Joseph Quinlan; Sought Daughter’s Right to Die

Joseph T. Quinlan, whose legal crusade to allow his daughter Karen Ann to “die with dignity” thrust him into the national spotlight, has died. He was 71.

Quinlan, a former pharmaceutical employee, died Saturday of cancer. His care had been supervised by the Karen Ann Quinlan Center of Hope, the Newton hospice which Quinlan and his wife, Julia, helped start with proceeds from a book and television movie about their daughter’s case.

Karen Ann Quinlan was 21 when she slipped into a coma at a party April 15, 1975. Although the cause was never established, people at the party said she had drunk several gin-and-tonics on top of a mild tranquilizer.

Convinced that their daughter’s condition would not improve, her parents requested that her respirator be turned off. Doctors refused.

The New Jersey Supreme Court sided with the Quinlans in March 1976, opening up a nationwide debate over the difficult choices families face when extraordinary medical measures are used to prolong life.

The Quinlans never sought the spotlight. “They say we were the pioneers. I guess we were. We just did what we had to do,” Joseph Quinlan said in an interview on the 20th anniversary of the decision.

As it turned out, Karen Ann Quinlan lived for more than nine years after she was removed from the respirator.

Joseph Quinlan visited her daily. “If she is asleep,” he told The Times in 1985, “I pray with her a little.”

The dedicated father became an activist for right-to-die laws and hospice care.

One of his final acts was to read and approve a legal brief for the New Jersey Medical Society opposing physician-assisted suicide.

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to review two such cases.