Word: case
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Dates: during 1990-1990
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...year-old writer suffering from a gastrointestinal cancer, came seeking help in committing suicide. He said he had the pills: 60 capsules, 200 mg each, of Seconal. But surgery left him with trouble swallowing, and he wondered if there was a better way to go. In this case it was not so much the physical pain of the cancer that plagued him; it was the mental burden of a lingering illness. "This long farewell performance gets to be a drag on people," the patient said. "It's just not the way you want to see yourself behaving. There's less...
...historic taboo about mercy killing gradually erodes, the courts and legislatures are struggling to be sure that the vulnerable are protected -- that, in the case of the severely disabled, the right to die not become a duty to die. They fear, for example, that medical care for newborn babies may come to depend on some cost-benefit analysis of their chance of living a "full healthy and active life." In the Baby Doe case in 1982, the Indiana courts allowed a couple to refuse surgery for their baby born with Down's syndrome and an incomplete esophagus; after six days...
...American legal tradition, right alongside the protection of individual liberty. When the two rights are at odds, the debates grow fierce. There are specific circumstances in which a society permits the intentional taking of life: in war, in self-defense, as punishment for a heinous crime. The Cruzan case raises the question of whether personal choice and great suffering, by either patients or their families, should join that set of circumstances...
...Cruzan case may finally provide the lower courts with some clear guidance in striking a fundamental balance between the rights of individuals and the duties of the state. If they chose, the Cruzans' lawyers could have suggested that Nancy's "life" is so faint that it does not meet a minimum standard of protection under the law; that, unaware as she is, she has none of those qualities and prospects and experiences that give life its value. But such an argument would require setting some line above which lives are protected, below which they are not. "In the public realm...
...Nancy's constitutional right to liberty has no meaning if it does not protect her from having a feeding tube surgically inserted in her stomach and being force-fed. Though she is unable to refuse the treatment, her parents could act on her behalf. Since the Karen Ann Quinlan case, 50 courts in 17 states have considered the right to have treatment withdrawn. Nearly all have come down on the side of privacy and limited the power of the government to dictate medical care. In a peculiar legal irony, many states make it illegal to assist in suicide; yet again...