idle threats of revenge. Just get up and leave. Leave their own daughter in the uncaring hands of her cheating husband. Insane, and Terri deserved far more than that.