This was reported here in Australia a couple of weeks ago and
I do remember posting about it as well.
It is hard to understand how this could be deemed acceptable.
The
family are now suing the hospital. This isn't a case of keeping her on life support for a few weeks. They plan to keep her on life support for months. I read somewhere at one point that they were even considering
going beyond the 24 weeks gestation.
The fetus is now in its 20thweek, and the family claim the hospital doctors have said they will “make a decision about what to do with the fetus as it reached 22 to 24 weeks,” and that they have discussed whether Munoz will be able to carry the baby to full term for a cesarean. Her father, Ernest Machado says, “All she is is a host for a fetus … We have no input in the decision-making process. They’re prolonging our agony.”
I cannot for the life of me understand how something like this could happen. And the laws in Texas also exist in other States as well. As denial of rights go,
this one is right up there:
Although “pregnancy exclusion” laws have been on the books for more than two decades, the case of the now 19-week pregnant Marlise Munoz in Texas is bringing attention to the laws in more than 30 states that explicitly establish a separate and unequal status for women. These laws exclude pregnant women from the right given to other people to direct in a living will that life support be stopped, or to authorize a family member to make that decision if they have no living will.
Rather than archaic sexist laws left on the books from earlier times, the pregnancy exclusions are of a recent vintage. They establish that while men are free to determine what will happen to them if they become sick and unable to communicate their health-care wishes, women who may become pregnant are not free to plan the course of their health care, lives, and deaths.
By relying on a Texas law that states “a person may not withdraw or withhold life-sustaining treatment under this subchapter from a pregnant patient,” the hospital has refused to allow Munoz’s husband and her family to make what should be a private decision to remove her body from mechanical support. Apparently this law that clearly applies to life-sustaining treatment of a pregnant woman who is alive is being interpreted to permit actions solely to sustain the life of the fetus. As a result, Munoz’s body will remain a fetal gestator for as long as hospital staff, acting on behalf of the state, chooses. In her case, the physicians say they will decide at 24 weeks (over two months after her death) whether to continue the use of her body to gestate the pregnancy or to cut her body open and perform cesarean surgery. All of this is medically complex and none of it ensures a healthy birth outcome.
It is hard to imagine a more absolute denial of a woman’s personhood than depriving her of the right to decide her own future, and then literally using her body without permission—possibly for weeks or months—as an object for a fetus to grow in. Yet this is exactly what the pregnancy exclusions envision in the 31 states that have passed them. A majority of these laws prohibit life support from being withdrawn from a woman even if she retains some consciousness and is suffering extreme pain. In Texas and many other states, the laws would prohibit doctors from following a woman’s wishes to remove life support even in the earliest stages of pregnancy.
Not only is she being kept this way against her wishes, that of her family and her husband, but they may decide to keep her like this until she is 40 weeks.
At present, they do not know if the "child" will be able to survive without the life support that is artificially keeping the mother's heart beating. The mother is completely brain dead. There is no chance she will wake up. She is, by every definition, dead. The "child" could very well be in the same state. All they do know is that the heart is beating. In the meantime, they are going to keep going like this and see whether it is also brain dead or not. She is legally dead in every sense of the word. She has not breathed on her own since she collapsed and her heart has not beaten on its own since that time either. This is what happens with deeming even a fertilised egg a "person". Had she been 6 weeks pregnant, the result would have been the same.
In response,
the hospital has hired a prominent anti-choice lawyer, because as the family and legal experts see it,
the hospital is interpreting the law in a way that it was never meant to be interpreted:
“If she is dead, I don’t see how she can be a patient, and I don’t see how we can be talking about treatment options for her,” said Thomas W. Mayo, an expert on health care law and bioethics at the Southern Methodist University law school in Dallas.
Arthur L. Caplan, director of medical ethics at NYU Langone Medical Center in Manhattan, agreed. “The Texas Legislature can’t require doctors to do the impossible and try to treat someone who’s dead,” Mr. Caplan said. “I don’t think they intended this statute the way the hospital is interpreting it.”
Critics of the hospital’s actions also note that the fetus has not reached the point of viability outside the womb and that Ms. Munoz would have a constitutional right to an abortion.
The family were told that it was possible that she had been without oxygen for up to an hour, before she was discovered. Her foetus was also without oxygen for that length of time. All they do know is that there is a foetal heartbeat. And that is it. As linked earlier, foetal heartbeat has also been used as an excuse to not treat ectopic pregnancies or even women who have miscarried and have gone septic. In this instance, the foetal heartbeat is forcing a dead woman to remain on life support against hers and her family's wishes.
There is absolutely no excuse for such a denial of rights and a clear difference in rights. It is exceptionally sexist.
