San Diego Judge Grants Right to Die to Woman, 92, in a Coma for 1 Year

Two days after he stood at the bedside of an aged, comatose woman, looking for signs of vitality, a San Diego County Superior Court judge cleared the way Thursday for the woman’s daughter to end the feeding and medical treatment that have preserved life.

Unless there is an appeal, the decision by Judge Milton Milkes means that a nasal feeding tube will be removed from 92-year-old Anna Hirth within the next month. According to doctors’ testimony, she will probably die a week or two later.

Concluding that there is no chance her condition will improve, Milkes ruled that both legal precedent and human decency dictated that Hirth’s daughter, Helen Gary of Calabasas Park, be authorized to terminate her mother’s treatment.

“When life has lost all function, it is not life which is extended,” he said in an extemporaneous 75-minute oral decision. “Rather, it is death which receives a reprieve.”

The decision follows a growing line of cases in California and other states establishing the power of patients--or those closest to them, if they cannot speak for themselves--to exercise the right to die by overruling their doctors and refusing life-sustaining care.

Milkes directed Hirth’s physician, Dr. Allen Jay of San Diego, to write a medical order ending her treatment or find another physician to issue the order. If none can be found, Milkes’ decision authorizes the operators of Hacienda de la Mesa, the nursing home where Hirth has lived since a choking incident left her in a vegetative state a year ago, to remove the feeding tube two weeks after his order becomes final.