2 Courts Refuse to Resume Feeding Comatose Patient

MT. VERNON, Mo. —  Two courts on Thursday denied a request to have Nancy Cruzan’s feeding tube reconnected, and demonstrators kept a vigil at the hospital where she is dying.

Yvette Williams, who cares for severely disabled children, asked the courts to require the state to provide nourishment to Cruzan, who has been in a persistent vegetative state since a 1983 traffic accident.

Her request was denied by the Missouri Supreme Court and a state court of appeals.

Williams was represented by Mario Mandina of the anti-euthanasia group Lawyers for Life. Mandina said he planned to ask the Missouri Supreme Court for a rehearing.

Cruzan, 33, is the central figure in a right-to-die case that went to the U.S. Supreme Court and culminated Dec. 14 with a probate judge’s decision that her parents could order her feeding tube removed.

The tube was withdrawn hours later. Doctors estimated that Cruzan would die within two weeks without food and water.

“Our laws protect life,” Williams, who lives in Kansas City, said in a prepared statement. “What is happening here offends me. I cannot in conscience be a party to the killing of Nancy Cruzan.”

Protesters from the anti-abortion movement have converged on the Missouri Rehabilitation Center in this southwestern Missouri town of 3,400. The protesters say the Cruzan case is an extension of their cause.

Policemen arrested 19 demonstrators Tuesday after they refused to depart. They remained in the Lawrence County Jail Thursday.

About 15 protesters gathered Thursday on the porch of the hospital and said they would maintain a vigil there until Cruzan dies.

The state Supreme Court rejected Williams’ request in a two-sentence order. It was signed by Judge Edward Robertson, who wrote the court’s November, 1988, decision that denied Cruzan’s parents, Joe and Joyce Cruzan, permission to remove the tube that provided their daughter with food and water.

That ruling sent the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in June in its first right-to-die case that Missouri could require “clear and convincing” evidence that Cruzan would not want to live in a vegetative state.

At a hearing last month, former co-workers testified that Cruzan had said she would never want to live like a vegetable.