Quinlan’s Kin in Seclusion to Mourn in Peace

Karen Ann Quinlan’s parents said Wednesday that they were at peace because their daughter “died in a natural state,” in her mother’s arms, preserving to the end the dignity won for her in a landmark court case.

The family went into seclusion after Miss Quinlan’s death at 31-- ending a decade in a coma--again brought attention to their successful fight to remove her from a respirator.

“Please let us mourn in peace,” Julia Quinlan said in a brief interview at the family’s home Wednesday morning.

Her husband, Joseph, said that they were at peace because their daughter had “died in a natural state.”

‘Shouldn’t Fear Death’

“I think there are a lot of lessons to be learned by how far we can go to preserve life,” Quinlan said. “Death is not so much to be feared. Everything in this world is temporary. We shouldn’t really fear death that much.”

The father, although weary, said that he and his wife are strengthened by their belief in an afterlife. He called life “a trial.”

Miss Quinlan died at 7:01 p.m. Tuesday in the Morris View Nursing Home here of respiratory failure after a five-day battle with pneumonia. She had spent 10 years in a “chronic vegetative state,” said James Wolf, her doctor for six years.

The state medical examiner conducted an autopsy Wednesday, but family spokesmen said they do not expect an answer to the lingering mystery of whether a combination of “therapeutic” amounts of a mild tranquilizer and alcohol consumed at a party caused Miss Quinlan to slip into the coma in April, 1975.

Miss Quinlan’s case established the rights of the terminally ill and their families to decide on treatment to prolong life.