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Texas's life-support case
I wasn't really sure if I wanted to post this even back when it first came to my attention a few weeks ago, but what got me ticked off was the law that was at the center of this case. If this is more appropriate for women's rights due to the content of the law, feel free to move it there.
Long story short, this involves the case of Marlise Muñoz who after suffering a severe pulmonary embolism at her home in November, was placed on life support- she also happened to be 14 weeks pregnant. Even though she was brain dead and as such legally dead, as well as her own wishes as per her directive as well as the wishes of both her husband and her own family, the hospital doctors insisted on keeping her on life support due to her pregnancy due to the law I will cover later. In a case like this, it is expected that this would involve a lot of ethical questions on when a person can be considered dead (as we can remember with cases like Terry Schiavo), and made worse with the pregnancy status.
This continued for weeks until now in January, with the doctors continuing to refuse her directive (saying that she didn't leave a written one) as well as her family's wishes to take her off life support due to this law taking precedence. Being Texas, this also drew out the "pro-life" crowd out of the woodwork to support the doctors' decision and give the family living hell. This ranges from condescending pricks who offer to adopt the child since the family doesn't want it as they see it, or more crusading ones who are out on a mission from god and apparently think that lets them do what ever they want.
Texas has a law which stipulates that regardless of the wishes of the pregnant patient, if she is in a vegetative state, terminally ill, or some other critical condition, that she must be kept on life-support as long as possible to allow for the baby to be removed, either as a delivery in of itself or in an incubator. I did not know this law even existed, and it sounds pretty terrible to me regardless of the situation- in effect Texas's government sees fit to interfere in these sensitive situations out of a messed up pro-life standpoint and ignore the wishes of those involved to shove its own agenda into the picture. But even in this case this law couldn't apply, and yet it has been used by the doctors to prolong this mess. Apparently as far as Texas is concerned, a woman is nothing more than a baby-making machine whose requests do not even matter.
Lawyers representing the Muñoz family could not challenge the law, (this would drag in the state government and take too long), and instead challenged the doctors' interpretation of the law to keep it more local. Noting that two of the framers of the original law pointing out that it is not applicable in this case as Muñoz is legally dead, they said that the doctors' were misinterpreting the law they were claiming to be standing by and unnecessarily dragging this out. They also pointed out that despite the doctors' claim to be protecting the child, that it had already been threatened due to this occuring when it was 14 weeks old, and that imaging (though limited) has shown abnormalities, especially in its lower areas. They said that while the hospital picked up a fetal heartbeat (which his used by several states to determine if the fetus is "living"), the hospital also acknowledged that the fetus is unlikely to be viable.
Yesterday the county court sided with the family and ordered the hospital to take Muñoz off life support. The pro-life crowd, including Governor Perry, chimed in that they were displeased with the decision and would challenge it to protect the unborn child.
It's really been a depressing mess for me to watch this because it's brought hell on the family from people ignoring their wishes (and the mother's too), out of some bizarre crusade for the unborn, even if arguably their actions likely killed the child anyways. And again, the law in of itself is a piece of shit too.
http://keranews.org/post/judge-order...d-life-support
http://www.wfaa.com/news/health/Muno...241550881.html
http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor...istinctly.html
http://www.texastribune.org/2014/01/...-life-support/
I know it's just preaching to the choir here, but it just seems so absurd to me that it would take so long to remove her from life support, given that it was her wish and that of her family to not keep her in such a state.
This blind resistance to a loss of life is pretty ridiculous, given the circumstances.
The most ironic thing,to me, is that the people who support such measures are usually the first to beat the drums of war when any bit of trouble appears in the international community.
History isn’t over; it needs our consent first.
It amazes me how absolutely obsessed with fetuses the 'pro-life' crows is. As has been pointed out before, they're 'pro-life' until the baby is born, then you're on your own. That baby better learn how to pull itself up by its bootstraps because it sure as hell isn't getting any help from those 'pro-life' folks. 'Defenders of liberty' my ass! Conservatives disgust me.
Sometimes I gotta get down with my red self
"Communism deprives no man of the power to appropriate the products of society; all that it does is to deprive him of the power to subjugate the labor of others by means of such appropriations." - Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto
They want to deny this woman funeral rites for the next 26 weeks. Fucking hell. They really do take being anti-woman to new heights.
effectively making her an incubator- not good not good at all - feel for her family
R.I.P Juan Almeida Bosque
"The true focus of revolutionary change is never merely
the oppressive situations which we seek to escape,
but that piece of the oppressor which is
planted deep within each of us." Audre Lorde
She's officially been taking off life-support today, ending her and her family's nightmare. It's amazing to me really though with the role of the doctors in enabling this- apparently, doctors are welling to bend the law here in this kind of situation, but not to provide medicine to people who really need it. Never mind crying to high heaven when they have to accept someone with medicaid instead of a nice insurance plan.
The media here in Texas been giving little to no coverage of the Munoz family or their supporters- lot of undue focus unsurprisingly on the "anti-abortion" thugs who felt that it was their place to dictate how this situation unfolded to appease their egos, and are displeased that the judge (who is Republican) in this case correctly followed the law as Texas laid out.
I don't understand the "Pro Life" group. These people are morons.
If you're brain dead, you're technically already dead and just allowing them to suffer for not wanting to pull the plug all in the name of Gawd and their perspective of religion or some other piss ass excuse.
They did this same bullshit with Terri Schiavo. Even years after she had been dead, they still wanted to bring it up and ***** and moan about it.
How do I suffer when I am already dead? Do you not see the contradiction here?
The revolutionary despises public opinion. He despises and hates the existing social morality in all its manifestations. For him, morality is everything which contributes to the triumph of the revolution. Immoral and criminal is everything that stands in its way.
ex. Takayuki
