Word: bouvia
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...terrible problem arises when the prisoner can create no inner freedom for respite. Elizabeth Bouvia, a 29-year-old California woman confined to a % hospital bed by cerebral palsy, in constant pain, unable to control her body, has for several years been suing to make her doctors stop force-feeding her and allow her to die. Her hopeless condition has thrown her back upon her last freedom--the freedom to decide to die--and even that freedom has so far been denied...
...hospital should not be forced to administer Bouvia painkillers. But one may also argue that neither should it be compelled to force-feed her. The prolonged and well-publicized case of Karen Ann Quinlan in 1975 determined that parents of a comatose girl could ask her doctors to remove the life-sustaining respirator that was keeping her nominally alive. As the judge in that case said, interest in preserving life "weakens and the individual's right to privacy grows as the degree of bodily invasion increases and the prognosis dims...
While Elizabeth Bouvia does not have a terminal illness, she is a quadriplegic and as such has decided that the no longer deems her life worth the pain and effort. Despite the criticism her stance has received from handicapped groups who deride her for implying "that the disabled nothing to live for," her decision remains a personal...
...Bouvia case, the obvious question is: why doesn't Bouvia go home to starve herself, if she is so resolved to do so? Her lawyers claim that she does not have sufficient control of her limbs to kill herself, but it seems that it is equally feasible to starve oneself in one place as in another. The staff of Riverside has complained that she is merely seeking publicity, perhaps this is true...
...situation does, however, deserve close consideration, for there may be another patient, unlike Bouvia, who is dependent on the hospital's care and cannot simply check herself out. That patient may find herself in the same position, but totally powerless a situation that makes the phrase "self- determination" seem irrelevant...