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Euthanasia and Morality: The Possibility of Dying a 'Good' Death
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10813 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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3 / 1993 |
5,199 Words |
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Rosemarie Tong
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Anyone who followed the daily news in the mid 1970s probably recalls the Karen Quinlan case. As the result of ingesting a potent combination of alcohol and barbiturates, 21-year-old Karen lapsed into what we now readily term a "persistent vegetative state"--though in 1975 the general public was not "neurologically sophisticated" enough to fully understand the irreversibility of Karen's coma.
As the months dragged on and the Quinlans grew united in their resolve to let Karen die, media accounts of her resolve to let Karen die, media accounts of her plight increased. Her life was becoming less discernibly human as she wasted away into a seventy-pound "vegetable"--a gnarled twist of human flesh sustained by a respirator and a nasogastric feeding tube, utterly dependent on her care givers and apparently without any hope of recovery.
When Karen's father finally requested that her respirator be withdrawn (note he did not also request that her nasogastric feeding tube be withdrawn), a lower New Jersey court ruled against him on the ground that no constitutional right to die exists, let alone one that permits parents to toll the bell for their incompetent, adult children. Although citizens' reactions to the lower court's ruling were mixed, the majority seemed relieved when the New Jersey Supreme Court overturned it on the ground that Karen's constitutional right to privacy was broad enough to permit her family to let her die.
As a result of the Quinlan case, the patients' right movement gained considerable momentum. Increasingly, patients voiced the concern that physicians would not permit them to die peacefully and with dignity, forcing them instead to fight death with every available technological device, no matter how burdensome.
No doubt imagining themselves hooked up to multiple machines with tubes going in and out of every orifice of their bodies, a variety of people--some conservative and others liberal--joined together to claim the moral permissibility of so-called passive euthanasia, that is, withholding or withdrawing treatment from those who are terminally, irreversibly, and incurably ill; who have fallen into a persistent vegetative state; or who simply find such treatment more burden some than beneficial.
A variety of Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish groups that support the sanctity of life also support withdrawing or withholding care (passive euthanasia). For example, United Methodist scholars in dialogue with Roman
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