I like to replace the concept of “free will” with that of “agency”.

The Britannica definition of free will is “the supposed power or capacity of humans to make decisions or perform actions independently of any prior event or state of the universe”. But it seems to me that any state where you temporarily cannot act or communicate would automatically rule out free will, at least while that condition persists. Do you lose free will every time you fall asleep? Are people who are aware but whose bodies are nonresponsive - people who are “locked in” - lacking free will? Certainly both conditions lack agency, but these are still inarguably people - yet free will is so tightly bound with the concept of personhood, that it’s supposed lack is often used to imply one is “less human”!

Frankly, free will seems like too broad and binary a concept to match what people actually do and deal with day to day. Agency comes in degrees, and can be gained and lost - which seems to me a much closer match to what people were trying to describe with the phrase “free will”.