Playing God (Marlise Munoz discussion)

[BDBoop]

the RR's tend to get carried away with this stuff.

Ya gotta choose freedom, warts and all in America

She didn't want to be kept alive and the would be father wanted to let her die. That's the end of it.

you may not like it, but that's freedom

Her husband, and her parents as well. Everybody on the same page - everybody that matters, anyway.

 

[BDBoop]

Well, since she is being taken off of life support, there will be no opportunity to wait 18 years and ask the child's opinion!

Those who believe there is a child involved in this horror need to google 'fetal monsters'.

No thank you.

Of course, you weren't talking to me, so there's that.

My point is that we all should never have been involved. This issue absolutely is not meant to be addressed by anybody other than the family of the patient.

 

[Luddly Neddite]

Some seem to be trying to make this an abortion issue.

That's why my comment about fetal monsters.

And no, it was not addressed to you. It was addressed to the thread and in response to Bob Plumb's comment.

 

[BDBoop]

Some seem to be trying to make this an abortion issue.

That's why my comment about fetal monsters.

And no, it was not addressed to you. It was addressed to the thread.

Well, not thus far in this thread. So since this isn't an abortion issue, and it is in the CDZ, I figure it should be a much different discussion.

 

[Luddly Neddite]

Some seem to be trying to make this an abortion issue.

That's why my comment about fetal monsters.

And no, it was not addressed to you. It was addressed to the thread.

Well, not thus far in this thread. So since this isn't an abortion issue, and it is in the CDZ, I figure it should be a much different discussion.

I was referring to the (at least) two people in this thread who referred to the fetus as a child or a baby.

In various news articles, the fetus has been described as being horribly malformed, so much so that the sex was not knowable.

 

[BDBoop]

Some seem to be trying to make this an abortion issue.

That's why my comment about fetal monsters.

And no, it was not addressed to you. It was addressed to the thread.

Well, not thus far in this thread. So since this isn't an abortion issue, and it is in the CDZ, I figure it should be a much different discussion.

I was referring to the (at least) two people in this thread who referred to the fetus as a child or a baby.

In various news articles, the fetus has been described as being horribly malformed, so much so that the sex was not knowable.

Would you mind sharing the links?

 

[Mertex]

Well, since she is being taken off of life support, there will be no opportunity to wait 18 years and ask the child's opinion!

The fetus has already suffered oxygen deprivation, fluid buildup in his skull and deterioration of his lower extremities. There is no guarantee that this fetus would be delivered healthy, in the meantime someone is going to have to pay the mounting hospital bills. Are those arguing to keep it alive willing to pay these costs?

And if this fetus were to be kept alive and delivered deformed and unable to function as a normal human being, and were he/she to survive to be 18 years of age, I would think if he/she was able to give an opinion he/she would have opted to be let go.

Maybe, maybe not. But unless dad won the Powerball, they would be having a tough time surviving, financially.

I speak for myself, if I was severely deformed, not able to live a normal life, had to depend on others to change my diaper and forever live in a wheel chair.....and if I was able to think at all, and knew that I was responsible for my father being in the poorhouse, I would rather not be here at all.

 

[Katzndogz]

There might be a different opinion if dead mothers had never given birth to live healthy children and this was the first time.

 

[blackhawk]

I find more than a Little irony here in the liberal concern over government overreach on this issue as they are usually in favor of more government intervention. That said end of life decision's should be made the family and no one else.

 

[Katzndogz]

I find more than a Little irony here in the liberal concern over government overreach on this issue as they are usually in favor of more government intervention. That said end of life decision's should be made the family and no one else.

That's what Scott Petersen thought too.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Why is this discussion even happening. In the face of the wishes of herself, her husband, her parents, why do "small government" conservatives believe that the government should have a say in whether this woman lived or died, when she would have had no extraordinary measures taken, were she not pregnant.

When Pro-life Goes Frankenstein: The Case of Marlise Munoz | Morgan Guyton

Indeed, Rachel Cox at LifeNews berates Erick for wanting to honor his wife's wishes about her end-of-life care:

Why is this father trying to find all the reasons why his wife and unborn child should be removed from life support and left to die, and not the reasons why they shouldn't? I find it very frustrating and disheartening that Erick Munoz thinks this way and also frightening that so many people actually agree with him. I believe these hopeless, negative attitudes about the Munoz family's situation are caused mainly by one thing: abortion. Abortion causes society to devalue human beings. When the abortion industry, media, and politicians pound in our heads over and over that unborn babies are blobs of disposable tissue, it's easier to see why someone would not be motivated to preserve the life of their "clump of cells."

Of course. It's all abortion's fault. That's why Erick and his wife's parents, all of whom want to end life support, are seeking closure and the ability to grieve their loss. Because the abortion industry has corrupted their minds. That's why Erick doesn't want a brain-dead body that is only a shell of a person to be artificially respirated as a super-expensive, organic fetus incubator. Elizabeth Landau writes that using the terms "brain-dead" and "life support" is a big part of the problem. When the brain no longer functions, a person is not just "brain-dead"; they are all the way dead. "Life support" is a misnomer in such cases because what's happening with the person's body is not life, but just a sort of zombie un-death, no different than if a mad scientist figured out how to create an organ plantation in which livers and kidneys and stomachs and hearts could be harvested from recently dead people and incubated outside of human bodies to be transplanted in the future (hey, it might not be a bad idea, but it isn't human life).

A truly Christian pro-life position is concerned with not letting people play God by ending unborn children's lives unnaturally with technology. The pro-life position becomes Frankenstein when it demands that technology be used to disallow nature from taking its course with human life. According to NIH data, God is the ultimate abortionist, terminating about half of all fertilized eggs, and about 15-20 percent of the fetuses of known pregnancies. If it became technologically possible to extract brand-new zygotes from the uterus and grow them in fail-proof incubators in which God would not be allowed to play God with human life so that the gestation rate would be absolutely 100 percent, would the pro-life movement call for that too?

She was removed from life support today, not just per a judge's order, but because the hospital chose not to appeal.

We should never have heard of her. Her husband should have found her, she should have been allowed to die, and that should have been the end of the story.

Texas hospital removes brain-dead pregnant woman Marlise Munoz from life support - CBS News

DALLAS - A Texas hospital removed life support from a pregnant, brain-dead woman following a judge's order that it was misapplying state law to disregard her family's wishes, the family's lawyers said.

Attorneys for Erick Munoz, the husband of Marlise Munoz, released a statement Sunday afternoon saying the order had been followed.

"Today, at approximately 11:30 a.m. central time, in accordance with the order of the 96th District Court of Tarrant County, Texas, issued Friday, January 24, 2014, Marlise Munoz’s body was disconnected from 'life support' and released to Mr. Munoz," Heather L. King and Jessica H. Janicek, Munoz's attorneys, said in a statement emailed to the press. "The Munoz and Machado families will now proceed with the somber task of laying Marlise Munoz’s body to rest, and grieving over the great loss that has been suffered. May Marlise Munoz finally rest in peace, and her family find the strength to complete what has been an unbearably long and arduous journey."

May she rest in peace.

The case has raised questions about end-of-life care and whether a pregnant woman who is considered legally and medically dead should be kept on life support for the sake of a fetus. It also has garnered attention on both sides of the abortion debate, with anti-abortion groups arguing Munoz's fetus deserves a chance to be born.

Hospital officials have said they were bound by the Texas Advance Directives Act, which prohibits withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment from a pregnant patient. But in his brief ruling, Wallace said that "Mrs. Munoz is dead," meaning that the hospital was misapplying the law. The ruling did not mention the fetus.

The hospital has not pronounced her dead and has continued to treat her over the objections of both Erick Munoz and her parents, who sat together in court Friday.

Next, I hope to see a lawsuit if the hospital attempts to bill the family for anything more than her arrival at the emergency room.

Just think, if you didn't support giving the government the ability to force other people to do things you think are right, you wouldn't have to put up with it being able to force people to do the things that you think are wrong.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

DALLAS - A Texas hospital removed life support from a pregnant, brain-dead woman following a judge's order that it was misapplying state law to disregard her family's wishes, the family's lawyers said.

The issue doesn’t concern a law ‘misapplied,’ but a law unwarranted to begin with.

A law enacted by conservative lawmakers in bad faith for purely partisan reasons, having nothing to do with ‘saving lives.’

Indeed, it was the intent of conservative Texas lawmakers hostile to privacy rights to create the conditions for an incident such as this to occur: a brain-dead pregnant woman forced to be placed on life support against the wishes of the family, and the family forced to seek relief in court.

Those opposed to privacy rights could then exploit the tragedy by contriving the lie that a ‘liberal judge’ was trying to ‘kill a baby’ by taking its mother off of life support, when in fact nothing could be further from the truth.

So once again we see the hypocrisy of the authoritarian right, hostile to individual liberty, and seeking to empower the state to allow government to dictate to citizens concerning matters both personal and private.

What, exactly, in your progressive hack opinion, makes the law unwarranted? Is it simply that it conflicts with your opinion about right and wrong?

 

[blackhawk]

I find more than a Little irony here in the liberal concern over government overreach on this issue as they are usually in favor of more government intervention. That said end of life decision's should be made the family and no one else.

That's what Scott Petersen thought too.

The two situations are hardly the same.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

DALLAS - A Texas hospital removed life support from a pregnant, brain-dead woman following a judge's order that it was misapplying state law to disregard her family's wishes, the family's lawyers said.

The issue doesn’t concern a law ‘misapplied,’ but a law unwarranted to begin with.

A law enacted by conservative lawmakers in bad faith for purely partisan reasons, having nothing to do with ‘saving lives.’

Indeed, it was the intent of conservative Texas lawmakers hostile to privacy rights to create the conditions for an incident such as this to occur: a brain-dead pregnant woman forced to be placed on life support against the wishes of the family, and the family forced to seek relief in court.

Those opposed to privacy rights could then exploit the tragedy by contriving the lie that a ‘liberal judge’ was trying to ‘kill a baby’ by taking its mother off of life support, when in fact nothing could be further from the truth.

So once again we see the hypocrisy of the authoritarian right, hostile to individual liberty, and seeking to empower the state to allow government to dictate to citizens concerning matters both personal and private.

Legislation based upon emotion makes for bad laws. Prohibition, the war on drugs and now these draconian laws about abortion all have unintended consequences that harm innocent people.

Government always has unintended consequences that hurt innocent people, which is why the only sane approach is to limit it to only the things that we can not live without.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

The issue doesn’t concern a law ‘misapplied,’ but a law unwarranted to begin with.

A law enacted by conservative lawmakers in bad faith for purely partisan reasons, having nothing to do with ‘saving lives.’

Indeed, it was the intent of conservative Texas lawmakers hostile to privacy rights to create the conditions for an incident such as this to occur: a brain-dead pregnant woman forced to be placed on life support against the wishes of the family, and the family forced to seek relief in court.

Those opposed to privacy rights could then exploit the tragedy by contriving the lie that a ‘liberal judge’ was trying to ‘kill a baby’ by taking its mother off of life support, when in fact nothing could be further from the truth.

So once again we see the hypocrisy of the authoritarian right, hostile to individual liberty, and seeking to empower the state to allow government to dictate to citizens concerning matters both personal and private.

Legislation based upon emotion makes for bad laws. Prohibition, the war on drugs and now these draconian laws about abortion all have unintended consequences that harm innocent people.

True.

And such laws are enacted motivated by emotion and cold, cynical political calculation.

Funny how that doesn't bother you when you are the one doing the calculating.

 

[Katzndogz]

I find more than a Little irony here in the liberal concern over government overreach on this issue as they are usually in favor of more government intervention. That said end of life decision's should be made the family and no one else.

That's what Scott Petersen thought too.

The two situations are hardly the same.

The result is the same. Petersen as the family, as the husband and father made an end of life decision.

 

[Noomi]

Well, since she is being taken off of life support, there will be no opportunity to wait 18 years and ask the child's opinion!

The 'child' doesn't have an opinion. The fetus wasn't viable.

 

[BDBoop]

Fetus Of Pregnant, Brain-Dead Woman Forced To Stay On Life Support Is 'Distinctly Abnormal': Austinist

 

[Esmeralda]

The fetus has already suffered oxygen deprivation, fluid buildup in his skull and deterioration of his lower extremities. There is no guarantee that this fetus would be delivered healthy, in the meantime someone is going to have to pay the mounting hospital bills. Are those arguing to keep it alive willing to pay these costs?

And if this fetus were to be kept alive and delivered deformed and unable to function as a normal human being, and were he/she to survive to be 18 years of age, I would think if he/she was able to give an opinion he/she would have opted to be let go.

Maybe, maybe not. But unless dad won the Powerball, they would be having a tough time surviving, financially.

I speak for myself, if I was severely deformed, not able to live a normal life, had to depend on others to change my diaper and forever live in a wheel chair.....and if I was able to think at all, and knew that I was responsible for my father being in the poorhouse, I would rather not be here at all.

I agree with you, except for Steven Hawking is what you describe, severely deformed, not able to live a 'normal' life, having to depend on others for the most personal care, living in a wheel char...and he seems pretty happy. Of course, he's not putting his people in the poor house. Maybe if you are born that way, it is so much easier to accept. I don't know.

 

[BDBoop]

Stephen Hawking?