Ethics: Love and Let Die

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Although the wishes of patients and their families are often frustrated in court, lawmakers are not insensitive to their plight. Missouri Attorney General William Webster, who has led the legal fight against the Cruzans, may end up their unlikely ally. Webster realizes that few people have living wills, and that the Cruzans' ordeal has been torturous. "Without her case," he says, "I don't think people sitting in their living rooms would have to come face to face with the fact that we have thousands of patients across the country who are never going to recover. They are in this legal, medical nightmare -- this limbo."

Webster endorses new legislation that would try to find a careful resolution. He has already met stiff resistance from the Missouri legislature and has a hard fight ahead to change the laws. He proposes that families of patients who have been continuously unconscious for three or more years could petition for withdrawing treatment, including food and water. If they were unanimous that this is what the patient would want, and three independent physicians certified that the coma was irreversible, the patient would be allowed to die.

That would put the decision back in the families' hands and leave them with the ultimate, intimate reckoning -- a weighing of needs and fears and risks and possibilities. Long after the decision is made, the resolution may continue to haunt. But, in a sense, the abiding difficulty of these choices has a value of its own. It reflects the deep desire to do the right thing and respect the wishes of a loved one -- and also an unshakable sense that life is neither to be taken nor relinquished lightly, even in mercy's name.