Court Refuses to Order Life Support for Coma Patient

Missouri Supreme Court today turned down a request to resume food and water for Nancy Cruzan, the young woman who has been comatose since a 1983 car accident.

The court rejected a plea by an anti-euthanasia group that state officials be forced to provide nourishment to Cruzan, whose condition was deteriorating six days after the tube was removed.

The court’s two-sentence order issued at Jefferson City was signed by Judge Edward Robertson. He wrote the court’s November, 1988, decision that denied a request by Cruzan’s family to halt her food and water.

That 1988 ruling sent the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in June in its first right-to-die case that Missouri could require “clear and convincing” evidence that Cruzan would want to die.