Word: states
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Nancy Cruzan never regained consciousness after that accident, and doctors say she never will. Now 32, she lies in a condition known as a persistent vegetative state, awake but totally unaware, at the Missouri Rehabilitation Center at Mount Vernon. Her body is stiff and severely contracted, her knees and arms drawn into a fetal position, her fingers dug into her wrists. Some nurses report that Cruzan can turn toward persons who speak to her and that she has cried on several occasions, once when a valentine card was read to her. But doctors say she is oblivious to the environment...
...tube to Cruzan's stomach provides all the food and water that keep her on this side of existence. The cost of her care, $130,000 annually, is borne by the state (since she is not a minor, her parents are not held responsible for her debts). Doctors say her heart could beat and her lungs could breathe for 30 more years, but her parents want the feeding stopped so that she can die in peace...
...into the murky legal and ethical seas that surround the notion of a right to die. What the Justices decide will directly affect Cruzan. It will also set some legal boundaries for addressing the plight of the 10,000 other people in the U.S. lingering in a persistent vegetative state. Ultimately, the ruling could have an impact on the 7 out of 10 Americans who can someday expect to confront questions of life-sustaining medical care for themselves or their loved ones...
...Cruzan case dramatically evokes many of the primal emotions and fundamental uncertainties of life, death and love. Even the simple question at the heart of the Cruzan case -- who is to decide on ending a life -- defies an easy answer. The Missouri Supreme Court ruled last year that the state must decide. And in Cruzan's case, the court concluded, the state's interest in preserving life was not offset by any clear or convincing evidence of Nancy Cruzan's own wishes or by any demonstration that the feeding tube was "heroically invasive" or burdensome. "We choose...
...intimate knowledge of Nancy's personality, views and preferences. "My daughter would say, 'Help, get me out of this,' " insists Joe Cruzan. The Cruzans' lawyers argue that the guarantee of liberty in the Constitution's due process clause protects individuals -- including helpless patients -- against unwarranted bodily intrusions by the state, and that a loving family is the best surrogate to decide what medical course an incompetent relative would choose. In 1983 a presidential medical- ethics commission endorsed the principle of family surrogate decision making, and so have many state courts since the 1976 landmark Karen Ann Quinlan case, in which...