"Take her from the machine and let her pass into the hands of the Lord...If he wants her to live in a natural state, he'll create a miracle and she'll live, if he wants her to die, she will be off all the artificial means and she'll die whenever he calls her. "
Joseph Quinlan, a modest drug-company section supervisor, loves his adopted daughter, Karen Anne. That is why the squarely built man with the short graying hair found himself in court last week, pleading for permission to let her die. Karen, 21, has been in a coma since the early morning of April 15, her breathing maintained by a machine called a respirator. By all accounts she has shriveled into something scarcely human. She weighs only 60 Ibs., and she is unable to move a muscle, to speak or to think. One doctor testified last week that she had become an "anencephalic monster." Another described her simply as "grotesque." Yet she is undeniably alive. Which is why her parents' efforts to end her stunted existence reached a court of law.
Now Superior Court Judge Robert Muir Jr., 43, a relative newcomer to the bench but a man with a reputation for doing his legal homework, confronts the most difficult kind of decision any judge can face, a decision with a life in the balance. Because it deals with some of the most fundamental aspects of human existence, the Quinlan case has become the focus of increasing attention from doctors, lawyers and moral thinkers (TIME, Sept. 29 and Oct. 27), but it is up to Muir alone to rule whether there is a point beyond which life need no longer be preserved. He must rule whether it is legally permissible to remove the artificial devices that are keeping another human being in the twilight zone between life and death.
In the midst of its new notoriety, New Jersey's Morris County Courthouse remains a quiet, old-fashioned sort of place. George Washington wintered his troops in Morristown in 1777, and handsome 19th century houses still stand near the village green. The courthouse is a three-story Georgian building shaded by yellowing oaks, and the pew-like benches in Courtroom No. 1 have room for only about 110 spectators, with space for another 30 in the white-paneled balcony. The seats are packed every day, mostly with reporters from as far away as Tokyo and London; there are a few students, and one white-bearded eccentric called Prophet Dan, who claims he could cure the stricken girl. Dominating the courtroom, just behind the witness stand, is a huge (3 ft. by 5 ft.) diagram of the human brain, with all the parts clearly labeled—cerebellum, brain stem, pons, medulla ...
The trial that has attracted so much attention is an adversary proceeding in which there are no enemies. Neither the doctors who refused the Quinlans' request to remove Karen from her respirator nor the guardian appointed by the court to represent her nor the attorneys who represent the legal rights of the county and the state—none of these rival authorities can avoid a sense of uneasiness at prolonging the anguish of Joseph Quinlan and his wife Julia Ann. Their court argument is really a search for answers to questions for which there are no clear legal precedents.