Posted on 01/24/2014 6:54:06 PM PST by Morgana
A judge allowed a Texas 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.
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.
munozSo far John Peter Smith Hospital officials have refused to follow the family’s request, citing a Texas law that prohibits hospitals from removing life support from pregnant women.
Erick Munoz, who says a doctor has told him his wife is brain dead, has filed a lawsuit against JPS Health Network. But, the judge in the case sided with the state law and hospital.
The judge ordered the hospital to remove life support by 5 p.m. Monday.
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.”
Newman added after the ruling:
We are appalled by Judge Wallace’s order to terminate life support for Marlise Munoz and her baby. The order is the equivalent of signing a death sentence for Baby Munoz. We utterly reject the false notion that Marlise’s body is a rotting corpse, which is impossible since a decaying body cannot support the life of a baby for weeks, as Marlise has.
Killing people because they are disabled is wrong, and dangerously devalues all life. We condemn in the strongest terms this order to fatally discriminate against this disabled mother and her baby, especially in light of the fact that there are people standing by to adopt the baby knowing that the child will have special needs.
Even if the Munoz baby has suffered disabilities due to Marlise’s condition, numerous people have expressed an interest in adopting the Munoz baby regardless of whether he or she has special needs.
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.
Writing at LifeNews, Calvin Frieberger says abortion activists are upset.
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.
The judge said not viable
He did not say viability was due to gestation age.
Two different things again.
The pro life group is fishing for a case to set precedent in Texas on this sort of dilemma
They won’t win.
JFTR....anti abortion here....not pro life
““the hospital and the Munoz family agreed on crucial facts listed in a court document: that Marlise Munoz, 33, has “met the clinical criteria for brain death since November 28” and that “the fetus gestating inside Mrs. Munoz is not viable.””
This is what the judge used today to order the removal of ventilators and respirators from this woman”
However:
Not much is known about fetal survival when mothers suffer brain death during pregnancy. German doctors who searched for such cases found 30 of them in nearly 30 years, according to an article published in the journal BMC Medicine in 2010.
Those mothers were further along in pregnancy - 22 weeks on average - when brain death occurred than in the Texas case. Birth results were available for 19 cases. In 12, a viable child was born. Follow-up results were available for six, all of whom developed normally.
You are well on point. I’ll note this brain death happened @ 14 weeks and since then the fetus has been living in a toxic stew due to dead mothers inability to regulate the many chemicals/hormones in her body. Among other things, the poor dead mother is likely diabetic due to the failure of her pituitary gland.
Yes there are documented cases of babies gestating in a dead mother, but I doubt there are any that started at 14 weeks.
the key point in your apples and oranges comment is that THIS case involved a woman who was around 10 weeks pregnant.... a critical time of baby development.
Doesn’t matter what you or I think. this case is over
Just a sad case all around.
Like the family said after the ruling, “We didn’t win anything here.”
It's much easier to feign outrage against the father and judge, calling them despicable murderers, than to try and understand basic human anatomy and physiology.
This is the first I had heard this.
It helps to look outside Life News when trying to learn the facts of these types of cases.
“the key point in your apples and oranges comment is that THIS case involved a woman who was around 10 weeks pregnant.... a critical time of baby development.
Doesn’t matter what you or I think. this case is over”
What you are missing here is the baby is now 22 weeks old, not 10 weeks. What should have happened back then as opposed to what should happen now is a different subject. And the analogy isn’t apples and oranges, as the baby is now close to viable, and the track record from German studies is that many of these babies pull through. Which leaves me back to my initial comment, how truly deformed or non viable is the baby in reality?
As the baby would be adopted out if viable, than the husband should not have an objection to waiting a few more weeks. Then, if a viable baby is delivered, his wife will be allowed to die. A matter of a few weeks’ wait doesn’t make it or break it for the husband and his family. It’s not like he has to wait a lifetime for his wife’s physical death to take place. I’d err on the side of potential baby viability, over speeding up the wife’s physical death over only a 3 week wait.
“Doesn’t matter what you or I think. this case is over”
Not if appealed. It may or may not be, but if so, that changes the equation.
??? Not one of the fetus at 14 weeks survived. Not one.
“Not one of the fetus at 14 weeks survived. Not one.”
The baby is now 22 weeks, not 14 weeks.
The brain death occurred when the fetus was at 14 weeks.
“I’ll note this brain death happened @ 14 weeks and since then the fetus has been living in a toxic stew due to dead mothers inability to regulate the many chemicals/hormones in her body. Among other things, the poor dead mother is likely diabetic due to the failure of her pituitary gland.”
I understand your concerns. Again, we don’t know if it is a toxic stew in there or not. The doctors should know. The doctors need to come clean and in detail about the state of the baby and the state of the mother’s interior environment. Than an objective decision could be made, one way or the other. Otherwise, my instincts tell me to give the baby a chance, if it only means a few weeks to a month’s wait. That’s not a long wait before pulling the plug on the mom. Of course, now the courts are in on this too.
than = then above. Typo
The Link from my post 72 is about a baby born to a brain dead mother who was 15 weeks pregnant at time of brain death. Her baby was born at 27 weeks and developed normally.
Were the tests to determine if the baby has abnormalities done , or not done?
If they were not done, why are they saying they were done?
This is what's so odd about this case.
Why do the facts keep changing?
The basic question is: Does this baby have rights as a human being seperate from his/her mother?
Does he/she deserve the right to live?
What tests have been done on the baby?
Where are they?
It's when the facts keep changing that I start suspecting sone people posting have more than what may, or may not be best for mother and child as their primary concern.
As a recovering attorney, I find it remarkable that the press and lamestream media very often fail to adequately identify the judicial perps who commit these atrocities. In this matter, even worse, it is the normally reliable Life Site News that is making the omission.
Note also that the decision to pull the plug on mother and therefore on the baby provides only one business day before it must be carried out. Perhaps Judge Wallace wants to discourage appeals from Judge Wallace's decision. What thorough judicial tyranny!
If Wallace will not stay his/her own death sentence meted out to mother and baby long enough to allow for appeal, then the appellate court over him ought to do so. One part of the standard would be the potential harm to the respective parties. The, ummm, "baby daddy" would have to suffer some brief additional time for mommy and baby to live or the hospital and its personnel would be drafted by his/her judicial majesty and required to kill both of them. Sounds like the very definition of a no brainer!
Don’t bother responding...some people can’t be reasoned with. See #59 and #66.
Agree. Family decision. Keeping this woman's corpse animated for months to see what if anything survives within her would be a macabre unnatural medical experiment.
Maybe there was never any chance of a positive outcome for the baby. We don't have the information reasonably to form an opinion. One problem is that it's difficult to trust medical personnel: many are pro-death.
Mr. Munoz wanted his wife and baby terminated immediately, weeks ago. Maybe he was in shock, but nothing in the reportage has indicated a desire for his child to survive and be born.
And his attorney says, ... “pregnant women die every day.”
They die in car accidents. They die of heart attacks. They die from head injuries,” she said. “And when they die the fetus dies with them. That is the way it has always been and the way it should be.”
Dead "fetus" is "the way it should be."
We have been through 40 years of unrelieved emotional flapdoodle (term coined by Mark Twain) to the effect that, if anyone anywhere finds an unborn baby inconvenient, let's all have a good cry and then murder the baby to make the emotional "feel" better. Next up, likewise, the elderly, the sick, the retarded and the handicapped. Margaret Sanger's vision of her ideal world has no place in a conservative's ideal world. Also, Margaret Sanger and her co-conspirators in murder of the inconvenient never suggested that they even believed in God much less had a relationship with God. Her murderous spirit has so permeated our society that even some conservatives, and some otherwise Godly conservatives, reflexively express Sanger's views on what is desirable public policy.
When a relative is in irreversible proximity to death from a degenerative condition such as a terminal cancer, heroic measures are not required BUT the provision of nutrition, hydration, oxygen and other palliative care is not in the category of "heroic." "Pulling the plug" or refusing nutrition or hydration or oxygen is in another category, particularly when the primary patient is a pregnant woman and, necessarily, the unborn is also a patient.
Finally, when a state enacts contrary laws that allow for the killing of the innocent, other principles apply. The unborn child, SCOTUS or no SCOTUS, is an individual human being and a person under the constitution and entitled to the equal protection of the laws under Amendment 14 to the US Constitution. SCOTUS which has imposed its infernal agenda since 1973's Roe vs. Wade and its evil progeny has a back asswards approach to such social issues and bears the guilt for a minimum of 55 million slaughtered and shares that guilt with the individual doctors and "family" decision makers who have decided to kill, usually for their own reputations or convenience. Maybe Obozo is our initial punishment for this unspeakable state of affairs.
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