By Grania Spingies
At the beginning of the year Texas had a case of a woman being kept alive by a hospital for the sake of a fetus, even though it was against her own previously stated wishes as well as her husband’s. Eventually the court ruled to allow the machines to be turned off. It was bad enough that someone lost their wife tragically. It was obscene that he had to go to court to be allowed to bury her.
Now Ireland is closing out the year with a similar case, which won’t surprise anyone who has followed Ireland’s bizarre slow shuffle towards modernity, at least where reproductive systems are concerned. A number of related cases have been discussed on this website such as the appalling horror of Savita Halappanavar being condemned to die when she started to miscarry rather than receive medical intervention that might hasten the end of the fetus, owing to the legacy of perverse law-making which hamstrings medical staff while trying to appease its Catholic past. Even the new supposedly improved abortion laws of the country have not had the intended effect, but instead have resulted in more inhumane horror which Jerry wrote about here and in The New Republic.
Today the Irish Independent writes of a new case where a woman who is clinically brain dead but in the early second trimester of pregnancy is being kept alive against the wishes of her family. The problem appears to have arisen because the hospital is unsure if it is legally permissible to switch off the life support machinery. The new law was supposed to clarify the position of medical staff, but as evidently it has not helped at all especially as serious penalties are now attached to anyone who assists in the termination of a fetus except in the most narrow of circumstances. And so a grieving family now waits for lawyers and doctors to decide whether they will be allowed to bury their loved one with privacy they deserve.
Surprisingly, the Minister for Health, who is himself on the pro-life rather than pro-choice side, but is also a medical doctor has shown some compassion and understanding:
“Difficult decisions that should be made by women and their doctors, a couple or the next-of-kin where there is no capacity, and on the basis of best clinical practice, are now made on foot of legal advice. That isn’t how it should be.”
Is it too much to ask that we not base our medical ethics on a millennia-old book of faery tales which commands genocide and mass rape?
b&
Seemingly!
🙁
sub
Can you direct me to the bit in the Bible that says clinical abortion is wrong?
I don’t think there is such a passage which makes it even worse: some countries’ medical ethics are based on what some people imagine a millennia old book of faery tales would say about abortion if it said anything.
Numbers 5.
Abortion is prescribed for women suspected of adultery.
You’re looking at it too narrowly.
For starters, the worst of it with respect to this particular situation is right there, at the end of the Ten Commandments, for one: “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour’s.” Only makes sense if wives are chattel property with a legal status comparable to the livestock and the extended patio.
b&
The Book of Job is interesting. After the wager with Satan, Job is given a new wife and children, so no harm, no foul.
It’s obvious why non-believers can’t arrive at proper ethics.
Been a while since I read Job but I don’t think the wife was ever offed.
Nope, just his sons (and possibly also his daughters, but the Book of Job only mentions that they were in the house prior to it falling over and has nothing to say about them after).
There are several uplifting entries about killing pregnant women, etc. in the name of god.
Most folks I’ve asked that to just use the “do not murder” commandment, which of course changes their problem to show that it is unjustified killing of a human, which is where we started.
And is what they say is true, that God controls everything, then God is the most prolific abortionist of all since up to 1 in 4 end in miscarriage. But hey, he’s the boss, eh?
Duh.
Yes, duh, but his reaction is telling. It’s one thing for the state to limit a woman’s reproductive choice, but for the legal system to tell DOCTORS how to do their job – that is going too far!
But I shouldn’t be so cynical; maybe he’s coming to a realization, as he does express compassion for women as well. It does happen.
“but for the legal system to tell DOCTORS how to do their job – that is going too far!”
Ha, tell that to insurance companies. For some, I now have to submit request for treatment and they determine the length of care needed, though they never even see the patient.
Of related interest in the UK a few weeks ago courts threw out an attempt to gain criminal compensation for a poor child damaged by her mother’s drinking –
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-30327893
This would have allowed all sorts of potential cases against women. It is tricky – although I do think that women who drink or smoke or take drugs, when they know they are pregnant, are wrong, until it is born a child has no status as a human being I would argue.
In this case, it seems that the RC church is desperately trying to grab onto anything it can to slow or halt the end of its theocracy.
“that women who drink or ….
when they know they are pregnant are wrong”
The only useful question is: “Has she had a chance for an abortion?”
Or do we, atheists, have to fight for a neighborhood abortion clinic???
Addicts (male also) are bad parents.
They should not have any children.
There is some foundation, a very maligned one, who pays for sterilization and other longtern birth control. (was on first RD website years ago)
The legal myth, that drunkards are “not responsible” is applied to males, and towards women – the above absurd and unfeasible demand.
Basically sexist stance.
As for biology: I do not know if this liver chemistry genes are widely accepted by now, but if i have to explain: addicted women (including iatrogenic pill addition) are MORE at risk to get raped, and risk an unwanted pregancy because of prostitution for the next shot/drink… and , of course, while craving the next… they are not able to think of birth control, let alone not to go into dangerous situations.
Even if it is “anecdotal” again, I have been born with such genes, and still have a hard time to insist NEVER to go into alc situations.
addiction, in iatrogenic pill addiction.
Typo, sorry.
And, as I am suppressing my panic and write:
A foundation is the right thing for promoting sterilization (and funding each birth control by single payer health insurance would be better), it would be risky ( history) to make it a legal demand.
The role of the state is to get rid of religious legalization, as in abortion, euthanasia, suicide, and leave all that to personal decision.
A state or nation should only have a right to get statistics.
last addition:
add pain medication and antiemetics to abortion, euthanasia, suicide.
A comment from the article:
“The one thing that this case shows is the rank hypocrisy of so called” liberals ” Take a look at some of their arguments here and compare them to other arguments.
In relation to the makey up” abortion to save the life of the mother nonsense, they said is it not better to save one life than lose two”. Now they are advocating loosing two lives without even countenancing trying to save one.
Then they talk of placing the life of an ‘actual. living breathing sentient life” over and above the baby. Now they talk of placing the life of a clinically dead, non sentient woman over an actual living human.
Finally some are bemoaning the fact that this child will be motherless, yet in another context they will be telling us that mothers aren’t that important, that all a child needs is love, that two men can do just as job as a mother and father.
Hypocrits one and all!”
Where to start?
Spelling and punctuation. If it’s unreadable, it’s not worth reading. 🙂
So you couldn’t parse it either?
I read it three times, and still only have a vague idea what the commenter is trying to say.
I think it boiled down to “augh, liberals!”
I completely disagree with the guy, but despite the poor grammar and spelling, I understand what he’s saying. He thinks it’s hypocritical that a liberal would think it’s wrong to keep a brain dead woman’s body functioning long enough for the fetus to be born because the same person would say it’s okay to abort the fetus in order to save the mother’s life. In other words, it’s always better to save one of the two lives if you can when one is going to die. In order to make this argument he has to believe that a fetus is an actual human being and he obviously thinks so. He also apparently thinks that a liberal will simultaneously think the fetus should not be born because it will be motherless and that two gay men are perfectly suitable parents. In his mind both cases involve the child having no mother. It’s a ridiculous argument for many reasons. He thinks he knows how liberals think, but he’s way off base.
IMHO he is completely wrong about almost everything, but if I wanted to illustrate how wrong he is, I’d be obliged to counter his arguments, not claim he can’t be understood. Attack the message, not the messenger even if he is insulting and unlikable. I’m guilty of doing the same thing a few times by attacking a post or comment for its woeful grammar in order to make the writer look stupid. It’s usually a cheap shot and does nothing to prove anyone wrong. I’ve only succeeded in making myself look like a bully.
Lastly, although I disagree, I have sympathy and understanding for the idea of saving the fetus. My knee-jerk reaction is “why not?”. But I immediately come up with plenty of “why nots”, not the least of which is it’s a terrible idea for the state to have any say in such a decision. Let the unfortunate woman die unless she’s left other instructions. That’s what my other knee says.
1+
Oh, I hate grammar Nazi’s. If one cannot determine meaning when punctuation or some misspelling is used, how can one ever communicate with those who are learning to speak your language. Your lack of communication skills is your problem (yes, your lack) as much as it may be theirs.
Obviously, you won’t be hired to solve any puzzles, or ask to relate to people whose second language is English if you can’t even get over a punctuation issue.
I can see it now “Man found dead because people giving him directions out of jungle had bad grammar”
Who’s playing god now?
Whaddya mean “now”? Don’t they always do that … ?
Indeed, that’s one of the primary functions of the gods.
Superficially, the gods are plot devices in a certain type of fiction. They first establish their bona fides by doing the impossible. Then, their command over the natural world demonstrated, they leverage that power to the world of human affairs and make all sorts of proclamations.
But, of course, it’s just some random schmucks making those proclamations in a certain type of fiction. But they convince people that their fiction is fact…and, hey-presto, the schmucks now wield the most important power of any god: the power to get people to obey you unquestioningly.
b&
I actually heard this explained by a Hassidic rabbi in so many words:” you carry the authority of the one who sent you.”
He used a parable: imagine you want to talk to the governor of your state and so you go and ring the doorbell at his residence. A voice booms on the intercom “Who goes there?!” You might be like “er um well I’m …” But if the president sent you with a message, you’d boom right back to the intercom “The president sent me!”
Leaving aside the little details like the fact that the president’s authority is, you know, real, it’s easy to see how the message would be appealing to a certain kind of person. I don’t think every believer is aware of that particular dynamic, but one can’t not think that the human to power – and for some, actual power – is part of what makes religion what it is. Sure, people are looking for answers, but plenty of people want to be the answer!
“I’m on a mission from Gawd” trumps all other considerations including science and ethics. Lucky the laws of nature can’t actually be broken.
The Church sure does enjoy the suffering its adherents & anyone caught up in the vortex that surrounds them!
One could always take the “Dogbert Solution“. That should sort (short?) out the question of “pulling the plug”.
I tend to think of that kind of thing as a “ram Norway” solution.
Heard of the book – has been on my “should read” list for years. But it’s behind Charlie Stross, new short stories …
It is a wonderful book. Read it soon as you can.
Codified madness.
There is irrational and then there is just barking at the moon crazy. These absurd laws are what trying to reconcile religious belief with an enlightened 21st century society looks like and man is it ugly.
The real irony in the US is that the very same people who would seek to compel the hospital to keep a woman on life support for the purposes of birthing her fetus were opposed to Obamacare because “the government would determine who gets what treatment.”
That they don’t see the irony in their position speaks to the intellectual bankruptcy of their position.