Karen Ann Quinlan
Before Terry Schiavo, there was Karen Ann Quinlan. On April 14, 1975, after an evening out with friends during which she consumed alcohol and sedatives, the 21-year-old New Jersey resident stopped breathing and lapsed into a coma. After five months, doctors diagnosed Quinlan as being in a persistent vegetative state; her parents, who believed there was no chance of her returning to consciousness and who wanted to end her suffering, requested that Quinlan be disconnected from the machines that were sustaining her. When her doctors refused, they took the case to court — in what became one of the the first "right to die" case in U.S. legal history. Based on the right to privacy, the court ruled that "no compelling interest of the state could compel Karen to endure the unendurable" and allowed her to be taken off life support. Her story made headlines and provided the groundwork for numerous similar cases. But Quinlan's story didn't end there: weaned from the respirator, she survived for nearly 10 more years, dying of pulmonary failure on June 11, 1985 in a New Jersey nursing home.