Playing God (Marlise Munoz discussion)

BDBoop

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Jul 20, 2011
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Don't harsh my zen, Jen!
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.
 
There is no recovery from brain death. At that point your body is good for parts if you have signed that on your driver's license, otherwise it is due whatever last rites are appropriate under the circumstances.

The Texas Advance Directives Act (appropriately abbreviated to "Ta Da" in this instance) is all too obviously a gross overreach of government interference in the lives of individuals. There is no way the government should be making medical decisions of this nature. Whatever "good intentions" might have motivated this statute it has failed to take into account reality. You cannot force a dead woman to give birth.

If there is a lawsuit to be had it should be against the state of Texas for depriving the family of their right to bury their deceased loved one.
 
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I can't imagine what her family is going through now that it's over. Hard to be relieved when your Dearly Beloved is 'finally' gone along with most of your 'future map' of how you think life will unfold.
 
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!
 
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.
 
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.

From the HuffPo op-ed:
>> The pro-life position becomes Frankenstein when it demands that technology be used to disallow nature from taking its course with human life. <<

I agree, it does. It's playing God.

The piece further goes on:
>> ... Nothing in chapter 166 provides for the state of Texas to pick up the bill when it requires the family of a pregnant patient to keep her alive until the fetus can be delivered. It costs about $4000 to run life support machines for one person each day plus a ton of other hospital fees. If the severely brain-damaged fetus is carried to term, there's no telling what the cost will be to keep it alive (of course I imagine that once the fetus is delivered, the state of Texas no longer cares what happens to it since the "life" that it champions is pre-birth and post-death).

So Texas is the worst kind of nanny state, telling people that they have to do something prohibitively expensive and unspeakably emotionally cruel at their cost. It's time for pro-life Christians to call up Rick Perry and tell him to let God be God when it comes to human life. Where are you, Tony Perkins? James Dobson? Russell Moore? <<

Excellent point; and aside from the religious question, where are the critics of "Obmamacare" who rightfully protest the coercion of government forcing a citizen to buy insurance?

When my own mother lay dying she reiterated to me, and I to the hospital so that we were all on the same page, that she was not to be artificially prolonged. I shudder to think what her road, and my memory of it, would have been like had they disregarded her wishes.
 
The woman is dead. Death is that part of life that we all know and accept will happen at some time in our lifetime. Christians, more than anyone else, should be the first ones to be willing to accept death because of what we believe - that we go to a better place, to be with Jesus, the culmination of all that we have hoped for throughout our entire Christian life.

It is disappointing to see that the people who insist that life is to be preserved at all costs, regardless of the quality of that life, are usually ones that call themselves Christian, and who truly believe that this is what is expected of them as Christians. Sometimes, we just have to accept "death" and the obsession to keep this woman on life-support just to allow this unhealthy fetus to continue to develop seems unusually cruel to me, cruel to the family of the dead woman and cruel to the unsuspecting fetus.
 
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.
 
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!

As if on cue…

Here is our example of the arrogant, authoritarian conservative, using demagoguery to cloud the facts of the issue and exploit a family’s tragedy. And the fact is that individuals and families alone should make decisions concerning whether to have a child or not, or whether family members should be taken off life support or not, not the state.
 
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.

True.

And such laws are enacted motivated by emotion and cold, cynical political calculation.
 
The woman is dead. Death is that part of life that we all know and accept will happen at some time in our lifetime. Christians, more than anyone else, should be the first ones to be willing to accept death because of what we believe - that we go to a better place, to be with Jesus, the culmination of all that we have hoped for throughout our entire Christian life.

It is disappointing to see that the people who insist that life is to be preserved at all costs, regardless of the quality of that life, are usually ones that call themselves Christian, and who truly believe that this is what is expected of them as Christians. Sometimes, we just have to accept "death" and the obsession to keep this woman on life-support just to allow this unhealthy fetus to continue to develop seems unusually cruel to me, cruel to the family of the dead woman and cruel to the unsuspecting fetus.

Exactly. Such thinking is, in my estimation, very simplistic, very black-and-white. No shades of gray to be considered. It feels to me as though no thinking is involved. It's all very reactive.
 
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!

As if on cue…

Here is our example of the arrogant, authoritarian conservative, using demagoguery to cloud the facts of the issue and exploit a family’s tragedy. And the fact is that individuals and families alone should make decisions concerning whether to have a child or not, or whether family members should be taken off life support or not, not the state.

As I stated in the OP - we should never have heard of her. Hell, most of the people fighting to keep her on life support for the sake of the fetus don't even know her name.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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
 
There is no recovery from brain death. At that point your body is good for parts...

Those who really want to save lives are organ donors.

There is no child here. Only the horribly sad tragedy of a dead wife and a dead baby that this family must bear. The rest of us need to stay out of it.
 
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'.
 

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