Karen's Precedent

If the concept of privacy failed to strike down sodomy bans, it nonetheless was used last week to create the most important precedent to date in the complicated area of a person's right to live and die. It came in a unanimous ruling by the New Jersey Supreme Court in the much-discussed case of Karen Anne Quinlan (TIME, Nov. 3). After apparently downing some pills and drinks a year ago, Karen, 22, had fallen into a vegetative coma, and her father asked for court authority to remove a life-supporting respirator so that she could die "with grace and dignity." Her mother believed that God had kept Karen alive "so that others could be helped" by a ruling on when life may become death.

But because Karen was not "brain dead," few lawyers were surprised when Judge Robert Muir ruled against any "pulling of the plug." Last week the state Supreme Court turned that result around. Chief Justice and former Governor Richard Hughes concluded that if doctors and a hospital ethics committee agree "that there is no reasonable possibility of Karen's ever emerging from her present comatose condition . . . the life-support system may be withdrawn . . . without any civil or criminal liability" for anyone involved.

Noting that a patient may sometimes decline medical treatment, Hughes held that the state's interest in preserving life "weakens and the individual's right to privacy grows as the degree of bodily invasion increases and the prognosis dims." The chief justice added that if a patient cannot exercise his or her rights, then a guardian--usually the next of kin--may do so. The court thus entrusted her father, Joseph Quinlan, with Karen's right to die, and he may turn to other doctors or hospitals if Karen's present medical caretakers continue to refuse to disconnect the respirator.

No precipitate end to Karen's life is likely, since her family will wait until the state of New Jersey has decided whether to take the case to the U.S. Supreme Court. Meanwhile, most legal observers found little fault with the decision. "It goes along with what is already normally done by doctors in cases where it is determined that additional treatment will have no ameliorative effect," says Attorney Stanton Price, a lecturer at the U.C.L.A. School of Public Health. Columbia Politics Professor Alan Westin, author of Privacy and Freedom, adds: "The court has said that, whether it's abortion or other matters, these difficult and tragic decisions should lodge with the family and not the state."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.