Julia Quinlan

Making the best of a tragedy

Julia Quinlan

This episode, as always, looks at people who can be considered as a Profile in Character. These people exhibit good qualities that make the world a better place.

Julia has provided great contributions under extremely difficult circumstances. Her daughter, Karen Ann Quinlan, had lapsed into a coma after an overdose of drugs and other conditions. She was in a persistent vegetative state in the hospital. In prior times, before modern medicine, she would have died. Her parents requested that Karen be disconnected from the ventilator but this was refused by doctors. Eventually the courts allowed Karen to be removed from the ventilator but she breathed for nine more years before finally dying.

Karen’s case raised very deep, very important, and controversial and divisive questions involving some the most essential questions of life. These questions are till considered profound and weighty and continue to be confronted and be decided upon.

Karen was adopted by Joseph and Julia Quinlan when a baby. She went to catholic school and lived in the Morris and Sussex County area.

Imagine the emotional stress of letting go of your child while also needing to fight the medical and judicial community to do so, and in front of a worldwide audience. “We just asked to have her put back in a natural state so she could die in God’s time,” said Julia Quinlan.

After enduring almost a decade of strain, the parents contemplated Catholic moral theology as devout Roman Catholics, and walked under the unending pressure from the watching world. Karen finally died.

Julia and Joseph loved their daughter as much as the situation would allow. But they did more. They did much more. They opened a hospice and memorial fund in honor of their daughter’s memory. Although her husband Joseph has passed on, Julia continues to provide a loving care for others, maintaining a clear purpose based upon the dilemma of her daughter Karen.

Julia has dedicated herself to the cause of hospice and care for those terminally ill. She has, over forty years, been a national speaker and has written about her experience. She has helped the nation grapple with ethics, end-of-life care and the place of hospice for this.

Still alive today at 97 years old. As founder of the Karen Ann Quinlan Home for Hospice on the picturesque Waterwheel Farm and instrumental in founding the Joseph T. Quinlan Bereavement Center in rural Augusta, NJ, Julia Quinlan remains an enduring and productive source of energy and strength on end-of-life questions and does her best to provide solutions.

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Episode 25 6/22/2024