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News: Brain-Dead Woman Forced to Incubate Fetus AGAINST HER WILL
Member Since: 5/14/2011
Posts: 14,089
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Brain-Dead Woman Forced to Incubate Fetus AGAINST HER WILL
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Marlise Munoz died the week after Thanksgiving.
Doctors believe she suffered a pulmonary embolism -- a blood clot to the lungs -- that cut off her oxygen. When her husband, Erick, found Marlise in their Tarrant County home, she wasn’t breathing and had no pulse.
She was gone.
If there is any mercy in the sudden loss of this happy young wife and mother, it’s that she doesn’t know she has since lingered in a hopeless twilight, her respiration artificially supported by machines.
She made it clear she didn’t want this. Her grieving husband and parents don’t want it either. But a not-very-well known statute under state law says Marlise, 33, doesn’t have the same right to a peaceful, natural death as other Texans because she is pregnant.
“All we want is to let her rest, to let her go to sleep,” said Marlise’s 60-year-old father, Ernest Machado of Azle. “What they’re doing serves no purpose.”
Marlise and Erick Munoz, the parents of a young son, both worked as paramedics for the town of Crowley. Because their jobs brought them into routine contact with sudden death and suffering families, they had conversations about their end-of-life wishes.
Marlise had made it clear she would never want to be kept artificially alive with no hope of recovery.
“Being active paramedics and knowing the facts, they know that people who have this happen to them don’t come out of this very well,” said Crowley Fire Department Lt. Tim Whetstone, a member of the town’s firefighters association that has rallied around the Munoz family.
Erick found Marlise at home Nov. 26. He performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation and called for an ambulance, and Marlise was taken to John Peter Smith Hospital in Fort Worth.
Electric shocks and drugs started her heart again and it continued beating with mechanical support, but her brain waves were completely flat. She had gone without breathing for too long to ever recover.
But when the heartbroken family was ready to say goodbye, hospital officials said they could not legally disconnect Marlise from life support. At the time she collapsed, she was 14 weeks’ pregnant.
And because doctors could still detect a fetal heartbeat, state law says Marlise Munoz’s body -- against her own and her family’s wishes -- must be maintained as an unwilling incubator.
“That poor fetus had the same lack of oxygen, the same electric shocks, the same chemicals that got her heart going again,” Machado said. “For all we know, it’s in the same condition that Marlise is in.”
Because of the fetus’ poor prognosis, the family has said publicly that they want to allow it to die peacefully, along with its mother.
But after the bewildered family protested the fine print in the law during television interviews shortly before Christmas, the case exploded into an online argument between vehement anti-abortion and abortion-rights factions.
Some of the posted comments were vicious, accusing Erick Munoz -- a grief-stricken father and husband -- of wanting to “pull the plug” and “get rid” of his wife and baby.
Others -- strangers who don’t know these people -- claim Marlise “might wake up” or cling to slim odds that the oxygen-deprived fetus might be miraculously healthy.
“It turned into a right or left argument,” Whetstone said, explaining that Munoz has declined public comment on the case since reading some of the more vitriolic online comments. “That’s not really how the family sees this.”
Hospital authorities have declined all comment, other than to say they have no choice but to follow state law.
According to a 2012 report by the Center for Women Policy Studies, laws governing end-of-life preferences for pregnant women vary by state. Texas is one of 12 that automatically invalidates a woman’s legal prerogative if she “is diagnosed with pregnancy.”
“These are the most restrictive of the pregnancy exclusion statutes, stating that, regardless of the progression of the pregnancy, a woman must remain on life-sustaining treatment until she gives birth,” the report says.
Marlise’s mother has said publicly that the family is “in hell.” Erick, exhausted, has said he wants to shield the couple’s toddler son, Mateo, from the savage debate.
Machado said the family is hoping to find an attorney willing to challenge the statute.
“This very emotional and personal crisis for the family is their responsibility,” he wrote in an online posting a few weeks ago, trying to answer some of the more uninformed critics.
He’s right, of course. What the state of Texas is doing to this family is unconscionable.
“This isn’t about pro-life or pro-choice,” Machado said Friday. He apologized for crying as we spoke.
“We want to say goodbye. We want to let them rest.”
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Member Since: 1/1/2014
Posts: 23,374
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What a horrible situation for people to have to deal with
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Member Since: 5/14/2011
Posts: 14,089
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Texas is the pits regarding women's rights.
#WendyDavisForGovernor
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Member Since: 6/17/2012
Posts: 1,297
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sickening, women are just life support machines for precious fetuses in texas.
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Member Since: 11/4/2010
Posts: 34,287
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This is a delicate subject. I mean, yeah, it was her wish that she didn't want to be kept alive by a machine, but did she know she was pregnant when she made that wish? Would she have wanted to "die a peaceful, natural death" if she knew it meant that her unborn baby would die with her? The article is pretty vague on those details.
Everyone should have the right to die the way they themselves choose, but at the same time I kinda agree that the hospital has an obligation to do what they can to save the baby even if it means keeping the mother alive until it's ready to be delivered. It might seem a bit barbaric to keep her alive when she's ready to die but is it not equally as bad to knowingly and willingly allow their unborn baby to die too if there's still a chance that it can be born without further problems?
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Member Since: 4/25/2011
Posts: 7,482
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Quote:
“That poor fetus had the same lack of oxygen, the same electric shocks, the same chemicals that got her heart going again,” Machado said. “For all we know, it’s in the same condition that Marlise is in.”
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Oh my god, this is horrible.
And even IF the child is healthy... can you imagine to tell your child how they were born/what happened to their mother?
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Member Since: 8/1/2012
Posts: 25,037
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What's the use when the mother is already braindead and the fetus has no chance of surviving whatsoever.
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Member Since: 5/10/2012
Posts: 10,996
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Quote:
Originally posted by Callum
This is a delicate subject. I mean, yeah, it was her wish that she didn't want to be kept alive by a machine, but did she know she was pregnant when she made that wish? Would she have wanted to "die a peaceful, natural death" if she knew it meant that her unborn baby would die with her? The article is pretty vague on those details.
Everyone should have the right to die the way they themselves choose, but at the same time I kinda agree that the hospital has an obligation to do what they can to save the baby even if it means keeping the mother alive until it's ready to be delivered.
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That fetus is 14 weeks. Literally given all the circumstances, it has ZERO chances of survival.
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Member Since: 8/18/2013
Posts: 6,919
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what even
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Member Since: 1/1/2014
Posts: 3,400
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Quote:
Originally posted by Auraeolux
“That poor fetus had the same lack of oxygen, the same electric shocks, the same chemicals that got her heart going again,” Machado said. “For all we know, it’s in the same condition that Marlise is in.”
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Why are they going to put the baby through the same exacerbation that Marlise went/is going through? Would they rather the baby suffer in life than go out peacefully? At this point, the baby is a parasite (in the sense that it can't survive without a host). Texas really has to loosen up the reigns on the rights the citizens in that state have because it is their body and they could very well do what they please with their body. Especially if she had a DNR order/did not wish to be on life support under any circumstance.
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Member Since: 2/17/2012
Posts: 33,611
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I saw this a week or so ago on facebook, and most everybody agreed that they shouldn't take her off life support.
Anyway, this is inhumane and sexist in my opinion.
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Member Since: 8/19/2013
Posts: 11,808
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Banned
Member Since: 3/19/2012
Posts: 7,835
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They can't just kill the baby because the mom is effectively dead.
She was pregnant 14 weeks, that's long enough for it to be kicking by now.
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ATRL Contributor
Member Since: 8/19/2013
Posts: 46,848
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Quote:
Originally posted by RomanNavy
What's the use when the mother is already braindead and the fetus has no chance of surviving whatsoever.
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MTE why let them both suffer any more pain. Texas is so terrible.
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Member Since: 10/19/2010
Posts: 3,941
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Quote:
Originally posted by Callum
This is a delicate subject. I mean, yeah, it was her wish that she didn't want to be kept alive by a machine, but did she know she was pregnant when she made that wish? Would she have wanted to "die a peaceful, natural death" if she knew it meant that her unborn baby would die with her? The article is pretty vague on those details.
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It's impossible to know what she would have done, but seeing as she had explicitly made a claim to not keep her on life support, I would follow her wishes. She was 14 weeks pregnant when she collapsed, so it may be reasonable to say that if she felt so strongly that she must be kept alive in order to birth the baby, she would have stated so.
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Member Since: 1/2/2012
Posts: 22,450
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This is a horrible thing for the family to go through.
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Member Since: 1/1/2014
Posts: 8,150
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The fetus isnt going to develop well, if she was cut off from oxygen long wenough to kill her imagine what it did to the fetus. The south like.....i cant wait till I go to NY
And death at her being "diagnosed" with pregance tha f***
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Member Since: 8/1/2012
Posts: 9,673
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ATRL Contributor
Member Since: 8/31/2012
Posts: 12,510
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Quote:
“This isn’t about pro-life or pro-choice,” Machado said Friday. He apologized for crying as we spoke.
“We want to say goodbye. We want to let them rest.”
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My heart broke from reading that.
It's kinda disgusting that she has no rights over her OWN DAMN BODY. Just a tad.
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Member Since: 9/18/2011
Posts: 5,330
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Reminiscing how we use to roll in Texas
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