Bouvia Still Wants the Right to Die

Elizabeth Bouvia, the paralyzed woman who once went to court for the right to starve herself to death under hospital care, is alive and reasonably well and living in a tiny cell-like isolation room at County-USC Medical Center.

She lost her 1983 Riverside Superior Court fight to starve herself, but when she later moved to Los Angeles, she established case law asserting a patient’s right to control her treatment regardless of age, health or motives.

The 2nd District Court of Appeal ordered one county hospital to remove a feeding tube that she detested, and the chastened Superior Court later ordered her intravenous morphine supply reinstated.

“I don’t regret anything,” Bouvia reflected in a bedside interview. “But the publicity has made it hard. I could have done it more quietly.”

Spirited Into Hospital

Because of the publicity, she was spirited into County-USC through the basement nearly two years ago, is registered on the computer as Jane Doe and lives in one of the hospital’s handful of isolation rooms, to avoid having to live with roommates.

She rarely grants interviews and would not allow her picture to be taken for this report. She said she does not want anything to cause the public to write, phone or try to visit her.

Bouvia still wants to end her life, but said that now is not the time.

“The publicity has had a big effect. If I tried to starve myself, I would be publicly shunned,” Bouvia said. “So what I am trying to do right now is just keep the peace.”

Her primary attorney, Richard S. Scott, and a couple of other American Civil Liberties Union lawyers visit her regularly, but she said she is planning no further lawsuits.

Her father, who lives in Bandon, Ore., on the coast near Coos Bay, and her two sisters, who live in Seattle, visit a couple of times a year and provide the colorful posters and small stuffed animals that brighten her austere yellow and white chamber. They also provide the pack and a half of Players cigarettes that she smokes daily.

Paralyzed by cerebral palsy and complications, the 30-year-old former social worker has given up reading because she has no strength to hold books. She watches television a lot and sees friends about once a week.

Bouvia has left her room only six times in nearly two years--once to see a dentist and the other times to make telephone calls.

“It is really frustrating at times,” she said, “because I just kind of lie here.”

Bright and articulate, Bouvia said she weighs about 90 pounds (up from the 68 she weighed during her last court controversy) and eats at least one meal a day of “everyday food.”

She last tried starvation in January, 1987. She gave it up after three weeks when she learned that starving could take several weeks, and she felt she could not endure the pain and side effects such as constant vomiting that were caused by the taking of her seven medications without food.

Wishes for Quicker Way

“Starving myself would take too long,” she said. “I wish there was a quicker way.”

She expects to spend the rest of her life in the $800-a-day, MediCal-paid hospital room.

“The thought of being here another 10 years, I just can’t fathom. I just take it one day at a time. I may be here six months, I don’t know. I would rather be dead than lie here,” Bouvia said.

“It is hard,” she said, acknowledging that her death wish has been controversial, “but people should have the right . . . to decide if they want to suffer or not.”