25 years ago: The death of Nancy Cruzan

I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live: Deuteronomy 30:19

For whoso findeth me findeth life, and shall obtain favour of the Lord.
But he that sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul: all they that hate me love death. Proverbs 8:35-36

There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death. Proverbs 14:12 (also Proverbs 16:25)

Righteousness exalteth a nation: but sin is a reproach to any people. Proverbs 14:34

Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,...
...And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient; Romans 1:22,28

Surely some future historian, surveying our times, will note sardonically that it took no more than three decades to transform a war crime into an act of compassion, thereby enabling the victors in the war against Nazism to mount their own humane holocaust, which in its range and in the number of its victims, may soon far surpass the Nazi one. It is significant that, whereas the Nazi holocaust has received lavish TV and film coverage, the humane one goes rolling along largely unnoticed by the media. Malcolm Muggeridge, Sanctity of Life, Chatelaine, December 1979, p. 138

On December 26, 1990, Nancy Cruzan, who had suffered permanent brain damage in a car accident in Missouri in 1983, and had been fed through a tube while being hospitalized in a "permanent vegetative state," died after 12 days of court-ordered starvation.

On June 25, 1990, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Cruzan v. Director, Missouri Department of Health, voted 5-4 to reject an appeal from Miss Cruzan's parents to remove the tube and allow her to die, but a probate court judge in Jasper County, Missouri ruled on December 14 that they had a right to remove the tube because three of Miss Cruzan's co-workers had testified in November that she had once said that she would never want to live under such circumstances. The tube was removed two hours after the court ruling, and it took 12 days for Miss Cruzan to finally be starved to death.

See also my posts:

30 years ago: The death of Karen Ann Quinlan (June 11, 2015)

10 years ago: The execution of Terri Schiavo (March 31, 2015)