Word: cruzans
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist wanted to make it clear that he sympathized. There was "no doubt," he said, that Joe and Joyce Cruzan "are loving and caring parents." So if the state of Missouri had to let anyone decide to end medical treatment of their daughter Nancy, who has lain in an irreversible coma ever since a car crash seven years ago, "the Cruzans would surely qualify." Despite all this sympathy, however, Rehnquist spoke last week for a 5-to-4 Supreme Court majority in regretfully rejecting the Cruzans' plea to have their daughter "set free...
...Cruzan case may finally provide the lower courts with some clear guidance in striking a fundamental balance between the rights of individuals and the duties of the state. If they chose, the Cruzans' lawyers could have suggested that Nancy's "life" is so faint that it does not meet a minimum standard of protection under the law; that, unaware as she is, she has none of those qualities and prospects and experiences that give life its value. But such an argument would require setting some line above which lives are protected, below which they are not. "In the public realm...
Unlike Georgia and many other states, however, Missouri has strong pro-life language in its statutes, which the state supreme court invoked in throwing out the lower-court decision. Though Cruzan had the right to refuse treatment, said the Missouri justices, her parents did not prove to the court that this is what she would have wanted. The "vague and unreliable" recollections by family and friends about Nancy's wishes were not deemed sufficient reason to stop feeding her. "The state's interest," wrote the judges, "is not in quality of life . . . Were quality of life at issue, all manner...
Though no one questions the love of Cruzan's parents and their desire to abide by her wishes, what happens when a family's motives are not so clear? The state of Missouri is paying Cruzan's medical bills; but for other families the desire to hasten an inheritance or avoid crushing medical costs could add an ingredient of self-interest to a decision. The Rev. Harry Cole, a Presbyterian minister who faced the dilemma when his wife fell into a coma, admits the complexity of pressures. "If she were to go on that way, our family faced not only...
...Alzheimer's disease or those in permanent comas are unlikely to be protected by most living-will statutes. "Many people think they will be aided in these situations, but they may not be," says Leslie Pickering Francis, a law professor at the University of Utah. "For example, Nancy Cruzan's case does not fit most states' definitions of terminal illness...