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?
The Schiavo case is NOT different from the Cruzan case or thousands like it. The only difference between Schaivo and literally tens of thousands of similar cases is the epic feud between the relatives, and the, frankly, shameless use of the media to whip up a public frenzy.
This is why the federal government should stay out of these kinds of personal family matters. When Congress can decide who should live, it is by extension deciding who should not live.
So because this story has been investigated and exposed on the Internet it doesn't deserve to be continued?
There was alot of passion during the Quinlan case. I remember it well.
wrong.
New York Post --
VATICAN RIPS TUBE REMOVAL AS 'DEATH PENALTY'
March 23, 2005 -- VATICAN CITY — The Vatican pressed its campaign to keep Terri Schiavo alive yesterday, saying that removing the brain-damaged woman's feeding tube amounted to capital punishment for someone who has committed no crime. In a front-page editorial, the Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, criticized federal Judge James Whittemore's refusal to order the reinsertion of Schiavo's feeding tube and disparaged a "society incapable of appreciating and defending the gift of life."
It said Whittemore had condemned Schiavo to an "atrocious death: death from hunger and thirst."
"After all, Terri's destiny appears not unlike that of many men and women who in the United States get capital punishment for their crimes," the paper said.
"But Terri has committed no crimes, if not that of being 'useless' to the eyes of a society incapable of appreciating and defending the gift of life. Of any life." The Holy See has maintained that there is virtually no justification for the death penalty.
The decision by Whittemore came after feverish action by President Bush and Congress to pass legislation allowing the brain-damaged woman's contentious case to be reviewed by federal courts.
"She has no possibility of being 'restored' to a 'normal' life. Therefore Terri Schiavo must die," the L'Osservatore editorial said in its interpretation of the judge's ruling. "This is . . . the absurd and terrifying reason" for Whittemore's decision.
The feeding tube was disconnected Friday on orders of a state judge, prompting an extraordinary weekend effort by congressional Republicans to push through unprecedented emergency legislation Monday aimed at keeping her alive.
A top Vatican official, Monsignor Elio Sgreccia, also criticized the ruling, saying it legitimized a "cruel" death by hunger and thirst for Schiavo.
But experts say if she dies from the removal of her feeding tube, her passing should be peaceful.
AP --------------------------------------------------- Vatican denounces Schiavo ordeal
From correspondents in Vatican City
March 24, 2005
COMPARING the case to Jesus Christ's Way of the Cross, the Vatican today denounced a US court decision to let a severely brain-damaged woman die as a new painful step in her ordeal.
The statement, in the Vatican's Osservatore Romano daily, came after a federal appeals court turned down early today an emergency request by the parents of Terri Schiavo to have her feeding tube reinserted. "A new painful 'station' of the personal calvary of Terri Schiavo was written today" by the court, the daily wrote today.
On Easter Friday, Christians take part in the Way of the Cross which commemorates the steps or "stations" of the suffering and death of Jesus.
"Unfortunately, until now Terri Schiavo has met several torturers on her painful journey: from those who first decided that she should die to the judges who signed her sentence," the Osservatore stated. The newspaper had compared Mrs Schiavo's "agony" to the "agony of humanity" in an article Monday.
Doctors estimate Mrs Schiavo's time of survival since her feeding tube was disconnected on Friday at two weeks. She has been in a persistent vegetative state for 15 years since heart failure caused severe brain damage.
Michael Schiavo, her husband, has said she should be allowed to die and that she had expressed such a wish in the past. Her parents have for seven years fought efforts to remove her from life support, insisting she can get better.
Doctors have repeatedly said in court that Mrs Schiavo has virtually no chance of recovery.
The Vatican daily said the court decision went against the views of a large section of US public opinion as well as that of US President George W. Bush, who expressed his disappointment at the court's ruling. "In the meantime, unaware of the fuss surrounding her case, Terri is dying, in silence," the newspaper wrote.
I completely agree with your post #22.
Bears repeating.
A national conversation will result from this and that's a good thing.
No unless people get a grip on themselves and their emotions so they can focus on the larger issues.
It sure was!!
20 years a nurse.
Don't believe the bunk about living wills, it is a mixed bag at best.
It may give you some control over your termination but it is also going to get you substandard care in the hospital or a nursing home.
Incorrect assumption on your part.
Guess again. This does not carry the weight of Doctrine. Even Papal encyclicals do not represent doctrine; they only provide a means of guidance for the Faithful.
But Terri is still alive.
Probably because her husband took her off the therapy which was at that point was improving her after he receieved all that money from the court settlement. Surprised how I've heard so little about the speculation that her husband may have tried to kill her, when a neurologist or something like that said there was a strange fracture on her skull that wasn't typical of an injury from falling.
I believe you're right, and would only add one other primary reason: media-savvy advisors for both parties to the dispute.
This made national news and the reason this got everybody involved is for the right to life over the politics of death.
Death wins this one.
Thats what I asked again and again. Prolifer's need to be for ALL not just one.
There was plenty of "passion", especially over Quinlan.
But, the major difference is this: the families were pleading with the courts to let them end the exceptional medical care (respirators).
And, equally important, there were no family members pleading with the courts for custody so they could assume responsibility for administering food and water and rehabilitation.
For the immediate parties to the dispute, it's about her. For everyone else, it's about a variety of things -- some well-meant, some quite ugly.
Maybe because the advent of the internet and talk radio has allowed such cases to be more widely disseminated, to say the least. Even the Schiavo case, although 15 years old, did not achieve national attention until a few years ago.
You'll notice I said that the Catholic Council of Bishops opinion does not seem to conform to the Vatican's opinion.
But I wasn't so rude as to post the entire official position of the Bishops; it's so long you'd all be screaming at me.
But their Catholic Bishop's position is posted again below. And it's interesting that there is obviously even deep divisions within the Catholic Church about this matter.
For instance, one of the reasons it is permissable to starve a person is if the financial burden becomes to great.
http://www.usccb.org/prolife/issues/euthanas/nutqa.htm
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