Human Rights A Day

Nancy Cruzan dies after a long legal battle for the right to die. On January 11, 1983, Nancy Cruzan, aged 25, was thrown from her car in a collision. When paramedics found her, she had stopped breathing for 15 minutes, yet they were able to revive her breathing but not her consciousness. After five years of watching over their unconscious daughter, Joyce and Lester Cruzan wanted Nancy’s feeding tube removed so that she could die a natural death. That meant wading into the legal and moral issue of a person’s right to die. The family’s long legal battle was with the state of Missouri, which argued that its interest in preserving life was worth more than the family’s desire to remove treatment. In 1990, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against the interests of the Cruzans in a five-to-four decision, stating there was no “clear and convincing evidence” to prove that Nancy would have wanted the tube feeding stopped. Less than six months later, the Cruzans presented Judge Charles Teel Jr. the “clear and convincing” evi