Jan,
On one point you stated I can both agree and disagree with you. You stated "The protagonists in this thread are as far as can be discerned from a glance at their username profiles NOT qualified to debate the When vs. When." I agree that this is the case when such protagonists are a third person, but I disagree with your statement when such a protagonist is the party of the first part , i.e. if I for example were in the situation when this applied to me then there would be no one more qualified to make this decision than I, even the best educated doctor with the utmost experience and credentials would not be more qualified than I to decide for my body "When vs. When" as you say. The points I have brought out are only incidentally medical ones. Medical practice may or may not at any particular point in time harmonize with the broadest moral truths and principals. The end does not always justify the means.
Consider ,please, some points from the "Universal Declaration of Human Rights" :
preamble
"...recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world,
Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people,..."
Article 1.

• All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

If, to begin with, if I am equal in dignity and rights to another human being; to any other human being, and seeing that I am endowed with my own reason and conscience, then would it not follow that I have the right to exercise this same reason in accordance with my conscience to decide what risks I should or should not take and also what priorities are most important to me?
Article 2.

• Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.

Notice that these rights are without any distinctions and such distinctions include religion, social origin, or other status, and thus if a doctor did not share my religion or understand or agree with it, and even if I were of a very limited education, and especially compared to the highly educated doctor, then I would still be entitled to my unalienable rights to freedom of conscience and personal dignity.
Article 12.

• No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

In this case in particular the interference is not "arbitrary" but it can indeed be said that we are talking about attacks upon both honor and reputation, if fact some people, it would seem, are claiming that the majority of society is right for no other reason than because the majority is the majority (circular reasoning) and that a minority, therefore, is lacking in honor and deserving of no respect for the reputation. of that minority.
Article 18.

• Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.

Observing the Biblical command to "Abstain from blood" is one of the distinctive characteristics of Jehovah's Witnesses, and while each person of this group are free to leave, or change their religion, those who choose to be a part of this group and exercise the beliefs of the same in their own lives are exercising this right stated in article 18, and as article 18 states are manifesting their religion in practice and observance, and thus this observance can not be negotiable for to attempt to do so would violate freedom of thought and religion.
Article 30.

• Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein.

I remember a conversation I had with a professor when I was attending a university. He told me that the purpose of a college education was not to teach a person how to do a job, since that was up to the employer who hired such a person. He said that the purpose of a college education was to mainstream each person into society, i.e. so that each person would have a common basis of thought, think alike, and look at situations in the same way. I told him that if you look at society historically and from the social perspective then it is readily apparent that, at least since the industrial revolution, society has been going downhill, and I had no desire to be mainstreamed into a sewer. He also stated that he didn't see moral distinctions as "black and white" but as different shades of gray according to circumstances. This would also be the view of society in general wouldn't it? In a literal way though if someone said this wouldn't they be describing a form of blindness?
I've heard that the Apache people had a saying regarding the conscience; they likened it to a wheel with sharp spokes, so that when a person did something wrong that wheel would move and beat against the heart, but if these proddings were ignored long enough then the sharp spokes would dull and the person could no feel their conscience. To me an educated conscience is more important than any other kind of education, though I am a big proponent of almost all forms of education, and for a person to live according to conscience without compromise is more important than the act of a coward who compromises, or that of a conscienceless opportunist who only seeks their own temporary and selfish advantage even to the detriment of others. It is not up me to be the conscience of another; only to point out those relevant facts which underpin my own moral standards and actions based thereon.
In this case I am not saying that the doctors or the state did anything illegal, or against their own conscience, but what they did was wrong because they deemed their own rights to be more equal than that of other people even to the point of alienating the rights of others simply because they had the power to do so. No, I don't know the medical details, and if I did I still would not be qualified to make a decision based on those facts. I do know that under similar circumstances other doctors have respected the rights of their patients, all their rights; not just the right to life. To focus on only one right to the exclusion of all other rights, or to contend that another person has no rights if this are based on beliefs which conflict with your own would be a form myopia . I resent the implication that only people with certain qualifications can talk about this topic. I, for one, am not a doctor, but that doesn't necessarily mean that I am also stupid. When I was in the sixth grade the others students called me "science" because that was my first area of interest and reading test I took that year indicated I was reading at the level of a college sophomore at three time the average adult speed and in the top percentile of comprehension. According, though, to the rights I quoted above even if I were illiterate I would still have the right to make my own decisions based on my own conscience; rather than be dictated by someone else's conscience, such as that of a doctor who might feel superior to me.
I would like to refer one more time to the earlier experience concerning my Father. I never knew the name of the doctor who saved his life, who viewed the conscience of a patient as more important than his own, but I can tell you that his act was completely selfless. My family was very poor, and had no insurance. He must have even lost money since this act took him away from his own practice and patients who needed him. Since that time I have met some doctors who are really very nice people. That is my last point. Doctors are people, and are thus subject to prejudice, to pride, and every other human shortcoming. Doctors are not deities, but it seems that some, if not most, people view them as such.