In my experience, those who want the government to force this woman to stay on life-support will also NOT want the government to use their tax money to help the father take care of his toddler and newborn motherless baby or pay for expenses that would be needed if the baby was damaged when the mother's heart stopped several times.
Dallas Morning News
http://dallasmorningviewsblog.dallasnews.com/2014/01/brain-dead-and-pregnant-marlise-munoz-poses-a-conundrum-for-fort-worth-doctors.html/
By Tod Robberson2:48 pm on January 8, 2014
Marlise Munoz has been brain dead since November, when she collapsed from a blood clot in her lungs. Her wish was not to be kept alive by artificial means. Her parents and husband want to let her body die. She is dead under the definition of death in Texas law, which says that “if artificial means of support preclude a determination that a person’s spontaneous respiratory and circulatory functions have ceased, the person is dead when, in the announced opinion of a physician, according to ordinary standards of medical practice, there is irreversible cessation of all spontaneous brain function.”
But here’s the catch: Doctors discovered upon her admission to hospital that she was pregnant, and they are now keeping her artificially alive because they believe Texas law requires it. It doesn’t. She is legally dead.
Keeping Marlise alive effectively means her body now serves as nothing more now than an incubator — not something Texas legislators intended when they wrote a law in 1989 stating that doctors may not deny life-sustaining treatment from a pregnant patient.
By keeping her body artificially functioning, they are not sustaining any sort of life for the pregnant patient. The pregnant patient is dead. Moreover, the same blood clot that killed Marlise might have inflicted irreversible brain damage when it blocked oxygen to her fetus. Keeping her alive for the sake of the unborn baby is certainly doing Marlise no good, and it might even be doing the baby no good.
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http://www.star-telegram.com/2014/01/05/5461612/husband-says-texas-law-shouldnt.html
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Marlise Machado Muñoz, 33, herself a paramedic then 14 weeks pregnant, had collapsed and fallen into a vegetative state. Each had been exposed to such situations in their profession, and each opposed life-sustaining efforts if either was declared brain dead. She had further discussed this view with her father, Erick Muñoz said.
Her heart stopped several times and she was resuscitated. But when her husband learned she had no brain activity, he expected that the family could decide to have life support withdrawn, he said.
Read more here: http://www.star-telegram.com/2014/01/05/5461612/husband-says-texas-law-shouldnt.html#storylink=cpy
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Three Texas experts, including two who helped draft the 1999 law, told The Associated Press last week that it doesn’t apply in the Muñoz case. “This patient is neither terminally nor irreversibly ill,” said Dr. Robert Fine, clinical director of the office of clinical ethics and palliative care for Baylor Health Care System. “Under Texas law, this patient is legally dead.”
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