Free Republic

Nancy Cruzan was a vibrant woman before a car accident injured her 20 years ago. Emotions still linger from Nancy Cruzan’s right-to-die case 10/22/03 No matter how case in Florida ends, 'their agony will not be over.' By: Dennis Graves, KY3 News MOUNT VERNON, Mo. -- A right-to-die case in Florida has brought back memories for some people in the Ozarks. Anyone living in the Ozarks 13 years ago is familiar with the right-to-die issue. Nancy Cruzan died in December 1990 after her feeding tubes were removed. In Florida, the husband and the parents of Terri Schiavo are battling over...

The life and death of Terri Schiavo - intensely public, highly polarizing and played out around the clock on the Internet and television- has become a touchstone in American culture. Rarely have the forces of politics, religion and medicine collided so spectacularly, and with such potential for lasting effect. Ms. Schiavo, the profoundly incapacitated woman whose family split over whether she would have preferred to live or die, forced Americans into a national conversation about the end of life. Her case raised questions about the role of government in private family decisions. But her legacy may be that she brought...

Father in right-to-die case commits suicide By Karen Testa, Associated Press writer CARTERVILLE, Mo. -- A sheet-metal worker with a high school education, Joe Cruzan reluctantly waged a battle of national proportions to break new legal ground in the right-to-die movement. In the end, though, he was just a father whose heart was broken beyond repair when a 1983 auto accident left his daughter Nancy in a persistent vegetative state. Without publicity, without a fight in court, in the privacy of his carport, Joe Cruzan exercised his own right to die this weekend. He hanged himself. "Psychiatrists tell us that...

Over the course of the past week, the Terri Schiavo case made headlines with its swift and unsuccessful journey through the federal courts. The string of court defeats might have left the impression that the case was doomed from the outset. Yet the litigation's failure may owe more to a poor tactical choice by the lawyers advising the Schindlers--Terri's parents--than to the case's underlying merits. The original Schindler complaint included a variety of federal constitutional and statutory claims. Each of them was weak at best, as was quickly reflected in federal district judge James Whittemore's ruling that the Schindlers had...

Karen Ann Quinlan was the first modern icon of the right-to-die debate. The 21-year-old Quinlan collapsed at a party after swallowing alcohol and the tranquilizer Valium on April 14, 1975. Doctors saved her life, but she suffered brain damage and lapsed into a persistent vegetative state. Karen Ann Quinlan A dispute arose between the hospital officials and Karen’s parents about whether or not she should be removed from her respirator. Karen’s parents did not want to take extraordinary means to keep Karen alive; however, the hospital officials disagreed and wanted to keep her alive. The Quinlans believed that they had...