Elizabeth Bouvia (born c. 1958) is a figure in the American right-to-die movement. Her case attracted nationwide attention in this area as well as in medical ethics.
On September 3, 1983, Bouvia, at the age of 26, admitted herself into the psychiatric ward of Riverside General Hospital in Riverside, California. She was almost totally paralysed by cerebral palsy and had severe degenerative arthritis, which caused her great pain. [1]
Bouvia was alienated from her family and husband, and had been entertaining thoughts of suicide. She requested hospital authorities to allow her to starve to death. When they refused and ordered her to be force-fed, Bouvia contacted the American Civil Liberties Union, which assigned her a lawyer. In the subsequent lawsuit, the court upheld the hospital's decision and ordered force-feeding to continue (Pence 64–65).
Following the court case, a bitter dispute broke out among physicians regarding the Bouvia case. Bouvia tried to resist the force-feeding by biting through the feeding tube. Four attendants would then hold her down while the tubing was inserted into her nose and liquids pumped into her stomach.
Some physicians called this battery and torture, while others claimed that the hospital was right to err on the side of continued life (Pence 65).
Bouvia appealed the lower court ruling and lost. Now, in addition to the force-feeding, she was hooked up to a morphine drip to ease the pain of her arthritis. In 1986, she appealed again and this time the court ruled in her favor that the force-feeding constituted battery. [2]
After the court case, Bouvia decided that she would live. However, her statements made it clear that it was because of the pain of starvation and that she actually wished she was dead.
In 1992, Bouvia's lawyer Richard Scott killed himself. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times after his suicide, Bouvia stated that she had gone on morphine after the original court ruling in 1983. She stated that side effects of the morphine made starvation unbearable and expressed bitterness that the 1983 ruling had gone against her. She stated that she had been strong enough to starve herself to death in 1983 and said that she never would have gone on morphine if she had known she would eventually get a court ruling in her favor. [3]
In 1998, she appeared on 60 Minutes, saying that she was still in pain and had felt great pressure to continue living; she expressed the hope that she would soon die of natural causes. She was still living in 2002. [4] In its obituary for USC professor Harlan Hahn, the Los Angeles Times on May 11, 2008, reported that Bouvia was still alive. Doctors in 1986 had predicted she could only live for another 15 to 20 years. [5]
Euthanasia is the practice of intentionally ending life to eliminate pain and suffering.
The right to die is a concept based on the opinion that human beings are entitled to end their life or undergo voluntary euthanasia. Possession of the right to die is often bestowed with the understanding that a person with a terminal illness, incurable pain, or without the will to continue living should be allowed to end their own life, use assisted suicide, or decline life-prolonging treatment. The question of who, if anyone, may be empowered to make this decision is often the subject of debate.
Sue Rodriguez was a Canadian right-to-die activist. In August 1991, she was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and was given two to five years to live. She ultimately made the decision to end her life and she sought the assistance of a doctor to that end, leading to a legal battle. She lost her case in front of the Supreme Court of Canada, but took her own life with the help of an anonymous doctor on February 12, 1994. She is cited as an important figure in the eventual legalization of medical assistance in dying in Canada.
The Terri Schiavo case was a series of court and legislative actions in the United States from 1998 to 2005, regarding the care of Theresa Marie Schiavo, a woman in an irreversible persistent vegetative state. Schiavo's husband and legal guardian argued that Schiavo would not have wanted prolonged artificial life support without the prospect of recovery, and in 1998, he elected to remove her feeding tube. Schiavo's parents disputed her husband's assertions and challenged Schiavo's medical diagnosis, arguing in favor of continuing artificial nutrition and hydration. The highly publicized and prolonged series of legal challenges presented by her parents, which ultimately involved state and federal politicians up to the level of George W. Bush, the then U.S. president, caused a seven-year delay before Schiavo's feeding tube was ultimately removed.
Stephanie Keene, better known by the pseudonym Baby K, was an anencephalic baby who became the center of a major American court case and a debate among bioethicists.
Rose Elizabeth Bird was the 25th Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court. She was the first female law clerk of the Nevada Supreme Court, the first female deputy public defender in Santa Clara County, the first woman to serve in the California State Cabinet, and the first female Chief Justice of California.
Cruzan v. Director, Missouri Department of Health, 497 U.S. 261 (1990), was a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States involving a young adult incompetent. The first "right to die" case ever heard by the Court, Cruzan was argued on December 6, 1989, and decided on June 25, 1990. In a 5–4 decision, the Court affirmed the earlier ruling of the Supreme Court of Missouri and ruled in favor of the State of Missouri, finding it was acceptable to require "clear and convincing evidence" of a patient's wishes for removal of life support. A significant outcome of the case was the creation of advance health directives.
Voluntary euthanasia is the ending of a person's life at their request in order to relieve them of suffering. Voluntary euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide (PAS) have been the focus of intense debate in recent years. Some forms of voluntary euthanasia are legal in Australia, Belgium, Canada, Colombia, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and Spain.
Oceana Wardlaw Martin Snead also known as Ocey Snead, was an American woman who was drugged and drowned in East Orange, New Jersey by her own family to collect $32,000 in insurance money.
Neil Papiano was an American lawyer, and managing partner of Iverson, Yoakum, Papiano & Hatch. He received Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts degrees from Stanford University, the latter in 1957, and an LL.B. from Vanderbilt University Law School in 1961. He was admitted to the State Bar of California in 1961.
Involuntary euthanasia is illegal in all 50 states of the United States. Assisted suicide is legal in 10 jurisdictions in the US: Washington, D.C. and the states of California, Colorado, Oregon, Vermont, New Mexico, Maine, New Jersey, Hawaii, and Washington. The status of assisted suicide is disputed in Montana, though currently authorized per the Montana Supreme Court's ruling in Baxter v. Montana that "nothing in Montana Supreme Court precedent or Montana statutes [indicates] that physician aid in dying is against public policy."
Participation of medical professionals in American executions is a controversial topic, due to its moral and legal implications. The practice is proscribed by the American Medical Association, as defined in its Code of Medical Ethics. The American Society of Anesthesiologists endorses this position, stating that lethal injections "can never conform to the science, art and practice of anesthesiology".
Consuelo Bland Marshall is a senior United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Central District of California.
Whitny Braun de Lobatón is an American bioethicist, professor, investigative researcher, documentary filmmaker and podcaster who has been featured on the Discovery Channel as the host and executive producer of "Undiscovered: The Lost Lincoln" and co-hosts the podcast "The Murders at Starved Rock with Andy Hale". She has also been featured on NPR and the National Geographic Channel television program "Taboo". She has served as a contributor for the Huffington Post. Her major academic work is centered in the fields of bioethics and public health and has focused on the Jain practice of Sallekhana and the Parsi practice of Dakhmenashini. She is currently the director of the master's in bioethics and professor of bioethics at Loma Linda University.
Lantz v. Coleman is a Connecticut superior court case that addresses the constitutionality of forcibly feeding prison inmates on hunger strikes. The court ruled in favor of force feeding.
The Riverside University Health System - Medical Center, or RUHS-MC, formerly Riverside County Regional Medical Center, or RCRMC, and also formerly Riverside General Hospital University Medical Center, or RGH UMC, is a public teaching hospital located at 26520 Cactus Avenue, Moreno Valley, California, United States, operated by the County of Riverside. It is classified as a Level I Trauma Center.
Lynette "Lynn" Gilderdale, also known on the internet as Jessie Oliver, was a British woman with a severely diminished quality of life from chronic fatigue syndrome who died by suicide after taking a morphine overdose after she decided she no longer wanted to endure the pain from the illness. She was assisted by her mother, Bridget Kathleen "Kay" Gilderdale, who was subsequently charged with attempted murder and was eventually given a one-year conditional discharge after admitting to assisting with her daughter's suicide.
Jahi McMath was a thirteen-year-old girl who was declared brain dead in California following surgery in 2013. This led to a bioethical debate engendered by her family's rejection of the medicolegal findings of death in the case, and their efforts to maintain her body using mechanical ventilation and other measures. Her parents considered these measures to constitute life support, while her doctors considered this to be futile treatment of a deceased person. In October 2014, the McMath family attorney made the unprecedented request that Jahi McMath's brain death declaration be overturned. The attorney later withdrew this request, saying he wanted time for the court-appointed medical expert and his own medical experts to confer. In March 2015, McMath's family filed a malpractice lawsuit against Children's Hospital Oakland and against the surgeon who performed McMath's surgery, indicating they were prepared to argue as part of the lawsuit that McMath was not dead, but profoundly disabled. The family lawyer stated that a preliminary second death certificate was issued on June 22, 2018, listing extensive bleeding relating to liver failure as the cause of death.
Baby M was the pseudonym of an Australian girl named Allison who was born with severe birth defects, whose treatment and eventual death caused significant controversy and international discussion about the medical ethics of disabled newborns. Right to Life activists accused her parents and the hospital of murdering the infant, leading to a lengthy legal inquest.
Matter of O'Connor, 1988 was a court case brought before the New York Court of Appeals.