Posted on 01/27/2014 8:10:12 AM PST by Morgana
A Texas hospital decided not to appeal a judge’s decision late Friday to allow a husband’s bid to remove his “brain dead” pregnant wife from life support, an action that would end the life of his own unborn child.
Following the decision, Marlise Muñoz, 33, was taken off machines at a Fort Worth hospital about 11:30 a.m. Sunday and her body was released to her husband, Erick Muñoz. The husband’s attorney released a statement saying the family “will now proceed with the somber task of laying Marlise Muñoz’s body to rest, and grieving over the great loss that has been suffered.” Erick Munoz’s statement made no mention of his unborn child, who has now died as a result of removing Marlise from life support.
marlisemunoz3Earlier Sunday, a statement from John Peter Smith Hospital indicated it would not appeal, despite pleas from pro-life advocates to save the life of the unborn baby, who was 22 weeks and 5 days old
“From the onset, JPS has said its role was not to make nor contest law but to follow it,” the statement read. “The hospital will follow the court order.”
Larry Thompson, a state’s attorney who argued on behalf of the hospital Friday, said the hospital, before the judge’s decision, was trying to protect the rights of the fetus as it believed Texas law instructed it to do. The hospital’s attorneys cited a section of the Texas Advance Directives Act that reads: “A person may not withdraw or withhold life-sustaining treatment under this subchapter from a pregnant patient.”
“There is a life involved, and the life is the unborn child,” Thompson told the judge.
On Sunday afternoon, about 40 people gathered near the hospital for a prayer vigil. Operation Rescue president Troy Newman, who coordinated the prayer vigil, told LifeNews he’s saddened by what’s transpired.
“We are grieved that the JPS hospital has removed life support from Marlise Munoz and her baby. As the term “life support” implies, Marlise’s body was alive and supporting a thriving pregnancy at the time support was withdrawn,” he said. “It is despicable that dehumanizing and deceptive language was used to refer to Marlise as a “corpse” and her baby’s condition as “incompatible with life” in order to elicit public support for putting them to death.”
Newman added: “A human being does not lose their God-given human beauty or dignity just because they are disabled or incapacitated. This case just goes to show how far we have slipped into the abyss of a Culture of Death and how intolerant we have become of those who are seen as “inconvenient.” We strongly believe that the order that led to the termination of life support is in complete contradiction to Texas law that was enacted to protect pre-born babies just like the Munoz child. The courts have failed this baby, the attorneys who should have defended Texas law have failed this baby, and the hospital has failed this baby. May this tragedy serve as a wake-up call to our society, lest others wrongly fall victim to this dehumanizing utilitarian view of life and death.”
Marlise Munoz collapsed in her home last November from an apparent blood clot in her lungs when she was 14 weeks pregnant with her second child. Her husband and other family members have asked the John Peter Smith Hospital in Ft. Worth to remove Marlise from life support after they were told she was “brain dead.” Ending life support would also end her unborn baby’s life.
Erick Munoz, who said a doctor has told him his wife is brain dead, had filed a lawsuit against JPS Health Network. The judge ordered the hospital to remove life support by 5 p.m. Monday.
According to AP, Republican Attorney General Greg Abbott, through a spokesman, said the case was a “heartbreaking tragedy” and that “Texas strives to protect both families and human life, and we will continue to work toward that end.”
Texas Sen. Wendy Davis, a Democrat running for governor, sided with Erick Munoz’s decision to remove life support and kill is unborn baby, saying, any decision like this “should be made by Mrs. Munoz’s family, in consultation with her doctors.”
The designation of “brain death” is a controversial one and presents moral and ethical issues, especially when the life of a baby is involved. There are many cases where babies have survived after the mothers have experienced similar situations to that of Marlise Munoz. There is a very strong possibility that Marlise’s baby could survive, given a little more time.
“We feel great compassion for the family of Marlise Munoz and her pre-born baby. No one ever wants to be in their difficult and tragic situation,” said Troy Newman, President of Operation Rescue. “Marlise wanted this baby, and as long as there is a chance that he or she can be saved, we support John Peter Smith Hospital in their bid to follow the law and protect this baby’s life.”
“The public has been given the erroneous impression that Marlise is a dead and decaying corpse. This assumption is completely false. Marlise’s heart continues to beat and she continues to nourish her pre-born baby. A rotting corpse cannot do that,” said Newman. “As for the baby, we have information that diagnostic tests have not been done on the baby to support allegations that there are developmental anomalies, but even if the baby does have health issues, that baby still does not deserve to be killed.”
Abortion groups like NARAL have coldly sided with Marlise’s husband in calling on the hospital to kill Marlise and her baby.
“Some people want to decide who lives and who dies based on their personal criteria. If that was allowed, none of our lives would be safe. We simply cannot murder sick or inconvenient people just because we don’t want the hassle of caring for them. That is a dangerous road that will only end up unjustly depriving vast numbers of people of their right to life, just as we have seen with the issue of abortion,” said Newman.
Wasn’t it the hospital that took the adversarial position to the husband and wanted to keep his wife on life support?
Given the above requirements, was the 'dead' mother able to function in those ways so that the alive unborn child can continue to build its own body/s[acesuit for life int he air world? Answering that question is to some degree subjective, wouldn't you agree?
longtermmemmory wrote: The only reason this is in court is due to the hospital trying to play games with the law because somebody at the hospital does not like the law.
I think we should just let the family mourn its loss(s).
Is this still in court? I thought the whole thing had been settled by the judge and the hospital already when they pulled the plug.
I was addressing the “THE BABY’S DEAD YAY!! IT WAS DEFORMED ANYWAY AND WAS SUFFERING AND IN A DEAD CORPSE MOMMY ZOMBIE STEW OH AND BY THE WAY I’M PRO-LIFE” crowd with my last posts.
Even with such evidence, there are those who will try to jump through hoops to isolate this case in Texas from the other rare cases. An agenda is being served, as I’m sure you realize, m’Lady.
Absolutely.
Where is that crowd here? You’re the only one making zombie jokes.
A question for you, where does the baby get oxygen? If the mother doesn’t get oxygen does it have an impact on the baby?
No. They thought they were obeying a state law
driftdiver wrote: By the way the concept that a dead body may not be able to properly support a baby is not hyperbole, whatever the insulting word games you want to play.
If she had been properly dead, you’d be right. Brain death is not the same as systemic, cellular death.
If they were the same, as you are somehow trying to advocate either via ignorance, stubbornness, or some combination thereof, then there’d be no such thing as “life support”, and thus no controversy at all about any brain-dead patients in any situation.
And I hadn’t started out by insulting you, but now I am because I’ve provided an authoritative source about the subject and you seem to have ignored it in order to act all offended.
That’s a familiar tactic. It usually doesn’t work for us conservatives, but hey, whatever floats your boat Chumlee.
I for one hope they removed the unborn baby and did an autopsy on it. I’d really like to know what it said.
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No for some strange reason the baby was never given a chance..
a Yahoo article said that the baby was not delivered..
“Munoz was removed from the machines shortly afterward and allowed to die. The fetus, which was at 23 weeks’ gestation, was not delivered.”
http://news.yahoo.com/brain-dead-texas-woman-taken-off-life-support-060336729.html
Go screw yourself sport. You are trying to claim moral ground by insulting others. Obviously you have a softspot for brain dead people because you are one.
Do they know if the baby was even viable? Was there a heartbeat?
U MAD BRO? CALL THE WAAAAAAAHMBULANCE!
troll
Yes there was a heartbeat..
not being viable just meant the baby wasn’t further along enough to be able to live outside the mother without being hooked up to machines himself for a while...
and that happens to lots of babies..even 40 weeks babies...
the baby was 23 weeks gestation..old enough to be born ..
Yes there was fetal heartbeat even as the woman was put on life support. When she was presented to medical personnel they immediately began treating TWO patients.
She wasn't "hurt," she had a pulmonary embolism. Not exactly something one person can easily inflict on another. Either he's the most brilliant murderer in history (in which case, why did he help rescuscitate her, instead of leaving her to die?), or it just tragically happened. Considering that pulmonary embolisms are one of the leading causes of death among pregnant women, I'm thinking the latter.
I don’t want the govt stepping in. In this case the father actually had a say in what happened to his baby and that is good thing.
Perhaps the doctors made the wrong decision but we’ll never know. This is a tragedy and if they made the wrong one for the wrong reasons they will face an accounting.
If the mother was brain dead I would be very surprised if the baby wasn’t also brain dead. I pray to God that I never have to make that decision.
So if they began treating two patients it seems logical they determined the baby was gone as well.
I am not in the business of retroactively reading the mind of medical personnel. The process of treating patients progresses from what is wrong to how to treat the malady. They kill patients when they start with preconceived notions, hence our medical science has developed many and very specific lab tests, usually beginning with broad spectrum results possible to less and less results possible, based upon eliminating the whats as they arise in the mind of the medical personnel, based upon their extensive experiences.
huh
Either you trust the healthcare providers to make the right decisions or you don’t. They started off making the right one.
Now just because we don’t like the answer it means they were incompetent or had evil intentions.
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