Karen Anne Quinlan’s Calvary

Twenty-one-year-old Karen Anne Quinlan lay for over six months in what was described as a coma, while a mechanical respirator assured her breathing. After the attending neurologist refused on grounds of medical ethics to withdraw the respirator, Karen’s parents filed a civil suit asking that the court authorize its removal, and so let the girl die. Both Karen’s court-appointed guardian and the Morris County prosecutor opposed the parents’ request. Judge Robert Muir Jr. will give his decision early in November.

For many, Karen no longer has a “meaningful existence”: no longer a human being, much less a human person, but merely a “human vegetable” with “animal reflexes,” existing in a “persistent vegetative state,” Karen would “never recover the ability to function as a human being.” According to one editorial, Karen is one of the “living dead—without thought, without joy, without sadness, and without any prospects for the future except as the machinery continues.” The editorial went on logically to ask: What shall we do with the other thousands of such living dead? Kill them? it asked gingerly. Like we kill unwanted fetuses nowadays?

MM

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Malachi B. Martin

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Twenty-one-year-old Karen Anne Quinlan lay for over six months in what was described as a coma, while a mechanical respirator assured her breathing. After the attending neurologist refused on grounds of medical ethics to withdraw the respirator, Karen’s parents filed a civil suit asking that the court authorize its removal, and so let the girl die. Both Karen’s court-appointed guardian and the Morris County prosecutor opposed the parents’ request. Judge Robert Muir Jr. will give his decision early in November.

For many, Karen no longer has a “meaningful existence”: no longer a human being, much less a human person, but merely a “human vegetable” with “animal reflexes,” existing in a “persistent vegetative state,” Karen would “never recover the ability to function as a human being.” According to one editorial, Karen is one of the “living dead—without thought, without joy, without sadness, and without any prospects for the future except as the machinery continues.” The editorial went on logically to ask: What shall we do with the other thousands of such living dead? Kill them? it asked gingerly. Like we kill unwanted fetuses nowadays?