Word: cruzan
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Most Painful Dilemma The right-to-die issue heated up when the parents of Nancy Cruzan, a comatose Missouri woman, petitioned the Supreme Court for permission to remove her feeding tube. The high court upheld a state's right to demand evidence of the patient's intent. A Missouri judge then ruled that the tube could be removed...
...cruel ordeal of Nancy Cruzan is finally drawing to an end. Last week probate judge Charles Teel Jr. ruled that the Missouri Rehabilitation Center could disconnect the feeding tube that has kept the woman alive since 1983, when a car crash left her in an irreversible coma. Since state officials have promised to abide by the ruling, the decision ends a legal battle that took the woman's parents all the way to the Supreme Court in their quest to "allow Nancy the dignity of death...
...written statement, Joe Cruzan said that because of his daughter's travail, "I suspect hundreds of thousands of people can rest free, knowing that when death beckons they can meet it face to face with dignity, free from the fear of unwanted and useless medical treatment." At week's end he and his wife Joyce had decided to instruct the hospital in Mount Vernon, Mo., to remove the tube. Nancy, 33, is expected to die within two weeks of that action...
...sustaining apparatus. Four months later, however, the Missouri Supreme Court reversed the ruling, arguing that "vague and unreliable" recollections were insufficient proof of Nancy's intent. Last June the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a state's right to demand clear and convincing evidence in the matter, then returned the Cruzan case to the Missouri courts...
...Teel heard new evidence. This time the Cruzan family's lawyer produced three witnesses who recounted specific conversations in which Nancy stated that she would not want to live "like a vegetable." Teel reaffirmed his decision...