Kin May Remove Food Tubes, Says Top Florida Court

The Florida Supreme Court ruled Thursday that relatives or guardians can order the removal of feeding tubes that keep brain-damaged people alive, even if the patients have not signed “living wills.”

The justices said the guardians do not need a court’s approval in each individual case. However, the patient must have expressed, at least verbally, a preference for dying rather than being kept alive with feeding tubes.

The foundation of the “right-to-die” decision, which came in the case of an 89-year-old woman who died last summer, is the right to privacy in the state constitution.

“This case resolves a question of an individual’s constitutional right of self-determination,” Justice Rosemary Barkett wrote in the majority opinion.

The woman at the center of the case, Estelle Browning, spent the last 2 1/2 years of her life hooked up to feeding tubes that she had earlier, in a “living will,” said she did not want.

She suffered permanent brain damage in a stroke and was left in a vegetative state, unable to swallow or communicate. She was not comatose. Doris Herbert, Browning’s second cousin and only living relative, was named her guardian.

Herbert sought permission to remove the tubes in 1988. The state fought the request and a trial court denied it. But a state appeals court said the state’s constitution allowed it, and the issue was reviewed by the Supreme Court.