Judge: Parents Must Decide on Child's Life Support

THE NEW YORK TIMES, May 17 — In a difficult end-of-life case, a New York judge has ruled that parents generally do not need to obtain a court's permission to remove a child from life support if he is in a persistent vegetative state.

New York Supreme Court Judge Doris Ling-Cohan decided that a 3-year old girl who never regained consciousness after a seizure last New Year's Eve did not need to be kept on a respirator.

The order was issued verbally in April. The girl died April 17, but the facts of the case were only made public a month later.

Previously, New York law had been ambiguous on the rights of parents in such cases.

Though a spokesman for the New York State Catholic Conference said he thought that in this particular case the removal of the girl from a respirator was “consistent with Catholic teaching,” the conference opposes a Family Health Care Decisions bill, which would establish procedures for family members and others to make health care decisions for an incapacitated patient.

The group is concerned about how the bill would address people without surrogates, pregnant women and the withdrawal of food and water from dying patients.

Sunday Now a Day of Spirits

DELAWARE NEWS JOURNAL/NEW YORK TIMES, May 19 — A number of states, including Delaware and New York, have looked to an unlikely source of revenue in tough fiscal times: increased tax receipts through more sales of liquor. How to achieve that? Leave liquor stores open more days each month.

Legislators have begun to re-examine centuries-old “blue laws” designed to keep the Sabbath holy by banning sales of alcohol (in some states, even wine), the Delaware News Journal reported.

The New York Times reported that the Delaware bill opening the shops passed with little opposition and went into effect May 18. In New York, the legislature passed a slightly different proposal, still requiring that liquor stores close one day per week but permitting the store to choose the day.

Laws restricting Sunday liquor sales face challenges in Kansas, Washington state and Rhode Island, the News Journal reported, also noting that four of the five most populous states now permit liquor sales on Sunday. Only Texas does not.

Islamic Quebec?

THE MONTREAL GAZETTE, May 14 — It seems that Islam has become the largest non-Christian faith in Quebec — as it already has in the rest of Canada, according to The Montreal Gazette.

Immigrants “from south Asia, north Africa and the Middle East” have swollen the population of Muslims in Quebec to 108,620 — an increase of more than 140% during the 1990s. Canadian census figures show that Muslims now outnumber Jews in both the province and the nation.

Chairman Bashir Hussain of the Montreal Chapter of the Council of Muslim Communities in Canada recalled that there were once only a few of his coreligionists in Montreal.

“Now,” he said, “we have about 30 mosques and places of prayer, and it's still not enough.”