Posted on 03/25/2005 5:01:12 PM PST by Wolfstar
Karen Ann Quinlan was the first modern icon of the right-to-die debate. The 21-year-old Quinlan collapsed at a party after swallowing alcohol and the tranquilizer Valium on April 14, 1975. Doctors saved her life, but she suffered brain damage and lapsed into a persistent vegetative state.
Karen Ann Quinlan
A dispute arose between the hospital officials and Karen’s parents about whether or not she should be removed from her respirator. Karen’s parents did not want to take extraordinary means to keep Karen alive; however, the hospital officials disagreed and wanted to keep her alive. The Quinlans believed that they had the right to legal guardianship for Karen. This led to two court cases involving who should become Karen’s legal guardian.
Her family waged a much-publicized legal battle for the right to remove her life support machinery. The Quinlans lost the first court case at the U.S. Supreme Court, but were victorious in New Jersey’s Supreme Court. This decision gave Joseph Quinlan, Karen’s father, legal guardianship over Karen. As a result, the Quinlan family decided to remove Karen from her respirator and the physicians obliged.
Unexpectedly, Karen continued breathing and was moved to Morris View Nursing Home where she lived for 10 years. She passed away on June 11, 1985.
The New Jersey Supreme Court Ruling became a precedent case for ethical dilemmas involving right-to-die cases in two significant ways. First, this case led to the requirement that all hospitals, hospice, and nursing homes have ethics committees. Second, it led to the creation of advance directives, in particular the living will.
Nancy Cruzan
The way Nancy's family engraved her headstone
Like Karen Ann Quinlan, Nancy Cruzan became a public figure after entering a persistent vegetative state. A 1983 auto accident left Cruzan permanently unconscious and without any higher brain function, kept alive only by a feeding tube and steady medical care. Cruzan's family waged a legal battle to have her feeding tube removed. The case went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled that the Cruzans had not provided "clear and convincing evidence" that Nancy Cruzan did not wish to have her life artificially preserved. The Cruzans later presented such evidence to the Missouri courts, which ruled in their favor in late 1990. The Cruzans stopped feeding Nancy in December of 1990, and she died later the same month.
Much has changed in the years since Nancy's death. The federal government passed a law requiring all persons entering a hospital in the United States be told about living wills. Most states have laws governing advance directives, durable powers of attorney and health care proxies.
Now, nearly 30 years to the day that Karen Quinlan collapsed, we have the Terri Schiavo case making headlines. In the intervening 30 years much precedent has been set and much case law has been settled in the so-called right-to-die area. Estimates are that some 30,000-35,000 people in the United States are currently in similar or identical states as Terri Schiavo, yet we do not hear about them. Life support measures -- including feeding tubes -- are removed virtually daily. Yet we do not hear about those cases. Why? Because the only thing unique about the Schiavo case is the epic family feud propelling it into the headlines.
People who so passionately argue for Schiavo to be saved have nothing to say about all the other similar or identical cases. Why? If one believes that all life must be saved, then why fight only for this single life?
Are any of the families of those 35,000 in court currently?
BTW that law that would save Terri would also save them.
Do you mean to imply that all the thousands of other people diagnosed as being in persistent vegitative states are not worthy of a fight for the right to life? Why are they being surrendered to the "politics of death" while Schiavo is not? Hmmmm....
I am a serious skeptic when it comes to polls. However, if those taken about this issue are correct, the overwhelming majority of the American people understand. We are not alone -- even if it seems that way here on FR.
You said that very well.
Some people...........!
Good for you. Common sense and intellectual honesty where they are greatly needed.
It also took practicaly non-stop coverage of the Scott/Laci Peterson case for the facts about the prevalance of pregnant wives being killed by their husbands there are--
I can't recall the number right now, but I remember being shocked at how many husbands killed their pregnant wives---
NOW, I am shocked at how "common" starving/dehydrating someone to death is---and yet, if a congresscritter even hinted at using this method on death row in a prison, WATCH OUT!!!!
What if the prisoners ate gitmo didn't get their 3 square meals a day?
I think that this pandora's box is opened now, and should be examined for the questionable practice of starving people (disabled) to death---
Think of the IRONY that Kervorkian that came up with a quick, painless VOLUNTARY form of "death with dignity", is in prison, but MS and Judge Greer are being hailed as heros by more than half of this country---
SCARY!!!!!
"the 30 years of case law will still exist, people will still have feeding tubes removed, and other patients like Schiavo will died. And I don't see any passion over that fact."
Would it be fair to say:
-people will still have feeding tubes removed in quiet, with no fanfare when the family consents to it.
-it is a very personal decision made by family members and not usually subject to public scrutiny.
-unless someone with "standing" objects, we wont know about it, and there will be no controversy litigated in the courts.
The cases we know about arose when there was a dispute about it, and the result of those cases is fact dependent. This case is dirty, and hence, more passion about it.
Do you actually think that it's unusual that a Mother and Father might want their daughter to live?
In Nancy Cruzan's case, it was a feeding tube, just like in the Schiavo case. However, in different words, you've made my point. There is nothing unique about the Schiavo case except the ugly family feud. Why should the entire federal government, the state government, and various and sundry hangers on get involved in a family feud.
If it's about saving life, then all people in the same situation should be kept on feeding tubes and other life support measures. On the other hand, if it is only about this one life, then all of those who are invoking religion as their rationale for keeping her on the feeding tube are hypocrites. Why? Because all they're doing is making themselves characters in a soap opera.
From his carport.
Funny the things they don't mention.
No, I made that case here all last month that if we were so up in arms about such cases as this, why don't we know and care about all the others?
What you are saying to me, I posted to everyone else last month and it pissed them off hearing it.
It's easy to jump on a national bandwagon when there is some self importance to be gained from it.
That is my opinion anyway.
The husband will not divorce her, nor give custody/care to her parents because there is ANOTHER FINANCIAL WINDFALL COMING HIS WAY!!!!!! He wants her dead for $$$$
It's called the life insurance policy, why are we not hearing about that?
You are wrong. The Bishop's conclude that it is not acceptable to withdraw Food and Nutrition in someone in Terri's condition. Also recent statements by Pope John PaulII and Vatican clergy clarify Church teaching on this matter. Below is a statement from the USCCB website you cited.
In light of these concerns, it is our considered judgment that while legitimate Catholic moral debate continues, decisions about these patients should be guided by a presumption in favor of medically assisted nutrition and hydration. A decision to discontinue such measures should be made in light of a careful assessment of the burdens and benefits of nutrition and hydration for the individual patient and his or her family and community. Such measures must not be withdrawn in order to cause death, but they may be withdrawn if they offer no reasonable hope of sustaining life or pose excessive risks or burdens. We also believe that social and health care policies should be carefully framed so that these patients are not routinely classified as "terminal" or as prime candidates for the discontinuance of even minimal means of life support.
This whole thing is a victory for heathens and insurance companies who will in the future stop coverage and will force "a dignified end"!
Did we ever think we would live to see "Soylent Green" become a form of reality in our lives?
We are not amused with your disingenuousness.
Michaels sudden and convenient recall that "Terri wouldn't want to live like this" after he got the money and got engaged to another woman.
Many of us, just plain, don't trust Michael and his motives.
You better prove your figures with some solid documentation.
It sounds like 3M homeless. It's made up.
I won't contest the number of feeding tubes because elderly people get them all the time, people that are temporarily on ventilators get them.
I will contest that there are 30,000 cases even vaguely similar.
Being 70 years old a, feeding tube and a stroke doesn't count.
As you know Protestants (outside of Reform, Pentecostal, Apostolic and Mennonite circles) do not excommunicate folks. I've never heard of anyone being asked to leave by any Baptist church of any kind ~ but maybe I've been living an isolated life.
You'd have to be considered to be elementally evil for the Baptists to give up on you.
This line of argumentation reminds me of neo-Confederates who try to assuage their feelings over slavery by pointing out that there was just as much racial discrimination in the Northern states as in the Southern. Not a valid way of looking at it, in my opinion. Whether it's right or wrong to murder innocent people has very little to do with whether some people have been hypocritical about the subject in the past.
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