Posted on 01/14/2014 12:29:26 PM PST by Morgana
Today we have a tragic pregnancy situation out of Fort Worth, Texas. At Life News, Rachel Cox summarizes:
In November, Erick Munoz’s wife Marlise, who was 14 weeks pregnant, suffered a blood clot and is still in the hospital hooked up to machines. Doctors say she is brain dead and will never recover. Erick Munoz believes the baby will have defects and the baby’s life won’t be worth living. Her husband says his wife clearly stated she never wanted to be on life support. Erick Munoz wants to “honor his wife’s wishes” and remove her from life support which would kill her and their unborn baby. However, Texas law prevents the removal of a pregnant woman from life support and Erick Munoz is publicly voicing his opposition.
Doctors plan to assess the baby’s viability and decide whether to attempt a cesarean section at 24 weeks.
As Newsbusters’ Katie Yoder documents, pro-aborts far and wide are seething with rage over this. But curiously, that’s despite the fact that almost none of their token justifications are present. Delivery will no longer affect Marlise’s well-being, and as Cox points out, whatever end-of-life wishes she had told Erick almost certainly didn’t account for the remote possibility that ending her life would also end her son or daughter’s, in what is presumably a desired pregnancy.
That means a man is presuming to make a woman’s reproductive decision for her—with the full backing of the supposed “reproductive rights” champions. Apparently the outcome of a dead baby is all that matters.
At RH Reality Check, Katherine Taylor and Lynn Paltrow tie themselves into logic pretzels to argue that the case is “dehumanizing”:
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.
*Sigh* for the millionth time, the sexes aren’t unequal; the situations are. Women are perfectly “free to determine what will happen to them if they become sick and unable to communicate their health-care wishes” in all cases except those where making that determination would kill someone else.
For that reason, pregnancy is fundamentally incomparable to a non-pregnant person’s wishes to have his or her own feeding tube removed. (And in reality, the principle behind pregnancy exclusion laws very well could apply to men—for instance, whether one conjoined twin exercising his rights would infringe on the rights of his brother.)
I’m sorry guys can’t get pregnant, but your quarrel is with biology, not some patriarchal boogeyman. The fact that liberals have devolved feminism into a perpetual temper tantrum about nature’s unequal distribution of reproductive processes isn’t a good enough reason to ignore the unborn life at stake.
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.
Oops. So desperate are the authors to hijack pro-life language for themselves that they’ve unwittingly conceded the legitimacy of some of our own principles.
Whether you consider Marlise Munoz dead probably depends on whether you believe her soul passed on with brain death or she’s still in there until the rest dies, but the pro-aborts are clearly going by the former (or a secular equivalent), so let’s run with it. She’s dead; she has no more earthly consciousness, sentience, pain sensitivity, desires, welfare, or future. What she “would not have wanted” can only possibly matter if she has or had some intrinsic worth completely unrelated to those qualities—a sanctity of her life as a human being.
If that’s the case, then an unborn baby, from his or her earliest moments of existence, must also warrant intrinsic respect regardless of those qualities. A zygote can’t think, feel, or want, but he or she is a living human being with an entire future ahead. If anything, shouldn’t a full life waiting to be had outweigh a life that is fully over?
And clearly, these laws interfere with the practice of medicine, substituting legislators’ values for what should be decisions made by pregnant patients and their families in consultation with physicians.
So I take it that means we should repeal ObamaCare, then? (Sorry. I know that’s off-topic. But hey, low-hanging fruit.)
When you think about it, it’s only natural that pro-aborts accidentally make the pro-life case from time to time. There are no great morals to be protected or enlightenment to be learned by championing a cause of pure selfishness, so when looking for actual principles to wrap it in, there are only so many places to look.
God help her and her baby.
As noted on another thread, if this mother is fed, oxygenated, and kept warm, her child will continue to build its own body for life in the air world. 'These people' want that child dead, to prevent the revelation that the child is building its own body for life. Evil saunters openly in America.
Like Reagan said...“I’ve noticed that everyone who is for abortion has already been born.”
Sounds like he would make a lousy father.
I’m thinking the same thing. If she’s taken care of she might recover. Take well cared for too. This story stinks to high heaven and why they are not looking into attempted murder in this is beyond me.
Prayers for her and her baby. It sounds as if the people at the hospital are trying to do the right thing.
Why was she hooked up to life support in the first place? don’t you need permission?
If Erik pulls the plug himself, what would happen? I doubt they would prosecute him because it would be too hard to get a jury to convict.
They are absolutely in love with abortion.
It’s really self-loathing self hatred. No wonder. Feminazis are angry, self-despising misfits who blame men for all their self-inflicted problems.
ok... i read the headline and immediately thought:
‘born of the undead’
yea, that’s creepy. need to stop watching those shows ;)
The husband is as faithful as a saint, he is trying to manage respect for the moral dilemnas of TWO lives, not one.
He knows what his wifes expectations anticipated a different set if circumstances NOT the present one.
He also knows something from their relationship that she might have been in favor of in the present circumstance.
EVERYONE should leave it to him to restle with the choices his wife delegated to him NOT because she is “unequal” or subordinate, but because it her life not his that is at stake, but his authority BY her choice.
Decisions are made for other people by those who are supposed to be knowledgeable of the wishes of the affected person.
But what parent knows what the wishes of the unborn child might be? A large assumption is being made here, that the child wishes to retire from the vicissitudes of life before ever being in a position to assess what those difficulties or challenges may be.
Sometimes the assumptions are right.
Sometimes.
Saving it is not dehumanizing for the baby!!! Quite the opposite. Terri Schiavo’s husband claimed to know she didn’t want to live. Even though she had to be starved and dehydrated to kill her. Yes, I understand that this is a different situation where artificial means are keeping the mother alive. Hard to understand, though, why the father would not treasure this child as his wife’s last gift.
Saints do not try to murder their unborn children.
So he is a saint for advocating the imminent death of “his” child? I guess..........
Though it may appear that their position is “abortion no matter what”,
their mindset is more of “don’t humanize the fetus no matter what”.
Because if that “fetus” is HUMAN, then aborting it IS murder, and most of these vehement “pro” aborts are actually “had” aborts, who have devoted the rest of their lives to justifying what they did.
as I said, and as the disciples knew, some moral quandries between two moral concerns, do not always in every circumstance povide us with the inspiration to the same result, any more than G-d answers all our prayers with the same result we might expect in our lives
I do not object to others with moral concerns on the man’s decisions, and not because I might agree with them, only because their Liberty gives them the right to theem. I do object to blanket “zero tolerance” translations of them into LEGAL mandates against the Liberty of others, in EVERY circumstance.
Whether I reject the husband’s moral position, or not, I defend his legal right in Liberty to make it. He knows that it is an account ONLY G-d will eventually judge him on. I hope everyone casting stones is prepared for the same extremity of judgement they wish to pass on this man, for ALL THEIR indescretions, which as G-d says will be their lot. Maybe in his lifetime, the man may “repent” (change of mind about) his decision, and meet with G-d in prayer on the subject; who knows. Meanwhile I support him as I believe the law should, whether it would be my decision if I were in his shoes or not.
You have not read much history.
Do these same people want to pull the plug on their elderly parents?
Her life is not at stake. The baby's life is at stake.
This argument reminds me of what some cultures used to do. If the mother died before her child was weaned her child was buried with her.
Sorry but you don't get to kill the baby because the mother is not here anymore.
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