Right to Die Cases
The very public, legal and ultimately political saga of Terri Schiavo brought not only national but international attention to the right to die issues and echoed a similar battle which took place some fifteen years earlier concerning Nancy Cruzan.
In "Cruzan, by her Parents and Co-Guardians v. Director, Missouri Department of Health, 497 U.S. 261,' the United States Supreme Court concurred with the lower court's ruling on June 25, 1990 (Cruzan pp).
Petitioner Nancy Beth Cruzan was rendered incompetent as a result of severe injuries sustained during an automobile accident on the night of January 11, 1983 (Cruzan pp). Paramedics restored her breathing and heartbeat at the accident site when she was discovered without detectable respiratory or cardiac function (Cruzan pp). She was transported to a hospital in an unconscious state where an attending neurosurgeon diagnosed her as having sustained probably cerebral contusions compounded by significant anoxia (Cruzan pp). The Missouri trial court found that permanent brain damage generally results after six minutes in an anoxic state, and it was estimated that Cruzan was deprived of oxygen from twelve to fourteen minutes (Cruzan pp). After approximately three weeks in a coma, she then progressed to an unconscious state, and although she was able to orally ingest some nutrition, surgeons, with the consent of her husband, implanted a gastrostomy feeding and hydration tube in order to ease feeding and further the recovery, however, subsequent rehabilitative efforts proved unavailing (Cruzan pp). When it became apparent that Nancy had no chance of recovering her cognitive faculties, her parents, Lester and Joyce Cruzan and coguardians, sought a court order directing the withdrawal of her artificial feeding and hydration equipment, but the Supreme Court of Missouri held that because there was no clear and convincing evidence of Nancy's desire to have life-sustaining treatment withdrawn under such circumstances, her parents, thus, lacked authority to effectuate such a request (Cruzan pp).
At the time of the U.S. Supreme Court hearing, Nancy Cruzan resided in a Missouri state hospital, (the state bearing the cost of her care) in a persistent vegetative state, a term generally used to describe a condition in which "a person exhibits motor reflexes but evinces no indications of significant cognitive function' (Cruzan pp). The State Supreme Court,...
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