Anna is an 84 year old female who is confined to a nursing home. She is unable to eat orally due to paralysis of er throat and is fed through a tube in her stomach. She entered the nursing home six months ago due to a CVA she suffered at home. After much rehabilitation, she is able to ambulate, dress, and toilet herself without assistance. Within the past year, she has lost her husband, for whom she had been the primary caregiver for the past four years, and her only child moved out of the area due to an employment change.

Anna is alert, oriented, and competent. She has expressed to staff that the life she leads is now not worth living. She has requested that her feedings be stopped and that she be allowed to die. Her son, upon hearing about this, asked that her priest be contacted to talk with his mother because "doing this is clearly against his mother's religious beliefs". The priest was contacted and visited Anna. Although Anna has had some "good days" since the priest's visit, she has begun again asking to stop her feedings. The doctor has been notified and will address this issue with Anna tomorrow. The ethics committee chairperson has made the administrator aware of the situation. If you were the administrator, what would you do? What can you legally and ethically do?