Newspaper Page Text
PAGE 10 — The Georgia Bulletin, June 20, 1985
Question Of Life And Death
Karen Ann Quinlan Symbolized
Dilemma Raised
By NC News Service
Ten years ago Karen Ann Quinlan tugged at America's
heartstrings and made the whole nation rethink basic
ethical questions of life and death being raised by modern
medical technology.
The country and much of the world shared in the pain of
Miss Quinlan’s parents, Joseph and Julia, as they fought
through the New Jersey courts for permission to remove
the artificial respirator from their comatose daughter and
let her die. Her case became the topic of books, a 1977 net
work television movie, and innumerable radio and TV
discussions and newspaper and magazine articles.
“She symbolized a great issue of our time," said Msgr.
Thomas Trapasso, the Quinlan’s friend and former pastor,
when Miss Quinlan died of pneumonia June 11 after living
more than 10 years in a coma.
“Her tragic accident and her parents’ persistence in do
ing what was morally correct has resulted in a clear
perception as to how we should treat those in the same
situation that Karen was in,” said Bishop Frank J. Rodimer
of Paterson, the diocese in which the Quinlan family lives.
As diocesan chancellor in the 1970s Bishop Rodimer had
been a spokesman for the church’s position on the moral
issues involved in the Quinlan case.
Miss Quinlan, then 21, lapsed into a coma on April 15,
1975, apparently because of the interaction of alcohol with
aspirin and a tranquilizer. Six months later, when it was
clear that the coma was irreversible and signs of brain ac
tivity had ceased, her father sought to be declared legal
guardian in order to terminate use of the respirator that
was maintaining her breathing.
After a lower court ruled against him, the state supreme
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court took up an appeal and decided in favor of Quinlan on
March 31,1976. In May Miss Quinlan was removed from the
respirator. In June she was transferred from St. Clare
Hospital in Denville, N.J., to the Morris View Nursing
Home in Morris Plains. There she lived for another nine
years with the help of intravenous feeding and ordinary
care, although she never regained consciousness before her
death.
Quinlan expressed amazement at the publicity generated
by his request for legal guardianship of his daughter. Msgr.
Trapasso said that from the start he advised the Quinlans
that they were well within traditional Catholic moral
teaching, which says that one need not use extraordinary
measures to preserve human life.
The celebrated case brought considerable publicity to
that Catholic teaching, surprising some who thought the
church would automatically take an official position in
favor of preserving life, whatever the circumstances.
Some pro-lifers disagreed with the New Jersey high
court’s ruling, however, and sought to bring the case to the
U.S. Supreme Court. Richard Gallagher, a leader of an
organization called the Human Life Amendment Group,
claimed the New Jersey ruling threatened Miss Quinlan's
right to life and that her father wanted “measures to hasten
his daughter’s execution.”
A priest-editorialist on the Vatican newspaper,
L’Osservatore Romano, took a stance critical of the
Quinlans for seeking to end use of the respirator. Noted
moral theologians rejected the view expressed in the
editorial, saying it did not reflect church teaching. When an
Italian doctor interviewed on Vatican Radio warned that
the Quinlan case provoked dangers of mercy-killing. Bishop
(then Msgr.) Rodimer called a press conference to express
the “approval, sympathy and understanding” of the Pater
son Diocese for the Quinlans.
From the start of the Quinlan case most moral
theologians and ethicists considered it “an open-and-shut
case” which “should never have gone to the courts;” said
Jesuiit Father Richard McCormick, a moral theologian at
the Kennedy Institute for the Study of Human Reproduction
and Bioethics at Georgetown University in Washington.
The importance of the case was that “it created a public
awareness that had not been there,” the priest commented.
It was that case, he said, that really started the American
public asking questions about “How are we going to use the
medical technology we have?”
“It was the first in a series (of cases) which helped us
achieve both moral and legal clarity” about such issues, he
added.
“She had a purpose in life far beyond what we could have
suspected,” Bishop Rodimer said in commenting on Miss
Quinlan’s death.
“There is a time for care in the hospital, but then there is
a time to say ‘I’m dying,”’ said Mrs. Quinlan in an inter
view just days before her daughter died.
“Karen,” she added, “has become a symbol of life.
Precious. And we should care for that life, but also
recognize that there is a time to go home.”
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JOSEPH AND JULIA QUINLAN
....their long vigil is over
(NC Photo frni UPI -Reuter)
Hospice Benefits
From Parent's Love
Bv Maura Rossi
MORRISTOWN. N.J. (NC) — “For over 10 years,
we’ve watched our daughter dying, but for 10 years
too, we’ve been able to touch her, hold her. kiss her,
and when death comes, it wifi be hard.”
Those were the words of Julia Quinlan, mother of
Karen Ann Quinlan, on June 5, just six days before
her daughter’s 10-year coma ended in a natural
death.
The interview, with the Beacon, newspaper of the
Diocese of Paterson. N.J.., where the Quinlan family
lives, was held in the office of attorney Paul Arm
strong. It dealt in part with bereavement and the pain
of survivors and focused on the Karen Ann Quinlan
Center of Hope in Newton. N.J., the hospice program
to care for the terminally ill and their families,
which the Quinlans founded in Karen’s name.
We've tried to prepare ourselves for when the end
comes,” Mrs. Quinlan said. “But no matter how long
an illness lasts, it’s sad to lose someone you love.”
Mrs. Quinlan has formed the Friends of Hospice, a
group of 17 volunteers who help raise money for the
home care program.
Joseph and Julia Quinlan have donated all the pro
fits from their 1977 book, “Karen Ann: The Quinlans
Tell Their Story;” the 1977 NBC television movie, “In
the Matter of Karen Ann Quinlan,” and all their
speaking engagements to the hospice center.
The center, she said, was born out of her and her
husband’s memories of the “pain and frustration”
that rigid hospital rules and the necessary precision
of medical technology cause to families of the ter
minally ill.
“There is a time for care in the hospital, but then
there is a time to say ‘I’m dying,”’ she said. “That’s
what we’re doing in the hospice program, providing
only palliative care, with no extra facilities.”
Why, Armstrong was asked, after 10 years of so
much publicity and the court case itself, must
families still fight to remove loved ones from ar
tificial life-support system?
“In America, as in no place else in the world,” he
said, “there is such a risk of civil and criminal liabili
ty and such a fear of lawsuits.”
In other countries, people just don’t understand
why this is so, Armstrong said.
Mrs. Quinlan said, “If God had wanted Karen’s
death, he would have done it. If he’d wanted to take
her, he would have.”
The world’s interest in Karen has never waned, she
said, and neither she nor Armstrong could recall any
hostile letter or comments.
“So many people have been looking for a miracle, a
cure for Karen,” Mrs. Quinlan said. “But I feel God
has performed so many miracles here. The miracle
of prayer, the miracle of love.
“Karen has become a symbol of life. Precious. And
we should care for that life, but also recognize that
there is a time to go home.
“That’s important,” she said.