Well, there’s not much to say about this except that Texas law is idiotic. That state is trying to force a brain-dead but pregnant woman to remain on life support, against the wishes of her parents and husband, so she can serve as a sort of non-sentient incubator.
As the Dallas News reports, Marline Munoz, a paramedic in Crowley, Texas, died on November 26 of a pulmonary embolism. At the time, she was 14 weeks pregnant. She had also previously expressed her wish (since she was a paramedic) to not be kept alive by artificial means. Now her family—both her parents and her husband—wants her to be allowed to die peacefully, especially because the prognosis for the fetus is also poor.
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.
. . . 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.”
This is not only absolutely heartless, but probably a violation of the Constitution. Roe v. Wade gave guidelines for abortion that made it legal before the fetus is viable on its own: between roughly 24-28 weeks, and that time hasn’t passed yet. Were Munoz alive, she would be able to legally elect an abortion. By electing to not remain on life support, and not giving a caveat that she should were she pregnant, that is what she has effectively done. The decision is not the state’s, regardless of its laws. It is now hers and her family’s.
According to the Constitution, a fetus has no “right” to be born until it attains viability on its own. I can’t see how such nonexistent “rights” trump the woman’s legal “prerogative.”
h/t: Diane G
Terrible.
Sad and medieval. Esé es Tejas.
This is madness. And if/when that child is born, can you imagine the father’s guilt? That that child will one day read in the paper that his(her) father wanted mom to die and him too?
Yet another example of the unforeseen human toll caused by a sentence as seemingly innocuous as “the soul enters the zygote at conception”.
“the soul enters the zygote at conception”
Which is, interestingly, a particular christian believe, since both judaism and islam (among other religions) teach that the soul enters only after about 40 days (if not later) after conception. Of course, the concept of soul is meaningless.
“Breath of life” is a Biblical thing. Google this. It’s apparently only recently that Christians have come to think of conception as a big deal.
In Judaism, I’m told, the child was traditionally named after 30 days, and not truly considered a member of the family until then.
Excuse my lack of Google-fu
An evangelical Christian pastor, a liberal Christian minister and a Jewish rabbi are debating the topic “when does life begin”. The pastor says “at conception”. The minister says “at birth”. They argue about this for a while, then the rabbi says “No, no, no. You’ve got it all wrong. Life begins when the youngest child moves out.”
That’s a good one! LOL
The three meet again at a meeting hosted by the Templeton Foundation. It’s at a nice location by a lake and it is quite hot, especially for those dressed in clerical clothes. The rabbi says “Hey, why don’t we go swimming?”. The pastor says “We have no swimsuits with us”. The minister says “No-one is around, and I think we can trust each other, so what about skinny dipping?” After some discussion, they decide to give it a go. After the swim, as they come out onto the shore, they see a bus of teenage girls has arrived to join the meeting. The pastor and minister cover their genitals and high-tail it to the nearest big tree they can hide behind. The rabbi does the same, but covers his face. When they are all hidden from view, he says “I don’t know about you guys, but my congregation recognizes me by my face.”
The last time I heard that one, it wasn’t three ministers of [INSERT RELIGIONS HERE], but a Cambridge don visiting Oxford and they went skinny dipping in the Isis/ boating lake/ whatever.
Old jokes never die … which is probably the closest to resurrection and immortal life that we’re going to see.
If/when that child is born it will most likely be in the NICU for a few weeks before there’s another big fight over when to unplug its mechanical ventilator.
The father shouldn’t feel the least bit of guilt as he and the family are trying to abide by the instructions from the wife. If a viable child results from the travesty visited upon them by the state, it shouldn’t have any problem accepting the father’s position at the time. Not being born isn’t equivalent to the death by religion that is practiced by the christians. It is after birth that the person becomes important as an individual.
Negligible ; the agents of the state who took responsibility for the non-viable corpse from the corpse’s former family took on that burden of guilt.
Nope ; the child is a ward of court, and so will end up being adopted (if it survives to birth and is reasonably healthy, which the doctors consider unlikely), with negligible knowledge of it’s birth parents. In the likely event of it having brain and or physical injuries, no one sensible is going to want to adopt it, so it’s highly likely to spend the rest of it’s life in the state child care system, until forced out to starve on the streets at age 18. Literacy is not likely to be an outcome.
Preamble: Humbly invoking the blessings of Almighty God, the people of the State of Texas, do ordain and establish this Constitution.
Do the doctors doing this have no integrity or humanity?
They are up against the law. Regardless of their own position, they would be in violation of the law if they were to take her off of life support. Doing so anyway might be “the right thing to do,” but requires that the doctor(s) risk criminal and civil legal charges, and their job. That is asking a lot of anybody in a situation like this.
There is some question whether the hospital is correctly interpreting the law, so they may not be “up against it”.
If the woman is brain dead, and not just in a coma or vegetative state, the law may not apply.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/08/us/pregnant-and-forced-to-stay-on-life-support.html?_r=0
Ahh, thanks. As usual we will have to wait for an accurate picture to emerge.
In any case, the doctors are not at fault. The politicians are. They’ve created the environment where lawyers are needed.
Who are physicians compared to omniscient state legislators?
I gather that the requirements for qualifying to run for state rep/senator are no more stringent than those for Congressional office.
(Ah reckon thems the ones the peepul wants; else they wuddunt vote fer ’em, eh?)
Ought someone running for higher office be able to pass a test on certain fundamental concepts, like:
T or F: the Earth goes around the sun and takes a year to do it. (courtesy Lawrence Krauss, who said that more or less 50% of adult Amuricuns have missed that question on the last few NSF surveys)
Automatically, even.
“diagnosed with pregnancy” makes it sound like a disease. There are cases when this would be a reasonable thing to do as you say – once a really viable baby might be born – but this seems to be strange.
Would Texas state law support someone who had no medical insurance but was critically ill, & cover their hospital bills? I mean someone whose life was in danger rather than whose life had not begun.
While, I agree that this is a terrible situation, the ‘right to choose’ is a little muddled here. I haven’t thought this all the way through yet, but it’s an interesting situation.
If this woman is brain dead, it’s only her body that is being “maintained as an unwilling incubator”. “She” is dead.
Usually in abortion cases, we are weighing the right to bodily autonomy of the woman to the right of an unborn foetus, and argue that the woman is infinitely more valuable that a clump of cells.
But in this case, we are weighing a posthumous preference not to be an organ donor (or something) to the ‘right to life’ of an unborn foetus.
Should I be allowed to deny my child a lifesaving kidney transplant on my deathbed?
In this case the foetus’ prognosis doesn’t look good. It was her own will and it is the will of the family.
Your analogy is bad. You shouldn’t be allowed to deny your child a lifesaving kidney transplant ever, assuming one is legally available. What happens to your kidney after your death is determined by things like your organ donor card.
I think that both courts and the legislature should be exceptionally reluctant to grant powers to override the wishes of an individual after they are deceased just because they may not particularly like those wishes. That should be even more the case when the deceased’s family wishes to respect their loved one’s wishes.
Should you be allowed to refuse to donate your organs? Yes, you should, even if people think you are a horrible person for doing that.
In addition, while, yes, this is a particularly difficult case, a 14 week fetus is not the same thing as a child. It is certainly not the same thing as a child waiting on a life-saving kidney.
Thank you. I agree.
Contrary to gbjames, I don’t think any Western countries force people to donate their organs against their will.
And I don’t think they should.
I didn’t say they did. And you didn’t ask if people should be forced to donate organs. You asked if you should be allowed to deny a kid a transplant. You should never be allowed to do that if one is legally available.
Eh. The analogy only works if it’s *my* kidney I’m refusing to donate to my own kid. Was that not clear?
I did mention that I was on my deathbed, in the analogy, denying my child a lifesaving kidney transplant.
Not to be overly pedantic, but “on my deathbed” usually means “I’m alive”. As I said earlier, what happens after you die is determined by things like your donor card status, etc. Thats why the “legally available” part is important.
No, you weren’t clear. If you meant to say “I don’t think people should be forced to make organ donations” then you weren’t saying something “contrary to gbjames” because I didn’t make that claim.
I think you raise an interesting point, but I think in this case the father’s wishes (and it’s easier here because they clearly coincide with the mother’s wishes when she was alive) should be the deciding factor.
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The heading of this piece could just as well have a comma after “brain dead”.
It seems that being “diagnosed with pregnancy” is akin to being found guilty of aggravated assault and battery, at least in Texas in terms of how rapidly your basic human rights get voided.
I’m wondering this, and I haven’t formed an opinion because I’m not sure if I have all the facts straight, so I wanted to throw a question out to everyone.
In abortion discussions, typically the rights of the woman and the rights of the foetus are considered. For people who are pro choice, the rights of the woman outweigh the rights of the foetus (for various reasons). If the woman is now deceased, is the foetus now the only concern, regardless of the wishes of the woman while alive?
Thoughts?
If it is the wish of the woman and the foetus is at the stage where abortion would be legal, then I think the woman’s will should be the main concern.
But it’s a tricky question that is closely related to consciousness and sentience.
At exactly what point does a foetus develop what constitutes sentient consciousness and does it even matter?
My first thought is that if there is no reason to doubt that a healthy baby could result from keeping the mother on life support, that seems like the proper thing to do. Just who gets to make the decision, and just where the various lines should be drawn to determine risk thresholds, I don’t know what to think yet.
But, in this particular case, the current information is that there are issues with the fetus.
Suppose you needed an organ transplant to survive.
Do you think that people should be required to have their usable organs harvested? L
If the people are dead – maybe.
That’s the basic question I asked above:
http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2014/01/09/texas-forces-brain-dead-but-pregnant-woman-to-remain-on-life-support/comment-page-1/#comment-684427
I had the same thought you did, but I concluded that since we don’t force people to donate their organs after their death, this woman shouldn’t be forced to donate the use of her body.
But she had already implicitly agreed to the use of her body up to week 14 of her pregnancy when she “died” (since she apparently was not planning an abortion).
Organ donation is a poor analogy here, but let’s try it.
Suppose you didn’t have “organ donor’ on your driver’s license, and expressed some wish to never have your organs donated OR have life support, but you had recently agreed to donate a kidney to your own child and died while in the OR but prior to the operation.
Your doctors could keep you on life support long enough to transplant the kidney and then disconnect you.
Should the doctors proceed with transplanting your kidney to the child, or should they refer to your driver’s license and advanced directives and decide against the transplant?
Presumably an organ donation in process would have much more clear, written instructions than a pregnancy, but ethically this scenario is much closer than the one you’re portraying where some persons simply don’t want to donate organs and no one can demand such a thing from their bodies post-mortem.
As I wrote above, I think it’s a very good question, but I think the father’s wishes should be considered in this situation. Since there is agreement between the father, (dead)mother, and (dead)mom’s family, it makes it easy. Don’t forget, it’s not entirely a distinction between the rights of the mother and the rights of the fetus. Many people feel that a fetus has no rights because it’s just a minimally differentiated ball of cells. In that case (which is my position), it’s not the rights of the mom vs the rights of the fetus, it’s the rights of the parents/family vs the pro-life movement and asshole politicians. I vote for the family.
“Many people feel that a fetus has no rights because it’s just a minimally differentiated ball of cells. In that case (which is my position)”
When, if ever, does this position change? 5 minutes before birth? 5 minutes after birth?
I don’t know if you can still find it online, but in a discussion with Uncle Eric on his blog, after he defended “the woman’s right under any circumstances” position, he wrote that this of course applies after birth as well, so throwing unwanted children into a volcano as a means of “birth” control is fine (this used to be done on Tahiti, by the way).
Yes, further along in development it gets trickier and other reasons are needed to defend termination. For this particular case, though, it doesn’t matter when in the future the fetus becomes a person. It’s not one now, and that is sufficient for this particular case. I don’t want to hijack the thread into an abortion debate, so I will not try to extrapolate or generalize to other situations.
Her rights do not disappear entirely or go to the state, they go to her designated next of kin or inheritor. She very clearly has desginated next of kin and their wishes correspond with her written will. IMO that should be the guiding factor.
Since people keep talking about kidney transplants, I’ll make that analogy. If I die and my wishes are unclear, my designated other can decide what’s to be done with my kidney. Right? The state doesn’t gain control of my body, she does. And if her wishes correspond to my will (whether that’s to donate or not donate), that’s about the strongest legal case possible that the state should not go against that wish, right?
I’m sort of with you on this. A foetus may only be a lump of cells, in the early stages at least, but so is a brain-dead person on life support. The only rights being stepped on, in my opinion, are those of the family – who naturally want to bury their wife / daughter. She’ll still be dead in six months though, so it’s not like their rights are being permanently denied.
Of course, if the baby is going to be born massively brain-damaged or disabled because of what has happened, then that is a different story. Either way it’s not something which should be legislated absolutely, with no leeway for doctors and family to make an informed decision.
I think whatever the decision, it should be with the family not forced on them by the state. In consultation with their doctor so they know the prognosis, they should be allowed to make the final decision and it’s only through this consultation that they will be able to reach a good decision.
It’s a shame about the costs as well and I wouldn’t want that to be the reason someone had to do anything medically (but I’m a big socialist from Canuckistan that favours universal health care).
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Can anybody with relevant medical experience comment on the prognosis for this situation? Is it likely that a brain dead body on life support can support the development of the fetus for the next 14 + weeks sufficiently to result in a reasonably healthy baby?
Even at 28 weeks there is a huge list of known, very serious, risks. Many of which result in permanent problems.
This is not a problem. Several healthy babies have been born from brain-dead mothers on life support.
That is some useful information, but that alone is not enough to warrant “not a problem” for me. Perhaps you know more and are therefore comfortable with that. But before I concede that, I’d have to do some looking to find out more. For example, how many not healthy babies have been born from brain-dead mothers on life support? How early in the pregnancy were the mother’s put on life support?
Fetal viability is contingent on the type of insult suffered by the mother (hypotension, hypoxia, etc.) with the fetus having greater sensitivity than the mother to these events, and the timing of the event relative to the pregnancy. 8-12 weeks is a particularly critical point in CNS development, for example.
I recall that there was a case a year or two ago in which a pregnant woman died but was kept “alive” artificially until the baby was born via Caesarian section at about 6 1/2 months. As I recall, the infant did not survive. I don’t want to play obstetrician here but I suspect that the likelihood of the 14 week old fetus surviving long enough to be viable is highly unlikely.
It depends in large part on how long the fetus was oxygen deprived when the mom threw her embolism until she was put on mechanical ventilation. I’m guessing it is not going to be a healthy baby, but that is possible.
The financial considerations also boggle the mind.
The husband is going to be forced to bear the cost of keeping his wife alive.
Also, the husband has said that he is not sure how much oxygen deprivation the fetus suffered, since he’s not sure how long she was down before he found her. So, nobody really knows what shape the baby is going to be in if he survives long enough to be born.
If he is brain-damaged, the husband is going to be forced to cope with that, with no financial support from the state of TX.
They have one son, who is also going to be enormously impacted by this whole thing.
The people who make these laws are content to meddle in others’ lives when there are no consequences at all for them. They scream and yell about freedom, but they don’t mean a word of it. L
“The husband is going to be forced to bear the cost of keeping his wife alive.”
Perhaps, but this is a consequence of a bad health-care system. Suppose the wife were seriously disabled, but wanted to live. Would you then say “The husband is going to be forced to bear the cost of supporting his wife”?
You’re making the mistake of equating a fetus with a fully-grown adult.
From what I’ve read (quotes from him), the husband would most likely have honored her wishes, whatever they were.
But, my point still stands. Other people are making decisions for which they bear no consequences.
I’m familiar with a case where a baby was born with severe birth defects, not expected to live more than a couple of hours, where the parents were forced to put him on life-support against their wishes. He lived for three years, bankrupted his family, totally disrupted their lives, and eventually the parents divorced. The family received no public support at all.
In that case, there were also two older children. L
No, because in that case the decision to assume the expense was made by the wife and or husband. Not forced on them against their wishes.
I think you are on to something with the financial issue being “a consequence of a bad health-care system” though. With a good healthcare system the financial issue disappears and the real problem can be focused on. The laws that govern the legal aspects of the issue.
But since we don’t have a good health-care system pointing out the extra pile of shit that would be dumped on the remaining family in this paricular situation is on point.
If the state forces him to keep his wife on life support, you’d think the state would bear all costs of that decision. I wondered how the husband would pay for all this.
Medical costs could be a legal matter. How can the husband be required to pay continuing medical expenses for someone who is dead? Shouldn’t your financial responsibility end at death?
My question too, if the state is mandating this does the state now take over all costs?
“She had also previously expressed her wish (since she was a paramedic) to not be kept alive by artificial means.”
Does no-one else detect a non-sequitur here?
No. People who work in a medical field are far less likely than the general population to want “everything to be done” or to be kept alive on machines. Those of us who’ve experienced it generally agree that it’s a terrible thing to do. Her being a paramedic is pertinent because it means she knew exactly what she was doing and why.
How is this possible?! I feel absolutely terrible for this woman’s husband and family. I don’t know what else to say. What a sad day…
Reblogged this on Geoffrey Jenkins and commented:
How is this possible?! I feel absolutely terrible for this woman’s husband and family. I don’t know what else to say. What a sad day…
Texas is, IMO, the most benighted state in the nation, and that’s a high bar. I wish they’d secede, as their governor has threatened. No more Cowboys as “America’s team”, no more Johnson Space Center. Goodbye and good luck.
On the other hand, they might turn politically blue due to the growing Hispanic population.
If she’s brain dead then she is just an incubator. Isn’t that the only rational position of us materialists? IVF is a non-brained phase of some pregnancies and that’s OK. She hasn’t been purposely made into an incubator; it’s just a rare circumstance. It’s a bit too easy to colour this with the macabre view of involuntary conscious incubation status, as in Alien or some other gruesome sci-fi, or indeed any evolved parisiticity in other animals.
“She made it clear she didn’t want this.” Was this a general wish? Did she specifically include during pregnancy? Many mothers would be willing to give up their lives to save their baby, so it would seem odd that she would choose not to save the baby just because she is already effectively dead at the point when someone must make that decision. The pulmonary embolism I’m presuming was pretty quick. Would she have modified her wishes to exclude this scenario had she had time to think of it?
“Marlise had made it clear she would never want to be kept artificially alive with no hope of recovery.” – Well she won’t be kept alive indefinitely. What are the plans for the foetus?
“Marlise, 33, doesn’t have the same right to a peaceful, natural death as other Texans because she is pregnant.” – It sounds a peaceful death to me, unless you believe there’s a tortured soul in there. The mother’s death will be allowed to proceed ‘naturally’, eventually. Here we see ‘natural’ being used emotively, as it often is. My mother has been kept alive unnaturally for several years now with a pacemaker and a bunch of drugs. I’m quite happy she has avoided a ‘natural’ death so far.
As a materialist I view this in the following way. If the mother is brain dead and the foetus isn’t, then the mother’s body has little philosophical difference to any other body that is sustaining a single brain. Here we have a complex organism consisting of pairs of organs that is sustaining a single brain. They might be different is some regard, in that there is one body attached to another. Perhaps this needs to be viewed in the context of co-joined twins where one is brain dead. I presume we would want to save the life of the other. The different DNA might crop up as an issue in some attempt to claim some difference of personhood, but we’ve already crossed that herdle in coming to terms with the fact the we as individuals already contain what is essentially foreign DNA in mitrochondria and all the synogistic essential bacteria we harbour. We don’t even have a sufficient definition of personhood that can deal with split brain patients. In what way is this different than organ donation on death, except that the mother’s organs other than the brain are being maintained in situ. Think of the mother as donating her body, on brain death, to the life of the foetus.
The reasonable case to consider now from the medical and family perspective is the potential state of the foetus. The family have expressed their view, that the foetus is likely to have suffered the same brain damage as the mother. Is this the medical view? If the doctors are not sure that the baby is brain dead then I wonder why the family wouldn’t at least want to try to sustain the life of their child. It may be born brain dead and so may in turn need its life support removing (or it may be a case of not providing any once it is free of the mother’s life support system). In that case the matter will be settled anyway. Isn’t there time enough to check the brain of the foetus as it develops?
Have the doctors ruled out the mother’s recovery? What is the extent of the damage? Is another six months too long to wait to see if the baby, or indeed the mother, might survive.
In what way would a brain dead mother and a brain dead foetus suffer if this pregnancy is continued – this contingency seems safe from a hindsight perspective? If the baby is born healthy then the family are lucky enough to have a connection with the lost mother.
This is nothing to do with the abortion debate, since the foetus is not being aborted, if it is already brain dead. It’s removal in a post mortem would happen after its death due to the stopping of the mother’s life support. Nor is it a matter for pro-choice, since I don’t think she had chance to make any choice relating to this scenario, and any would-be choice isn’t about aborting.
But nevertheless, there is a similarity here. One of the pro-choice arguments for early abortion being permitted is the supposed lack of suffering in the early foetus because it has not developed a conscious experiencing existence of any significance – it cannot suffer. Well, if the mother is genuinely brain dead to any significant degree then she is not suffering either.
I’m not sure why there is no unified stance here from pro-choice materialists and pro-lifers, if there is an opportunity for continued healthy life but no removal of choice.
See my reply to Diana at #11 above. It applies to your questions as well.
It’s not clear what the woman’s wishes would have been had she anticipated this particular scenario. And even if she included this scenario it’s not clear that once brain dead she has any say when there’s a foetus involved.
14 weeks is quite advanced. It isn’t just a ball of cells. The pro-choice case is heavily based on the notion of ‘just a bunch of cells’, and at fertilization and soon after I am entirely pro-choice, on the bunch of cells basis alone, whatever the woman’s motives. As the foetus develops there are points, say 9-months just prior to birth, when even pro-choicers would say the opportunity to abort has passed.
My opposition to pro-lifers is their usually religious dogmatic assertion that the zygote is a significant enough person to warrant consideration.
In between it’s a very grey area, and we have little understanding of the conscious state of the unborn infant. While I support pro-choice to a great degree, there is no room for absolute pro-choice dogma any more than there is for pro-life dogma.
“It’s not clear what the woman’s wishes would have been had she anticipated this particular scenario. And even if she included this scenario it’s not clear that once brain dead she has any say when there’s a foetus involved.”
Those are both good reasons to give the decision-making power over to her legal next of kin. They are (IMO) NOT good reasons to give the decision-making power over to the state.
So, if the doctors did say the foetus was viable you’d still let the family decide to terminate it?
With the mother dead, the legal guardian should have the same rights as the mother in terms of abortion choice. Nothing else makes much sense to me. If it would be legal for the mother to abort in this case were she conscious, then it remains legal for the guardians to do so. And if it were illegal for her to do so, it should be illegal for the guardian to do so.
Being pro-choice, I’d very much hope the former is true. But this being Texas, I am not sure whether it is. I think even in the bad case where it isn’t, one could argue that it is the legal guardian’s right to take their charge to another state to seek medical care more consistent with her wishes and their wishes. Were she alive and conscious, would Ms. Munoz be allowed to leave the state, go to California, and get an abortion there? If so, then certainly her guardians should be allowed to take Ms. Munoz to California etc…
Pro-choice isn’t about the next of kin, the father. Pro-choice is about the autonomy of a woman carrying a foetus balanced against the interest of the foetus at its various stages of development.
“If it would be legal for the mother to abort in this case were she conscious, then it remains legal for the guardians to do so. ” – Are you quoting law here, or your personal opinion about what the law should be?
Brain dead is what it says it is: dead. The mother is not going to recover. Regarding the fetus, the doctors cannot know at this stage whether it has already been permanently damaged or not. It is too early to tell. So there is also a chance that if this pregnancy is forced to term the result will be a severely disabled individual. Right now, no-one knows.
Here’s a thought experiment for you. How about, in spite of Marlise & her husband’s wishes to the contrary, they keep her alive for the next six months for the sake of harvesting her organs should there be any emergency that arises at the hospital where an adult or actual living child needs an organ transplant?
After that they promise to switch off the machines and let her family bury what is left. Is that okay? After all, it could save several lives.
The point I am trying to get at here is: is there any point at which you balk at the idea of the state being allowed to utterly disregard and override their citizen’s manifestly expressed wishes?
“Right now, no-one knows.” – But unless the doctors say otherwise, and the doctors’ opinions were not stated, then the report suggests they are presuming to know the foetus is brain dead.
“is there any point at which you balk at the idea of the state being allowed to utterly disregard and override their citizen’s manifestly expressed wishes?”
As I pointed out, it’s not at all clear that she had considered carrying a child while on life support. If there was no foetus then I would resort to complying with her wishes. This scenario is entirely about the status of the foetus. I offered the other conditions only as means of avoiding the usual macabre perspective we have on dealing with the dead, as if they are the undead, as if we are torturing enclosed souls.
“Here’s a thought experiment for you….”
I see no problem with maintaining a body for organ harvesting, if the patient has no objection. We always seem to give way to the notions of the religious, as if we are dealing with a soul or some other significant remnant of the deceased. Without evidence to support that I would be happy for the default case to be that organs are harvested, and if necessary sustained until required. I wonder how many lives could be saved or improved if organs were more readily available. one could if one wished concoct a slippery slope argument about the resulting selling of organs before death is confirmed, or some Berk and Hare killer source, but if we wanted enough safeguards could be put in place for that.
Again I remind you that it is not clear that Marlise would not have had a different request for this scenario. If she didn’t specify it then the foetus takes precedence.
Even if she had included this scenario her right to have that wish carried out would be questionable. This is not the usual pro-choice issue.
Here’s another thought experiment.
If they were to pull the plug today, presumably her organs would be harvested right now.
What right does the state have to deny those in need of her organs right now access to said organs?
Cheers,
b&
” those in need of her organs right now access to said organs” – You mean the foetus?
A fourteen-week-old fetus is not a person. It is, at this point, no more alive than the dead woman acting as its incubator. As such, it is irrelevant to the discussion at hand, except insofar as the dead woman’s husbands’s personal interests in the matter.
Were you in his place, I would rather expect you to want to try to successfully incubate the fetus to viability and then raise the almost-assuredly dain-brammaged infant to adulthood. And that would be your right to do so.
But you’re not in his place, and it’s no more your right to demand that the husband do as you would than it would be his right to insist that you should do as he wishes to do.
That’s the price of personal freedom: unless you want others to dictate how you get to live your life, you don’t get to dictate how others live their lives. Indeed, it is the very bedrock of civilization, and all attempts to violate this compact inevitably lead to discord and strife and chaos.
Cheers,
b&
“A fourteen-week-old fetus is not a person.” – On what basis? What is the state of brain development? Precisely when does it become a person? It’s a grey and somewhat arbitrary definition.
“It is, at this point, no more alive than the dead woman acting as its incubator.” – its brain may not be fully developed, but without some clear definition of personhood that isn’t that relevant. Viability is often a crucial factor – such as the viability of the woman in this case.
” almost-assuredly dain-brammaged infant” – If it is that assured (is ‘almost’ good enough) then I would agree. I’ve not read anything that assures us of that except the published view of the family. Whether that’s a worse case scenario provided by the doctors or an almost assurance isn’t clear. Without making that clear I don’t think there is a strong enough case to bow to the family’s wishes.
I agree with your earlier statement that it should be between the doctors and the family. I’m not defending the state here, or any imposition on freedom.
It’s all a question of balance. For a conscious woman carrying a foetus then the balance is made by considering factors that slide more in the favour of the foetus as the pregnancy advances, with late abortion depending more on life threatening conditions for the mother. But the normal limit on abortion doesn’t apply here since the autonomy of the father doesn’t count. The father never gets to decide the fate of a foetus when the mother is well, I see no reason to give him power over the life of the foetus now, unless the medical opinion is that the foetus is likely damaged. There would be time to at least try to determine that by monitoring the foetus for some time.
At that stage, the fetus is 5″ – 6″ in total length — about the size of a hamster. It has a brain, sure, but brain development doesn’t really take off for another four months.
Yes, there’s no hard-and-fast dividing line one can use to determine personhood, but that’s like trying to tell the difference between blue and green in the spectrum. This is more a case of trying to tell reddish orange from blue, and there’s no such problem there. The only criteria by which one could possibly define such a fetus as a person is the soundly-debunked superstition of some invisible sky monster infecting it with an alien spirit at some point in development.
The woman suffered a fatal stroke. The fetus was utterly dependent on her body at a time when her body was unable to protect and repair her own nervous system. While rapid brain development is months away, certain critical foundational stages of neural development were almost assuredly interrupted for the fetus. Further, the woman is the ultimate antithesis of an healthy mother-to-be: she’s dead. Plus the fetus got dosed with whatever the mother got dosed with during medical attempts to save her, and is continuing to be subjected to whatever they’re doing to keep her body from rotting.
That’s the only good thing about this sad situation: the odds are that the fetus won’t even survive to term or long after birth. The great tragedy, though, is that the fetus might not die a clean death while it’s not capable of being aware of anything.
Again, if the father thought that those were still odds worth fighting for, he’s the one in the position to make that decision. But that’s not the decision he made, and nobody — least of all some petty bureaucrat in a political office — has any moral right to override his decision.
Cheers,
b&
I’m not defending the state’s bureaucratic position. If you are right about this particular case with regard to the viability of the foetus that I’d agree to terminate both. But I still don’t know that you have made that case: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2506281/Baby-born-brain-dead-mother-foetus-survives-15-27-weeks.html
So, one objection I have is the assumption that the foetus is beyond survival.
Another objection here is what seems like an automatic and dogmatic pro-choice transfer of choice to the father, made by some commenters. Pro-choice is about the choice of a well mother balanced against the life of a foetus.
There’s also a suggested presumption that the mother accounted for this scenario, when many mothers would rule this scenario out. Mothers have been known to risk their own death to save their unborn baby, so it’s not clear this woman has accounted for this case where she might already be dead from some other cause.
The current stage of the foetus is irrelevant. If the foetus were shown to be well then it could be sustained in the mother, then that puts the case in a different perspective. What moral precedent is there for a father deciding to terminate a foetus when the mother is already dead?
I’m a materialist and have a pragmatic view of life, support the right to die and so on. I have no woolly mystical regard for life. I’m a moral nihilist. I’m not trying to make any defence of some mystical human spirit. Defining the boundaries and limits of life, deciding the value of life forms of any kind, is a complex and messy business. I simply don’t see the father and other family members having the right to terminate. I don’t see the state having the right to prevent termination. I see it as a pragmatic medical matter of the survivability of the foetus, as determined by the doctors. They are the only ones that can bring some needed dispassion to the case. Though it’s sad for the family there are many cases of sad families struggling with complex death cases and I don’t think their current emotional state carries the weight that others here seem to be prepared to admit.
“the fetus might not die a clean death” – I’m not sure that has any meaningful value. It seems no more meaningful than the emotive ‘natural’ death used by someone else. If it is as good as dead as you suggest then it’s as good as dead, clean or not. If it’s not dead and there’s a chance it might survive then it will not necessarily meet an ‘unclean’ death.
Were it ever possible, would ex-utero conception, as in Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World,” be the solution to such problems/situations?
Filippo,
Good point. In the case of a brain dead mother, if a well and viable foetus could be extracted and sustained to full term then I would think that takes precedence over the wish of father regarding the foetus, but does then allow the father some say over the mother’s body. Separating the two in this way is a better perspective. There’s too much emotional and dogmatic baggage tied to the in utero situation.
Having focused on that point though, and the interest of the foetus, there’s still a debate to be had about the rights of family over the use of viable organs of dead loved ones that is comparable to the debate about the use of foetal stem cells.
But the husband and family are suffering. There’s no tortured soul trapped in the mother’s dead body, but there are tortured souls in the living bodies of her loved ones — and the state is complicit in that torture by overriding her clearly expressed wishes for the sake of some absolutist principle about the sanctity of unborn life.
This was her second pregnancy. So apparently she had a couple of years to think about it, and declined to modify her directive during either pregnancy. The reasonable presumption is that she knew what she was doing and that her wishes should be taken at face value.
“But the husband and family are suffering.” – Irrelevant. Religious people that have a strong belief that god will cure their sick children will be suffering when the state forces them to administer health care; but most of us atheists don’t really worry too much about that.
“This was her second pregnancy. So apparently she had a couple of years to think about it, and declined to modify her directive during either pregnancy.” – And you know that’s what happened? We don’t know, and that’s one of my points. People aren’t always so thorough in managing their plans and wishes. Do you really suppose she thought of that? Did she think through the case where she received brain damage without oxygen starvation, so there was no danger of the foetus being damaged? I don’t think people keep adding codicils for death scenarios.
Is your position then that any advance directive should be ignored unless it specifically anticipates the precise situation in which the patient finds herself? That people are obliged to spell out in detail what they want done in every conceivable medical emergency? That’s simply not practical.
The point of such directives is to give general guidance so that family and doctors can draw reasonable inferences about what the patient would want as the specific situation develops. But you seem unwilling to allow such reasonable inferences in this case.
If you want to argue that her wishes should be set aside in order to minimize harm, fine. I don’t agree that doing so minimizes the harm in this case (since harm is being done to the family for largely political reasons, with little assurance of any lasting benefit to the fetus), but it’s a legitimate argument.
But I don’t think it’s legitimate to argue that her wishes should be set aside simply because she failed to predict, in writing, this particular chain of events.
I agree it’s not practical and that’s why I suspect it wasn’t done. But that this is probably an unanticipated scenario, and given that mothers do often value their child’s life over their own, and given that the woman’s life has gone past that stage, I don’t see there is a case to suggest that termination is in compliance with her wishes, or what her wishes would have been had she thought of this scenario. The default case then is that she had not made the choice.
I don’t think the inference is reasonable in this case.
“(since harm is being done to the family for largely political reasons” – Irrelevant.
“with little assurance of any lasting benefit to the fetus” – If that is establish then I would agree. But it hasn’t. We have only the reported opinion of the family, and the speculative opinion of people commenting here. But, are the presumptions of foetal death justified: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2506281/Baby-born-brain-dead-mother-foetus-survives-15-27-weeks.html
“and doctors” – We’ve not heard from the doctors.
“But I don’t think it’s legitimate to argue that her wishes should be set aside simply because she failed to predict”
If she failed to predict then even she didn’t know beforehand how her wishes in this case might be different had she considered it. It’s too different a scenario from the more common case of death not in pregnancy.
The husband, who knew her better than anyone and has already been through one pregnancy with her, thinks it is. You won’t find a more authoritative answer than that.
This sort of religious / “embroyonic rights” contamination of advance health care directive laws has also occurred in my home state of Indiana.
I was involved pretty closely in the drafting and enactment of Indiana’s version of a law authorizing patients with terminal illnesses with serious chronic illness or frailty to sign (along with their doctors) a set of orders to spell out what treatments they do and don’t want in an end-of-life situation or if cardiac or pulmonary arrest were to occur. The orders are stated on a brightly colored form and are described by the acronym POLST or POST or MOLST in various states.
In Indiana, and thanks to the so-called “pro-life” lobby and — even more important, the Catholic “nonprofit” hospital chains and their lobbying power — a provision was inserted into the bill at an early stage, confirming that none of the orders in an Indiana POST form would have any legal effect at a time when the patient is pregnant. It was clear that the bill would not pass without this provision (The pro-lifers and the Catholic hospitals would fight for this amendment and kill the bill if necessary). So the bill’s proponents swallowed hard and proceeded with this odious provision included.
Why is it odious in this case? What value is the human body carrying the foetus that is not applicable to the foetus. This seems to tangle two quite separate issues as if the same standards can still be applied.
Under pro-choice, where the foetus is in early stages, and certainly as a zygote, the woman has free choice. But when the woman is brain dead are you really contending that her prior choice to non-resuscitation, which is usually considered in for non-pregnant state, takes precedence.
Suppose that amendment had not been included, can you imagine this conversation:
Her: “Honey, I don’t want to be resuscitated under the following conditions: … brain death, … ”
Him: “OK, I agree. But what if you are pregnant and there’s a chance the foetus would survive. It would be all I and your parents have left of you. The child would receive so much love.”
Her: “No. As a secular-humanist/atheist/Christian/Muslim/… I have a principled objection to that. Even if I’m only brain dead, so my body could be sustained to term, I really want to die as soon as possible once it’s clear resuscitation would be prolonged.”
“OK honey. I’ll carry out your wishes.”
OR Her: “Well, if we’re having a child that would be different. I’d want the child to live if at all possible.”
It’s odious because a human being (even a human being carrying a fetus that is not currently viable) has a constitutional right to give or withhold consent to medical treatment of all kinds, and to sign documents and appoint agents (e.g., attorneys in fact under a health care POA, or health care surrogates in some other states) to carry out and enforce his or her preferences. A human being’s right to control what is done or not done to his or her body should not be set aside merely because she is pregnant. What if she is 8 weeks’ pregnant? The Texas “tyranny of the fetus” law has the potential to create multiple tragedies. How bad could it get? Consider a different scenario that was the result of essentially the same mindset: Savita Halappanavar and Galway Hospital.
In some states (like Indiana, where I live and practice law), an agent or attorney-in-fact who holds health care powers under a POA from a patient has the legal authority to compel a health care provider to carry out the agent’s instructions. A doctor or hospital has two choices: Comply with the agent’s instructions, or, if the doctor or hospital is having “moral” or “spiritual” qualms or objections, transfer the patient (who is not capable of giving her own consents or instructions) somewhere else.
Fortunately, when Indiana enacted its POST legislation with the provision saying that those medical orders are unenforceable if the patient is pregnant, the legislation also included a provision confirming that a patient’s health care POA and the agent’s powers under that POA will not be affected at all if the patient and his or her doctor signed a POST. Texas law may not be the same, and it might be that even if Mr. Munoz holds a health care POA from his spouse, the hospital is justified in refusing to follow Mr. Munoz’s instructions because the “patient’s pregnancy” provision in Texas law also trumps a health care POA. I don’t know.
Yesterday on a public radio program, I heard a snippet suggesting that perhaps Mr. Munoz and/or his wife’s parents have not yet signed some declaration necessary to confirm that the wife is brain-dead, and that this, at least in part, is what gives the hospital the leverage to keep her on life support. I don’t know whether this is accurate, either.
“even a human being carrying a fetus that is not currently viable”
Who said it is not viable? Just the family as far as we know from the report. What if the doctors say it’s viable?
There are many cases where dead people don’t get their wishes acceded to. Are all wishes in wills legally binding?
There is no absolute fundamental right overriding anything here. Rights are mutually agreed, and enforced by the political power at hand. So, if it turns out the foetus is viable I don’t see any moral requirement to adhere to the family’s wishes. If was just the women with no foetus, or if the doctors were sure the foetus wasn’t viable, then by all means let them pull the plug.
Please cite me some scientific evidence supporting the notion that an embryo or fetus at 14 weeks is viable.
Simple empirical evidence will do. Every child born was a viable 14 week foetus. If they were not viable they would not have survived. Viability is related to how likely the foetus will live once born. There is nothing in this case as reported that suggests the foetus isn’t viable, except the reported opinion of the family. Doctors will give a range of possible outcomes, and if possible (sometimes only if pushed) give some idea of their opinion on the viability. It’s quite possible that the reporting and/or the family have expressed the worst case – that the foetus suffered oxygen starvation. I’ve not seen the full medical opinion. Have you?
The case I’m making is as follows:
1) We don’t know that the woman would not have made a different choice had she had the opportunity or foresight to account for this scenario. Not all mothers would choose their own life even knowing the pregnancy could actually be the direct or indirect cause of their death:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gianna_Beretta_Molla
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2382060/Cruel-dilemma-having-cancer-pregnant-need-life-saving-chemo-damage-child.html
2) Pro-choice, which I support, is all about the balance of the rights of the mother and the rights of the foetus/baby. It ranges from purely the mother’s choice, from inception through early embryonic stages (though pro-lifers disagree) to being in favour of the baby in late stages, unless life threatening to the mother.
The pro-choice case is complex and not as simple as some dogmatic pro-choicers make out.
Let me ask you, to better understand your position as a pro-choice proponent: if a baby is due on a particular day and all looks on time and both mother and baby are well the day before, does the mother have the right to abort the baby the day before?
3) The rights of the father are fairly irrelevant in these specific matters of the life of a pregnant woman. It’s quite different from the much simpler case of a brain dead non-pregnant spouse.
Actually, I think you’ve got that completely backwards.
The fetus is irrelevant in this matter, except insofar as the husband considers it relevant.
The woman had a do-not-resuscitate directive in place and her husband, who has power of attorney, wants that directive followed. Again, that she’s pregnant is irrelevant; the fetus has no standing of any sort, no rights, no nothing.
If the state can intervene and violate the DNR and the husband’s power of attorney in this case, they can manufacture some bullshit reason to do so in any case. And that’s not merely not right, it’s downright evil.
b&
In a legal and constitutional sense here in the U.S., a 14-week-old fetus is not “viable.” The current test (until Roe v. Wade is overruled and replaced with some other rule) is whether a fetus is capable of surviving outside outside the womb, on its own, if it were delivered at its current stage of development, at the time when a potential abortion is being considered.
Like it or not, when the “viability” of a fetus is an issue for discussion or analysis under U.S. federal or state law, we are impelled to look to abortion case law.
To argue that every child born was once a 14-week fetus, and therefore every 14-week fetus is “viable,” is clever sophistry, but it bears no relation to the analysis required under current laws when there is a pregnant woman who is clinically brain-dead or being sustained solely by artificial means. Texas law just short-circuits the analysis and apparently requires that the woman’s life be prolonged artificially if she is pregnant, with no exceptions.
This woman, like every other American adult, has the right to sign health care advance directives and to have them enforced. I have lectured to state-wide audiences on health care directives and testified before legislative committees on the subject. One type of health care advance directive is a power of attorney or health care surrogate appointment in which the signer designates one or more other individuals (such as a spouse or adult child) to make decisions and to give or withhold consents for the signer if illness or injury renders the signer incapable of giving his or her own instructions and consents. In every one of the many states whose laws I have studied, a surrogate decision-maker holding such a document has the legal authority to direct that life-supporting procedures be refused or discontinued.
It is not clear to me whether Mrs. Munoz named her husband as her agent or surrogate in a health care POA or similar document. However, many state laws regarding health care directives provide that if an individual has not signed a health care POA or surrogate designation, one or more relatives (spouse, parents, adult children, etc.) have the same authority — either collectively or in stated order of priority — to give instructions and consents, including instructions to withhold life support, that a surrogate named in a signed document would have.
Mr. Munoz, the woman’s husband, has rights and has a say in this matter, even though the body on life support is not his body, because one way or the other (either because his wife appointed him as her surrogate or because state law gives him that status), he has the right and the power to exercise substituted judgment on behalf of his wife at this time, in a setting where she cannot give her own health care instructions and consents.
In the absence of a specific state statute or reported court decision to the contrary, the enforceability of a health care advance directive and the enforceability of a surrogate decision-maker’s instructions is not affected by the pregnancy of the patient. Period. If this Texas law were not on the books, it would not matter at all whether Mrs. Munoz thought about a future pregnancy (or about this specific scenario of a fatal pulmonary embolism) when she signed her health care directives. If she gave her husband a signed surrogate appointment or health care POA, she did so with the intention that he make all health care decisions for her in settings where she could not give consents or instructions. That is the way it works. And what the Texas legislators have done is shameful, tyrannical meddling. As Issac Asimov said in another context, “I resent it bitterly.”
Jeff D,
“To argue that every child born was once a 14-week fetus, and therefore every 14-week fetus is “viable,” is clever sophistry”
I’ve not argued that or anything like that. Viability in the constitutional sense in the US is of interest. But so what. We are not arguing about what is currently law. Technical viability need not be immediately realisable. Is there a viability of the foetus surviving in utero until such a stage as if becomes viable ex utero? Legal boundaries are somewhat arbitrary, and may be used to settle a specific legal case, but that is not what I’ve been objecting to. My specific point is that in cases where a brain dead woman is pregnant with a 14 week foetus it is possible for it to survive to term and become a healthy adult human. All we lack in this case is the specific detail of the state of the foetus.
But legal viability in the context you refer to is about balancing protection of the prenatal with that of the woman, when considering abortion. This is not that situation. So it’s irrelevant.
“Texas law…” – Read my comments. I have repeatedly said my points are not about Texas law and that I don’t support the law or the change in the law as reported. My points are entirely about the foetus and the pragmatic position of the woman, the father and the foetus, and whether the woman or the father have specific rights to terminate a foetus under various conditions.
“This woman, like every other American adult, has the right to sign health care advance directives and to have them enforced”
Yes. But unless you are sure that she specifically included this scenario then the default position should be to assume she had not accounted for this scenario, and that there’s a good chance she would have excluded it to the extent that the removal of life support be should be delayed while the foetus is assessed. As impressive as the rest of that paragraph is you don’t mention how many times in all your experience you or the cases you have helped with have included the scenario of a brain dead woman with a foetus that might survive. So, to what extent have you lectured, advised or otherwise consulted on this particular scenario? What data do you have available about the the number of woman who if prompted on this specific possibility would then include codicils to keep her body going for the benefit of the foetus?
“It is not clear to me whether Mrs. Munoz named her husband as her agent or surrogate …” – Then it’s also not clear to you what her feelings would be had this scenario had been put to her. For all either of us know she may well have included it ans still requested that the plug be pulled on her and the foetus no matter what state the foetus is in – though I find that hard to imagine.
“one or more relatives (spouse, parents, adult children, etc.) have the same authority — either collectively or in stated order of priority — to give instructions and consents, including instructions to withhold life support…” – Withhold life support from that person. So I’m asking specifically, has this scenario been accounted for? Does this authority extend to the life of a foetus where the authority was intended only to extend to the life of the subject, the mother?
“Mr. Munoz…” – Another paragraph full of detail I’m not disputing, because it extends to the case of his wife. Is there anything that then extends it to any foetus? If the foetus is well (and it’s state isn’t clear yet in this case) then does his right to pull the plug on his wife extend to killing a foetus capable of survival to good health?
“In the absence of a specific state statute or reported court decision to the contrary, the enforceability of a health care advance directive and the enforceability of a surrogate decision-maker’s instructions is not affected by the pregnancy of the patient. Period.” – Really? Can you be specific? Are not other laws then overriding this, since in the grey area of one life becoming two during the various phases of pregnancy, I take it there is a point at which the foetus has rights? Is the ‘Period’ your certainty, or the current law’s? In order for you to be sure I’d have thought a precedence case would be required in order to set the law for a specific scenario like this. Is there such a case?
If you’re going to argue the significance of the future potential for a bit of matter to develop into an human adult, then you’ve really gone off the rails. For that is exactly Every Sperm Is Sacred. Worse, every nuclear cell in your body has the potential to independently develop into an adult human through cloning, as do all those copies of Craig Venter’s DNA on computer disks everywhere.
No. No way in Hell.
Can the entity in question survive on its own right now without causing harm to others?
A fourteen-week-old fetus doesn’t even have functioning lungs. It’s not got a brain worth mentioning. Hell, for that matter, it’s smaller than my hairbrush. It’s entirely irrelevant.
Cheers,
b&
Ben,
Then we simply disagree on the standing of the foetus and who has rights over its life. And this specific tragic case is incidental to that disagreement as far as I can tell.
In your opinion, when does a foetus/infant become significant to justify your concern? Thinking just of a well mother and baby first, is it OK to abort the day before the baby is due, when on the day before anticipated delivery everything is going as expected? Can the mother suddenly decide to terminate the unborn infant’s life? Can a father every overrule the mother in choosing to abort, at any stage, even the evening of conception?
Where there’s a two way relationship between mother and infant I take a pro-choice stance of it being a balance that begins entirely in the mother’s favour but changes depending on the stage of pregnancy and the health of both.
In a two way relationship between two adults regarding the resuscitation after certain stages of death, then that’s between the couple, if it can be anticipated, or between the surviving partner (or parents if that’s the situation, or sibling, according to normal precedence of interested parties) and the doctors if not.
A three way relationship such as this I see as a complex case, and in this case I don’t see the father’s right’s take precedence over the foetus. Not on the basis of the father’s rights as a father, or as the partner of the dead woman. In this case I see the foetus having precedence on both counts.
The mother’s opinion, though not known with regard to this scenario (and most of my points so far have been the doubt I have that she would make the choice to terminate) I think is irrelevant. I don’t see the need to consider her opinion once she is dead, regarding the foetus. Even if she had been explicit in saying, “If I die, terminate the foetus.”, then I don’t see any reason to comply.
But here my stance is still not supporting the state’s choice to deny the termination; but rather denying the states right to permit it. The states duty to defend the rights of the living is already required. There are many states of consciousness, intelligence and other variations in the state of life where we do not permit the termination of life, or where we control it strictly, for both humans and animals. I don’t see a 14 week foetus being a sufficient exception. In the scenario of this family it would depend on the opinion of doctors only; and then only if they recommended termination could the father assent to it. If the doctors thought the foetus was viable then I don’t think the father has the right to override that opinion.
Ron, this isn’t a three-way relationship. A fourteen-week old fetus isn’t a person. Only persons can have relationships (in this context).
Making this a question about abortion only muddies the waters. It’s not about abortion at all; it’s about the rights of patients to have advance directives and for their next of kin to make medical decisions on their behalf.
Further muddying the waters with near-term abortions is even less helpful, in this or any other context. I am unaware of any near-term abortions ever having been performed, except perhaps for the most heartbreaking of circumstances — circumstances which would become vastly more heartbreaking with legislative interference in the medical decision-making process.
Put simply, abortion need no more legal regulation than any other surgical procedure, from coronary bypasses to liposuction. The boogeymen of the forced-birth crowd don’t actually exist, and using those boogeymen to interfere in radically unrelated circumstances (such as this one) is beyond cruel and unusual punishment for people who haven’t even committed a crime in the first place.
It’s okay for abortion to make you uneasy, for you to wish that it would never happen, for you to think you’d never agree with one, even to urge women to never get one. That’s all just fine. I’d probably be with you for a substantial part of all of that.
What’s not okay is using the power of the state to impose your wishes upon women.
How much do you want to bet that there’s something that you enjoy doing that I find positively disgusting and repulsive and repugnant, but that causes no harm to anybody (except possibly yourself)? Do you want me sending police to your place to arrest you and throw you in jail for whatever that may be?
No?
Then stop trying to make illegal things that other people do that you find offensive — unless, of course, it’s to protect somebody else who’s objecting to the treatment they’re receiving.
Cheers,
b&
“A fourteen-week old fetus isn’t a person. Only persons can have relationships (in this context).”
Just congenially curious, is there a fetal age, prior to birth, when a fetus is a person?
Personhood would be another red herring in this debate. It could be relevant if women were getting late-term abortions for frivolous reasons, but I’ve never heard of even one such case, and I have an hard time imagining circumstances by which it could happen. Real-world late-term abortions are triage situations or other types of medical emergencies in which personhood is truly irrelevant.
And let’s not forget. Even if frivolous late-term abortions were a problem, making them illegal would just mean that women getting them would do so in back alleys with coathangers.
There is no problem with abortion needing to be solved; if there were, legislation would be the worst possible approach to solving it.
And, oh-by-the-way, however you might want to define personhood, fourteen weeks of gestation is clearly waaaaaaay too early to do so. That’s firmly in “Every Sperm Is Sacred” territory.
Again, no matter how distasteful you might find the topic, no matter how much you might wish it went away, no matter how much you want to make it go away, it’s entirely a matter between a woman and her doctor — just as with everything else in medicine.
Cheers,
b&
Very well stated, Ben.
From a legal standpoint, I would think that the husband has the authority to make this decision regardless of the ‘possible’ viability of the fetus.
We can’t know whether or not this poor girl would have wanted her body to be used to incubate a fetus, particularly one that may be physically or mentally damaged.
Perhaps if the fetus was healthy with a good chance of survival, maybe. But “maybe” shouldn’t override the wishes of her family as well as her own written word.
Ben,
If the 14 week foetus isn’t a person, and the woman is dead, then what right has the ex-potential father got at all? There is no relationship for him to consider.
Abortion and person-hood is relevant in that vague notion of person-hood. Does the unborn infant become a person suddenly on birth? what is the significance of person-hood that makes the abortion of an about to be born baby different in this respect from one just born but otherwise healthy. It’s as an artificial demarcation as as any other.
And you still haven’t addressed the other aspect of advanced directives, in that without information to the contrary I think it unreasonable to assume the mother intended this scenario to be included, given how mothers usually respond to their foetuses. My wife lost a foetus at 6 weeks, and she still retains a strong emotional attachment, thinks about it still, even after we now have two adult children. Other mothers that lost early foetuses empathise with her. But I only give it a thought when prompted and have no emotional attachment. So I don’t see any reason to suppose her directive would not have been changed by her for this scenario and it is only convenience to suppose she intended her directive to include this scenario.
“What’s not okay is using the power of the state to impose your wishes upon women.”
They are not imposting wishes upon this woman. She is passed being imposed upon. And if you want to send the police to arrest me when I’m brain dead then by all means. I think your point here is of far less relevance than abortion, because abortion is related to the termination of a foetus, and that is what is being considered in switching off the woman’s life support.
“No? Then stop trying to make illegal things that other people do that you find offensive …”
I’m not trying to make any legal change; and I’ve repeatedly said I don’t support the state’s move here. It seems like a clear move on the state’s part to impose what I guess would be pro-life views on this rare case. I have not idea what the legal precedence would be for this, or if a new one would be set. While the husband has the right to decide the fate of the wife’s body alone, there is no existing case for supporting his right over the foetus, or any stage. My suspicion would be that there is already enough legal requirement for the doctors to save the foetus if they can, if they think it is viable. What steps are being taken to establish the viability of the foetus?
My objections are entirely as I explained in several responses here:
1) The presupposition that the woman’s directive included this scenario is not at all clear, and without further explicit information is unlikely to be the death of her foetus, if it is viable.
2) The right of a woman to predetermine the fate of a foetus in the case of anticipation of her being dead but the foetus alive and viable is entirely unclear. Personally I think she lost any right to anything other than her own body.
3) The presupposition, based on a single reported statement from the family, that the foetus is not viable is unfounded.
4) While the husband has rights over the woman’s body there is no precedence for giving him rights over the foetus, if it is viable, and so no right to rule on the wife’s complete death while the foetus is possibly viable.
5) Despite your wish to leave abortion out of it you argue as if (and others are explicit on this) as if this is a pro-choice issue that is only usually used for an abortion with regard to living mother and a living foetus.
Ron, a hypothetical (or two) regarding your #4. What if an ultrasound showed significant brain damage in the fetus? Whose decision would it be to continue or terminate the pregnancy? Should the father have no say in the matter? Does the state get to decide? What about a case where the mother is not brain dead, but she says, “I want the father to make this decision.” Should the state say he’s not allowed. Because that’s not too far from the same situation as a brain dead mother who left her husband the power to make her health care decisions.
I don’t see the need for bilateral rights for the father in this case.
I don’t think he has an obvious right to terminate a foetus in good health.
But if it can be shown that the foetus is effectively dead then his right, then under the women’s wishes about her body alone, he could terminate the woman’s life support, precisely because the fate of the foetus is already decided. He isn’t terminating it in that case.
So, for a healthy foetus he has the right to give it up for adoption say, but not t terminate it. For a dead foetus his views on the foetus don’t matter and his agreement with his wife can take precedence.
It’s a complex system of determining the precedence of a three-way system. Precedence varies according to the specifics of the case.
If someone disagrees about the status of the foetus with regard to the father, no matter what the health of the foetus, then we disagree on that point.
My main interest here has been to challenge what seem like pro-choice motivated over-simplifications and some presuppositions about what the mother might have wanted had she considered this case, or a presupposition that she had, and some presumptions about the state of the foetus based on the limited report.
The woman’s husband has medical power of attorney. And she has an advance directive stating that she does not wish her life to be sustained artificially.
That, really, truly, honestly, is all that’s relevant.
That her advance directive didn’t spell out what should happen in this situation is irrelevant; advance directives don’t work like that.
Whether or not the fetus would survive if she’s kept from rotting is irrelevant.
The existence of the fetus is irrelevant. It has no claims on anything; it has no legal standing; it has no interests.
That you want the woman’s body kept from rotting is irrelevant, as are your reasons and justifications for why that should be done.
It’s not your decision to make.
It was hers, and she made it in the form of the advance directive. It’s now her husband’s, who is fully supporting her decision.
Period, full stop, end of story.
Cheers,
b&
The husband has no rights to his fetus?
That sounds rather silly. But I’m not familiar with the law regarding that.
First, this is obviously quite the heartbreaking and tragic situation.
It’s also extremely complicated and…well…messy.
That’s why, though I’d be quite happy to express my own various opinions on what I’d like to think I’d do in that situation or what I want those involved to do, actually doing so would be irrelevant and meaningless.
I’m not the one in the thick of things. I don’t have all the facts at hand. And I’m not in a position to make decisions.
Neither are the legislators.
The only people qualified to make a decision in these sorts of situations are the family members with power of attorney and the presiding physicians.
That especially applies in this case, but it also applies in more routine abortion cases. All the arguments the forced-birth crowd makes, even the valid ones that should reasonably tilt the scales away from an abortion being performed, are irrelevant unless they’re also weighed against the reasons in favor of an abortion. And, again, the only ones qualified to make such a decision are the pregnant woman and her physicians.
The same is true, of course, for any other medical procedure. In many cases, it will be clear that the procedure should or shouldn’t be performed, and the physician and patient will rapidly come to agreement on the fact. In other cases, the physician may strongly believe that the procedure is called for, but the patient still has the right to refuse. In still other cases, the patient may very much desire the procedure, but it is not considered “standard of care” and the doctor cannot otherwise medically and / or ethically justify it; the doctor is under no obligation to perform the procedure, but the patient reserves the right to try to convince some other doctor.
Yet in no case does the state have any business getting in the middle of any of these matters, other than in the usual way of licensing and protecting against fraud and malpractice. Even then, it is not the state that decides whether or not something meets “standard of care,” but the medical community and ethics boards.
Cheers,
b&
+1
Well said and this is why I am glad that Canada has no legal restrictions on abortion. We owe this to a personal hero of mine, Dr. Henry Morgentaler, a total bad ass who survived the Poland ghettos & internment in Nazi death camp and emigrated to Canada much to Canada’s benefit. Morgentaler went to prison in his fight for abortion reform. His appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada re: abortion led to this statement by the Court:
Thanks.
There’s one more thing I should add, and that’s that one of the most important freedoms one can have is the freedom to make mistrakes, to be worng.
I think many of those advocating for government interference in private matters have a fear of other people making mistrakes, and they think that having a law to force people to do something will stop those mistrakes from being made. What they miss is that, though they’ll prevent (or reduce) one type of mistrake, they’ll also guarantee (or increase) incidences of the opposite mistrake.
As much as I think it’s an huge mistrake, for example, for somebody to get drunk every night, I have to concede that there really might be people for whom a drunken stupor and all its accompanying ills really is preferable to sobriety — and that’s long before I acknowledge that lots of people can responsibly get blasted with less frequency, or merely have on rare occasions a single drink small enough to not even register. Even if prohibition did somehow manage to prevent anybody from ever becoming an alcoholic ever again, who am I to decide for everybody else that that’s the best way for them to live their lives?
And so with everything else. If you’re not harming others (such as by reckless endangerment of driving with alcohol in your system), it’s up to you to decide how best to live your life. And you’re going to want to do things that I’d hate, and I’m going to want to do things that you’d hate, and we each have to live with that.
Cheers,
b&
I think your autocorrect has gone haywire (mistrake). 🙂
From my experience I’ve heard some strange arguments as well for limiting abortion – one I find particular repugnant is that we have to have laws to limit it because women will abort foetuses at all times for no good reason (some variations add that women would do this to spite their partners).
This argument assumes that most women are sociopathic and tries to address an issue that must be in the 0.000000000001% of all cases instead of concentrating on real world situations.
Oh, I never make mistrakes. I’m never worng, either.
I think most of the people calling for prohibitive laws are generally looking for the state to stop them from doing things they themselves would like to do but know they shouldn’t. Somebody wanting to ban abortions out of fear that abortion would be used as part of a power game with a partner is somebody you don’t want to ever be partners with.
b&
Agree on the heartlessness and general tragedy of the situation, and IANAL, but I don’t think Roe is the controlling precedent you think it is. Planned Parenthood vs. Casey in 1992 scrapped the trimester system that you are citing, and also gave states a lower burden of proof to meet before passing abortion-limiting laws.
Now, that stinks for us pro-choice types. But we can’t ignore it just because we don’t like it. The question of whether Texas’ law is constitutional will have to be answered by looking at Casey, not Roe, and I sadly suspect that Texas can mount a pretty good case that their state law follows the rules set out in Casey.
Am I weird for thinking that the ethics in this case are far from obvious? Restrictive abortion laws are grotesque because they infringe upon something which concretely does exist-a woman’s autonomy–in favor of something which only *may* exist–the “life” of a fetus. Here, however, there is no autonomy to infringe, especially since we know it was a wanted pregnancy and the woman never explicitly formulated what she would want done in this contingency.
IMO the question is who becomes the legal guardian of Ms. Munoz’ body, fetus included, and assumes her legal powers over what to do with her body.
I tend to think that what makes the most sense is to have her legal next of kin step into her shoes, as it were. They now become the legal decision-maker over what happens to her body. They have the same legal rights and decision-making power she would have, were she alive and conscious. The balance does not shift from Munoz – fetus to [nothing] – fetus, it shifts from Munoz – fetus to Munoz’ husband – fetus.
Except that Munoz while living has a right to bodily autonomy that weighs against the putative right to life of the fetus. Munoz’s husband doesn’t have a comparable right, even if he is given “guardianship” over the corpse.
I wonder how you know that to be true.
The husband would seem to have legal right to his wife’s body and anything in it in a case like this.
I am not claiming to “know” anything. I am making an ethical argument. I am saying, the woman’s autonomy seems like it may be sufficient by itself to override the rights of a developing human being. It seems far less clear, to put it mildly, that a man’s right to power of attorney over his wife’s corpse has the same overriding power over a developing human being. [To be clear, I daresay this is the state of the law, we’re talking ethics here.] I’m happy to consider arguments to the contrary obviously, and have been reading this thread with much interest.
To me, abortion is acceptable because in the dispute between the rights of the living, breathing mother and those of the baby-who-might-be, I have to side with the mother. If she doesn’t want to carry the pregnancy the fetus has no right to force her to.
Since in this case the mother no longer has any rights (and assuming the fetus has a reasonably good chance of living) then I think the fetus’s right to survive has precedence. She is no longer a party to this decision, and a doctor’s sole duty is to try to save the fetus.
Nor do I think her next-of-kin has the right to choose an abortion for her. ONLY the mother has a right to abort a pregnancy, because it’s her body. And this body no longer has a living owner to dispute the fetus’s claim to it. To allow the husband to order an abortion (by removing her from life support) amounts to saying, “His right to dispose of a corpse outweighs the fetus’s right to live.”
As a doctor, surely the rule has to be, “Do no harm.” Does the emotional harm suffered by her survivors (knowing she’s lying in a hospital like a piece of meat) really outweigh the loss of life the fetus suffers if it’s aborted? I think that depends on the fetus’s chance of surviving to become a healthy baby.
There remains another tough problem, though. Who pays for it? The insurance company could argue, “We were contracted to insure her. We would have paid for childbirth because that’s part of her health, but her health is no longer a factor.” And I can’t see making the father pay for such expensive care when the fetus might not survive anyway. So either the hospital gets stuck with the cost and passes it on to everyone else, or the state should step in and fund this mandate.
“Brain death” is not death. Brain death is not based on data that would be considered valid for any other scientific purpose: http://www.organfacts.net/braindeath/ Many patients have survived so-called “brain death”: http://www.organfacts.net/notdead/
This would be a difficult situation if no prior wishes had been expressed by the deceased and/or if her family were in disagreement. The fact that everyone involved wants the same thing makes it easy. Why does the law think it has the right to step in?
Assuming the baby survives to be born, under Texan law whose responsibility does it become?
The only people making any kind of decision should be the family with their doctors input.
According to a bunch of RNs chatting aboot earliest viability in their experiences. 22 weeks – including 1 of sextuplets.
The odds of survivability at 23 weeks are less than 1 in 5.
14 weeks is not viable by any stretch of the imagination.
Funny how during the heyday of the medieval mindset behind this legislation the poor woman would likely already be resting in peace.
While it may be true that Marlise wanted a DNR and never hooked up to machines, she also didn’t foresee herself dying while pregnant. It’s difficult to assume what she’d have decided if that were a question asked on the DNR petition before she signed.
I’d certainly allow myself to be hooked up in order to give my unborn child a chance at life, REGARDLESS of how others are going to also assume the physical and mental state in which it will live. Bridges should be crossed when you reach them and dealt with accordingly in a humane manner. I would like to think that the family would want a part of their daughter to live on in a child she bore.
How do we know that?
Indeed, since she and her husband are trained EMTs, and have been through a previous pregnancy together, I think it highly likely that they have thought about and discussed their own mortality in that context.
And the husband was pretty adamant in saying that she would never have wanted to be kept alive in these circumstances. I think we should take him at his word.
…and, even if it never occurred to them, she trusted her husband enough to make these decisions on her behalf to give him medical power of attorney. Even if he’s incorrectly (or even maliciously) choosing what she would not have chosen, the choice is now his and his alone to make.
An exception, of course, would be evidence that she was coerced into giving him that power, or that she wished to remove his consent, or that she explicitly wanted something else. But none of that apples; not even an hint of it. Instead, the only reason we’re in this mess is because other people with no right to meddle in their private affairs think they know better.
And that’s just not right.
It’s also against the self-interests of those trying to interfere. Unless all y’all want somebody else to have the power to override your own medical, sexual, and reproductive decisions? No? Then stay the fuck out of other people’s decisions.
Cheers,
b&
That’s what medical power of attorney is for. She designated somebody she trusts — her husband — to make such decisions on her behalf should she be unable to do so. And can you think of anybody who better knows what she would have wanted?
It’s his position that she still wouldn’t want to be hooked up as she is. And it’s his obligation and right to make that decision.
That you’d want otherwise is just fine, and you’ve hopefully made your wishes known to those who might someday have to make such decisions on your behalf.
But your own wishes for yourself in similar circumstances are irrelevant to this particular case.
Cheers,
b&
The family already have a child to remember her by, and by all accounts are unanimous in wanting life support withdrawn.
Ben,
“The woman’s husband has medical power of attorney.” – Over her body; with no reference to any foetus. The foetus may be irrelevant to you, but is it irrelevant to Texas law, in this scenario? I get that you think it irrelevant. But it isn’t irrelevant as far as the state is concerned, it isn’t as far as many people are concerned, and it’s not clear that it would have been irrelevant to the mother had she anticipated this.
“And she has an advance directive stating that she does not wish her life to be sustained artificially.” – An advance directive that could be reasonably challenged for the reasons I’ve already given. Mainly that it is not clear she intended the directive to cover this situation, and there’s good reason to suspect she would not want it to. It doesn’t matter how many times you tell me there is this directive, because I’m not disputing the existence of the directive, or its implications for her body alone. I’m saying in my view the status of the foetus may change that. There are cases where legal challenges are made to personal directive, so even the legal status of the directive would not be clear cut if the doctors thought her condition contradicted the conditions specified in the directive.
And medical practice is to prolong and save life if possible. In this case the woman’s life may be effectively over, but if the foetuses life is not then there is a default duty to save it. The age of the foetus is usually only of concern for living conscious pregnant women.
“That, really, truly, honestly, is all that’s relevant.” – I get that this is your opinion. But it’s not mine. And given that cases involving just the family and brain dead person do go to court, even without any foetus to consider, it’s clearly not as straight forward as you wish it to be.
“That you want the woman’s body kept from rotting is irrelevant, as are your reasons and justifications for why that should be done.”
I haven’t said I want her body kept alive; and I’ve specific in saying I don’t expect it to be kept alive indefinitely. I’m challenging the presuppositions around the understanding of the intent of the directive and the subsequent rights of the family, or the prior rights of the woman once brain dead, if there’s a foetus to consider. I get you don’t want to consider it. I’m not disputing that you have that opinion.
The purpose of such directives is personal and subjective, but often includes reasons such as to prevent the person being resuscitated into some poor quality state of life; to prevent the burdening of the family should such a poor state of resuscitation be achieved; to prevent indeterminate continuation of life support. Well, if the foetus could survive in utero and be removed as a baby in good health, then all those are still achieved, since keeping the body alive is not indefinite and is only required to support the foetus.
It sounds like the family is of the opinion that the risk of the foetus being damaged is too low, and if the doctors are telling them this is the case then I would be of the opinion to switch off life support. But if the doctors are of the opinion that this would be a low risk and they thought they could bring the foetus to a successful term then there is a case to challenge the family’s current position. I wouldn’t envy anyone making that decision to override the family’s wishes, and if I had to be involved in such a decision I’d want far more facts than I have right now. I’m not declaring it to be as black and white as you are; in either direction – which is what you seem to be implying.
Case in point: “It’s not your decision to make.” – I’m not making a decision. I’m giving my opinion on how the presence of a foetus changes the basic case of such a directive that was probably intended for a scenario without a foetus. But it’s not your decision to make either, no matter how dogmatically you declare it. You’ve already said elsewhere that it’s complex and the opinions of the doctors should be considered. So far the opinion of the doctors hasn’t been presented to us. And other similar cases would offer different specific problems, but I still haven’t seen any reasoning on your part that would support switching off the mother’s life support for a healthy foetus; I’ve only seen your declaration that the foetus is irrelevant.
“It was hers, and she made it in the form of the advance directive.” – Yes. About her own body. As you keep saying. Her wishes will be granted, eventually, with regard to her body alone.
“Period, full stop, end of story.” – As far as your opinion goes. I get that. But it clearly isn’t the end of the story. If the story is correct then 12 states have this requirement in place, so there’s a long way to go in reality. Perhaps you mean ‘full stop’ as a matter of principle. Then I still disagree. It’s a complex situation that deserves more than ‘full stop’ and the dismissal of the foetus, especially since she is dead.
“For that is exactly Every Sperm Is Sacred.” – I’ve explicitly said that I discount any such issues like sacredness. I’ve explicitly said I’m not making any claim that is remotely mysterious, mystical, has any woolly woo like regard for life. I’ve explicitly said I’m a materialist. I’m not even making a moral judgement here. I’ve explicitly said I’m a moral nihilist. I’ve explicitly said I’m not a pro-lifer. So I’m not sure why you’re getting your panties in a bunch with what you think I’m saying about the value of the foetus. Let’s try the next bit then…
“If you’re going to argue the significance of the future potential for a bit of matter…” – In my opinion a rock is a bit of matter, a sperm cell is a bit of matter, a foetus is a bit of matter, a prenatal near birth is a bit of matter, a toddler is a bit of matter, you and I are bits of matter. Of course this status of being bits of matter is not a defining aspect of the many potentials that come along in a human life. It starts off relatively insignificant, but becomes significant. But then you conveniently don’t want to consider the matter of determining where the boundary lies. There are various legal but somewhat artificial boundaries set with regard to a live and conscious woman aborting a healthy foetus, but they don’t deal very well with the vague and increasing significance of human life. I don’t know how well Texas state law deals with a brain dead foetus in this situation, since it isn’t stated. Does it only require that the foetus have a heart beat? It’s not clear.
Of course humans do put a lot of significance in even the smallest of foetuses, even for many materialist atheists, so you’re claim to the insignificance of the foetus doesn’t wash.
“Can the entity in question survive on its own right now without causing harm to others?” – Irrelevant if it can be maintained to a state when it can. The problem in this specific case is already defined to be with regard to maintaining the foetus in utero, so it doesn’t matter that it would not survive if delivered at 14 weeks.
“Hell, for that matter, it’s smaller than my hairbrush.” – Irrelevant. In the pro-choice/life debate regarding the views of a living conscious pregnant woman this would be relevant. She’s brain dead, and unless it is clear that the foetus is also brain dead and would not survive incubation it’s a different case. In this different case the father’s rights are not necessarily the same as if there were no foetus, even if that’s your opinion of how you’d like it to be. That you claim the foetus is irrelevant to the status of his authority does not make it so.
“No. No way in Hell.” – This sounds like a claim to absolute knowledge about what rights apply to what bodies. Rights are conferred by humans on humans and implemented by law. As such they are social, cultural and legal assignments and not absolutes. Even when referred to in documents as inalienable rights, or absolute rights, or any similar phrasing, that is so only in so in opinion, and in so far as the supporters of that view can implement those rights. They are still the implementations of opinions. They are up for debate, in as much as free debate is allowed to flourish.
You are quick to call on that aspect of the law that you think support your case to let the woman and the foetus die, i.e. her directive; but you object to the law that is intended to protect the foetus when the woman is dead and it isn’t. That’s fine. You have an opinion on which bits of the law you support and which you don’t. But your dogmatic “No. No way in Hell.” seems to go way beyond opinion. I’m not clear what you mean by it because I didn’t take you to have such apparent absolutist views.
I still don’t get why the foetus is so insignificant to you and yet the opinion of the dead woman, who may well have held a different view had she thought about this, counts for so much.
I also get that you feel for the family. Me too. That doesn’t make them right by virtue of their suffering. If you want to argue that on balance you would accede to the family’s wishes, even if the foetus could be saved, because the mental suffering of the family takes precedence, then that is merely your opinion. Perhaps “No. No way in Hell.” expresses the strength of your opinion and isn’t an absolutist claim. I’d be interested to know what makes your position so vehement.
Ron, it’s clear that you think people have no fundamental right to control their own bodies or make their own decisions about reproduction, including the right to delegate that authority to a spouse. And that nothing I can possibly write will persuade you otherwise.
I would think that a simple desire to such rights for yourself would be sufficient to grant them to others, but that’s apparently not the case.
I’ll try one last example, and then leave it at that.
Suppose some space alien beamed down tomorrow and waved a magic wand, and hey-presto you became the only person in the world capable of bearing this fetus to term, but you would also die in childbirth.
And now suppose you have no say in the matter, for whatever reason. Tough shit; you just don’t.
And the fact that you didn’t write anything specifically about this type of event that you didn’t foresee is considered irrelevant.
And your own spouse’s opinion is likewise considered irrelevant.
All that matters is that the Texas legislature adopted an ALEC-penned law saying that the fetus must be born and that everything physically possible must be done to ensure said birth.
If you’re happy living in such an universe, then carry on. But if you find that as bizarre and horrific as I do, then you just might maybe possibly perhaps want to rethink your position on this case as well.
Cheers,
b&
Ben,
“Ron, it’s clear that you think people have no fundamental right to control their own bodies or make their own decisions about reproduction”
Ben, it’s clear that you haven’t paid the slightest attention to the ways in which I have explained I hold no such fundamental view.
I’m pro-choice in pregnancy, when the woman is alive and has the capacity to make decisions, with some vague limits on the extent to which I think that choice is reasonable. As a ridiculous example (since aliens with magic wands are on the table), I don’t think pro-choice applies if a woman agrees to carry the pregnancy to term, and then changes her mind just for the hell of it just prior to birth, asking that the life of the unborn infant be terminated. So, even without being fundamental that seems like a reasonable limit to me. And I’m sure that most humans have some similar limits, at least to the extent that allows politicians to put existing limits on abortion.
But, do I think people have a fundamental right to determine what happens to their bodies after their death? No. I’m not big on fundamentals, since they tend to be not so fundamental but rather an simplistic expression of the owners complex acquired views.
But to be clear, if the person is dead then they have no fundamental rights worth having. In times of plague and high death rates it’s quite common for current rights to be overruled and bodies put in mass graves or burned on-mass. Circumstances change. There are no fundamental rights. At all. The rights we become used to calling fundamental are not so in any absolute sense; they are acquired rights, and do change in extremes.
“Suppose some space alien beamed down tomorrow and waved a magic wand, and hey-presto you became the only person in the world capable of bearing this fetus to term, but you would also die in childbirth.” – You’re doing well at coming up with analogues that are conveniently not quite analogous enough. Try this variation:
“Suppose some space alien beamed down tomorrow and waved a magic wand, and hey-presto you became the only person in the world capable of bearing this fetus to term, and then you became pregnant, and then you unexpectedly became brain dead, and then the aliens used your body as an incubator to bring the foetus to term. Tough shit.” – Well, actually, I’d be brain dead. I wouldn’t give a shit for my body or what happens to it, so that shit wouldn’t be so tough. It’s nothing more than live meat. Organs for donation, or in this case for the use of the foetus.
“And the fact that you didn’t write anything specifically about this type of event that you didn’t foresee is considered irrelevant.” – Damned right it’s irrelevant. And so would it be irrelevant if I had written specifically about it. I’d be brain dead. I’m not sure why you think it matters to the dead person.
The ‘death in dignity’ woo applies only to the person in the process of dying. It means nothing to the dead person once dead, or brain dead. It’s also a culturally acquired sop to the feelings of the bereaved, which in straight forward and most common situations is easy to accede to. Unusual cases call for a reanalysis.
“And your own spouse’s opinion is likewise considered irrelevant.” – Well yes, that’s right, since we’re talking about me. I have no more rights to her post-death, or even post-brain-death body than she has to mine. Like I say, through custom alone I acquire that right, for her body, under specific conditions, and she for mine. But it’s not fundamental in any unbreakable sense. This case isn’t one of the usual ones. It’s unusual.
As a matter of fact I’ve been to a few funerals, and my wife is quite accustomed to me telling her to do what the hell she likes, including giving up any legal obligation she can get away with ditching. I’d recommend any useful organs be used, but otherwise feed me to the cats. It really is a dumb ass religious hangover caring about the bodies of the dead beyond their usefulness. At least a foetus has some more interesting potential (see, no sacredness required).
We might actually make some advance in human nature when we can cope with the loss of a loved one without getting all gooey over the meat that’s left behind after the lights have gone out.
“Texas legislature adopted an ALEC-penned law ” – I already told you that the Texas law wasn’t what I was addressing. But you raise a good point with “saying that the fetus must be born and that everything physically possible must be done to ensure said birth.” Does that law include a “no matter what” clause? Does it say it needs to be done even if the foetus is brain dead? Because my view isn’t as fundamental as you make out. I’ve already said that if the foetus could not be brought to a safe and healthy term I’d recommend termination. Where does the Texas law stand in that respect?
I strongly disagree with this. It seems obvious that the attachment between husband and wife is as much physical as emotional. He presumably loves everything about her, including her body. So it’s entirely natural that he should “get gooey” over her physical remains, which he will now never be intimate with again. There’s nothing weak or shameful about that.
Similarly, parents get physical pleasure from hugging their children, smelling their hair, and so on. This physical component is essential to human bonding, and losing it is traumatic.
So to pretend that “the meat that’s left behind” should be of no consequence to a grieving husband or parent, it seems to me, is to deny fundamental facts about the nature of human relationships, namely that we are social creatures who express our affection physically. This has nothing to do with religious woo; it’s entirely compatible with a materialist view of human nature.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_nature
Some primates have been known to carry their dead young around with them for a while. I agree that the feeling of attachment is part of the grieving process sometimes. So is the wish to meet your loved ones in some hoped for afterlife. It doesn’t mean that retaining an attachment to the physical remains is good for us. I can see why the husband might be caused anguish, seeing the body of his wife maintained in this partially alive state, and that final death will allow him to detach his emotions from the body. But, if this is in fact how he feels then is that emphesising the point that he might have felt better about it had we a different body-death culture?
I’ve had friends who have lost limbs, and that too seems to be emotionally traumatic in a way that goes beyond the loss of function. Whether it’s limbs, dead loved ones or a foetus, we struggle getting a handle on what it means to be a person or a whole person.
Atheist Raymond Tallis, in his opposition to what he calls darwinitis and neuromania, struggles with notions of our animal nature and our lack of free will. He gets real confused about what the whole person is, to the extent that you could mistake his writing for that of a theist if he wasn’t explicit in stating his atheism. These feelings also seem to be responsible for many of the anti-reductionist rants from various sources.
So I’m not disputing the natural nature of these feelings but acknowledging them, and I’m saying in my opinion we’d be better off if we could detach out emotional regard for the experiences we’ve had with the whole ‘person’ from the dead body.
Fortunately we have an expert witness available — her husband — who says she would want it to cover this situation. And there’s good reason to think he’s more likely to be right about this than you are.
I’m not claiming to be right. It doesn’t matter who is actualoy right.
There seems to be such an emotionally charged response in many of the comments here on this topic, not unlike that seem on a pro-lifer site, that it seems impossible to drag brains away from the the actual specifics. There seems to be a desperate instinctive and vehement denunciation of anything that isn’t following the party line of a pro-choice agenda. It is not clear at all that they considered this scenario. Being ‘experts’ in their field is no sign that they would have considered it. I’ve spent the last 12 months trying to get nurses to make very basic common sense decisions in the care of my sick mother. I know from first hand experience, and from many a conversation with relatives of other elderly patients, and from discussions on a main UK geriactric site for clinicians, and from a complaint case that has dragged on for months, that from nurses to consultants, they do not think of everything and quite often don’t think through potential scenarios. They are human. It’s hard to cover all the bases, and when some scenarios are rare it it would be inefficient to do so. Unless they had explicitly included this rare scenario I have far more reason to think they have not. Add to that the emotional attachment mothers have that will cause them to choose the life of their early foetus to their own, and this adds to my feeling that she would not have chosen what most here are presuming.
If it turns out I’m wrong in this specific case it still doesn’t alter my general point that most people making such DNR declarations probably don’t consider pregnancy.
There might be a god of some sorts. We atheists might be proved wrong. But that does not change the principle that there is no evidence for one and that it makes sense to act (form our working beliefs) as if there isn’t one.
In this case and in mnay others it would make sense not to jump to the conclusion that the declaration has covered this scenario, since the general principle that doctors adhere to is to save life where they can, and here the only life worth considering is that of the foetus. I repeat yet again, to avoid being misunderstood, that if the doctors are convinced there is little hope for this particular foetus, then pull the plug.
This long comment is the last thing I will allow you to add to this thread. You have had your say many times, and are dominating this thread, and it’s time that you stop.
Holy shit Ron!!
Give it a break!! We get your point!
I would absolutely encourage everyone here to watch this discussion on Anderson Cooper. Neither WOMAN on this panel is religious or conservative and both are sympathetic to the “pro-life” position in this case.
http://www.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/bestoftv/2014/01/09/ac-10-texas.cnn.html
I agree with the concensus on the panel that this is fucked up by abortion politics, on both sides. I agree with the guy saying the Texas law comes from a pro-life manipluative agenda, but I disagree with his comment, and note his cognative dissonance that is exposed, when in one breath he emphasises how dead the woman is then complains how grotesque it is to keep her body breathing. To lay persons everything about surgery, autopsy, organ preservation for transplant, even transplant itself, can seem grotesque. And this emotional reaction is adding to the pro-choice agenda in a quite disfunctional way. It really is a mixed up case.
True, but not terribly informative. Add the fairly popular concepts of butchery, and of turning nice fluffy mammals into food. Most people get upset to some degree over that, and the number of meat-eaters in any country (possible exception : no, I can’t think of one) considerably outnumbers the number of people who use surgical services.
I think most humans are pro-life by default, and opposition to pro-life human propogation instincts has arrisen only to the extent that it conflicts with the pro-choice freedom and avoidance of coercive pregnancy maintenance and birth options of an existing person, the pregnant woman.
This woman is dead in that regard. A couple of members of the panel are making the same dogmatic point of flatly ignoring the objection that it is not the same case of a DNR for a non-pregnant person, and will not entertain the possibility that the woman might have made a different choice had she considered it. And they don’t get around to discussing the possibility that it might be better to overruke her wishes even if she had; and this point could still be argued, that the state law might be right, even if the motivation is entirely disagreeably pro-life based. If a state bases an anti-murder law on some religious motivation surely we don’t overturn the law just because we disagree with the motuvation for its enactment. That would be as fucked up and as dogmatic as the lawmakers were. This iscwhat seems to have crept into this discussion from pro-choicers.
It is not just Texas.
Holy fucking shit, that’s insane.
Only an half a dozen states have legal protections in place to honor the advance directives of women? And over half have legal requirements that the advance directives of women be ignored?
God damn but I live in a barbaric monstrosity of a fucked-up country.
b&