www.nytimes.com/2014/01/08/us/pregnant-and-forced-to-stay-on-life-support.html?ref=us
Personally, I can't work out how the family can't embrace the wonder of a new birth, to try to compensate for their grief and loss.
How on earth is that child going to feel, when it looks on the internet in 10 years time.
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>>>I can't work out how the family can't embrace the wonder of a new birth
I wholeheartedly agree. I truly believe that I would do everything I could do to save the child in the same situation.
But would the relatives want the child and will it be damaged by the the death of the mother?
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>> How on earth is that child going to feel, when it looks on the internet
>> in 10 years time.
If a pregnant woman dies at 14 weeks the foetus dies with her. Nature's Law.
If you keep the dead mother 'alive' until a Caesarian is possible and then switch her off there's no wonder the child is going to have some odd feelings.
Thank goodness for UK law and the ECHR which means an adult's directive to 'let me die' would be respected here.
Last edited by: Bromptonaut on Wed 8 Jan 14 at 23:12
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"She's dead, therefore we ain't payin' your medical bills."
Problem solved.
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>> "She's dead, therefore we ain't payin' your medical bills."
>>
>> Problem solved.
>>
Bromptonaut and Lygonos,
Are you both saying you think this unborn child should have been let go?
I'm having genuine difficulty getting my head around that. I know you two are intelligent professional people..and..that the child is not a child yet, it's a growing foetus...but why wouldn't anyone want it born if it can be healthy?
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>> Bromptonaut and Lygonos,
>>
>> Are you both saying you think this unborn child should have been let go?
>>
>> I'm having genuine difficulty getting my head around that. I know you two are intelligent
>> professional people..and..that the child is not a child yet, it's a growing foetus...but why wouldn't
>> anyone want it born if it can be healthy?
At the time of her brain bleed and effective death the mother was at 14 weeks. The foetus was incapable of independent life. It's not clear whether, at time, she'd shared fact of pregnancy outside immediate family - 12-14 weeks is point where most folks do.
I'm not saying it's clear cut and I don't think posing the question as 'why wouldn't anyone want it born healthy' captures the ethical problem posed.
On the one hand there's the 'life' of the foetus. On the other there's the dignity of a dead woman who's functions are kept going by science but only as an incubator until the baby can be extracted. She appears to have expressed a view in her lifetime that she did not want resuscitation or life support in an event such as this.
On the whole I believe her wish to die with dignity should be respected. If she'd been near term and the baby was viable then keeping her body going until it could be born would be reasonable. As it is she was nowhere near that point, in Great Britain she could legally have had an abortion. The issue in Texas seems to be that the case has engaged their restrictive or prohibitive abortion laws.
Thankfully we've avoided that sort of dilemma here by having a liberal law on abortion and a legal system that would decide such a case on its facts not the Y/N choices of statute.
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>> On the one hand there's the 'life' of the foetus. On the other there's the
>> dignity of a dead woman who's functions are kept going by science but only as
>> an incubator until the baby can be extracted. She appears to have expressed a view
>> in her lifetime that she did not want resuscitation or life support in an event
>> such as this.
My main problem is thus:
Someone expressing a wish not to be kept falsely alive is most understandable, (it's the sort of angle many husbands and wives have discussed)...however...if the wife was pregnant, that changes things dramatically, as you are talking about another life being produced ...should that not be wonderful, joyous, sacrosanct?
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as you are talking about another life being produced ...should that not be
>> wonderful, joyous, sacrosanct?
>>
>>
>>
In normal circumstances yes, however in this case it's not seen by some as above the right for the mother to choose to live on a machine.
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>> In normal circumstances yes, however in this case it's not seen by some as above
>> the right for the mother to choose to live on a machine.
>>
The 'living on the machine' is somewhat temporary...and she has been on it for a while anyway.
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>> The 'living on the machine' is somewhat temporary...and she has been on it for a
>> while anyway.
>>
Yes it's not years, however to some the fact that she's on it at all is the issue, as it appears she didn't want that to be so. The length of time isn't that much of an issue.
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>> Yes it's not years, however to some the fact that she's on it at all is the issue,
>> as it appears she didn't want that to be so.
>>
She did not want to be on life support for just herself, I can understand that.
What mother would not want to do the very best for her unborn ?
Did she take into account the possibility of a pregnancy when making her wishes known ?
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>> I'm having genuine difficulty getting my head around that. I know you two are intelligent
>> professional people..and..that the child is not a child yet, it's a growing foetus...but why wouldn't anyone want it born if it can be healthy?
>>
As Bromp has said 'The foetus was incapable of independent life' so is the foetus a child at that point, or more a (large) clump of cells?
Hard one to call...
But.. in that particular case, there is a possibility that the mother may not have been breathing for an hour.
Could that mean a lack of oxygen to the foetus?
resulting in a brain damaged child?
Time will tell on that.
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>>
>> Thank goodness for UK law and the ECHR which means an adult's directive to 'let
>> me die' would be respected here.
>>
But surely it's not as simple as that? The adult's directive is not simply "let me die", but also "kill my baby". Should that wish be respected too?
It's really only a stark example of the problems posed by the old argument at what age does life begin, and at what age does a foetus have a right to life, which cannot be over-ruled by the mother?
Society is divided down the middle on that one.
Last edited by: Cliff Pope on Thu 9 Jan 14 at 08:36
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Texas is a backward, reactionary US State some of whose law appears to be based on religious belief, or superstition as many would call it. This must often make it very difficult for Texans to arrive at rational decisions on matters of life and death, especially where the unborn are concerned.
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>Texas is a backward, reactionary US State some of whose law appears to be based on religious belief, or
>superstition as many would call it. This must often make it very difficult for Texans to arrive at
>rational decisions on matters of life and death, especially where the unborn are concerned.
FFS AC. Substitute any African or Asian country for Texas and it sounds like something I'd read in the archives of the Dutch East India Co.
Texas may be conservative, but the only way it could be described as backward is that Texans retain some traditions that have been lost elsewhere.
Old-fashioned things like politeness, down to earth commonsense and a healthy disrespect for meddling politicians and unnecessary regulations.
In this particular case it appears that the hospital is interpretting the law as it was never intended. It's a bit like our Health and Safety carp, but unlike us Brits, the Texans probably won't just roll over and moan about it.
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>> >Texas is a backward, reactionary US State some of whose law appears to be based
>> on religious belief, or
>> >superstition as many would call it. This must often make it very difficult for Texans
>> to arrive at
>> >rational decisions on matters of life and death, especially where the unborn are concerned.
>>
>> FFS AC. Substitute any African or Asian country for Texas and it sounds like something
>> I'd read in the archives of the Dutch East India Co.
>>
>> Texas may be conservative, but the only way it could be described as backward is
>> that Texans retain some traditions that have been lost elsewhere.
>>
>> Old-fashioned things like politeness, down to earth common-sense and a healthy disrespect for meddling politicians
>> and unnecessary regulations.
>>
>> In this particular case it appears that the hospital is interpreting the law as it
>> was never intended. It's a bit like our Health and Safety carp, but unlike us
>> Brits, the Texans probably won't just roll over and moan about it.
I'd normally snip part of the re-quote above but that would remove my message that there's no contradiction between AC and Kevin. Just difference expressions of the same message.
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Funny place I thought, albeit on brief acquaintance belting across the Panhandle which isn't very wide, and with a slightly menacing side. But hey, it's the West, no problem, and all that hat tipping and Sir and Ma'am stuff is charming.
Californians, who spoke a language closer to my own, and East Coast people often shrugged and looked skyward when Texas or Texans were mentioned. A lot of Americans treat them with wary respect.
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>Just difference expressions of the same message.
Read it again.
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Big garish diner in a big garish truckstop where R66 passes through the edge of Amarillo. Stopped for a coffee break with two hitchhikers, an engaging Texan and Californian thug and a snooty Hippy from the intellecttual Norht West. In the next booth were six or eight ddead hard cowboys, who gave us a couple of looks but no gyp.
As we left a powder blue or pink Cadillac convertible swished up and disgorged a white-suited bunch of spade pimp types accompanied by numerous foxes.
'Shoot!', sniggered the engaging thug hitchhiker, 'no sooner they get rid of them hippies than they get a bunch of n******s!'
Not really that backward in some ways even all those years ago.
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So, on the basis of your "brief acquaintance belting across the Panhandle which isn't very wide," and that you witnessed " a white-suited bunch of spade pimp types accompanied by numerous foxes." you brand Texas as backward?
If anyone else here had used the same terms to describe Nigeria or Somalia, you and Bromp would be flapping around screaming "racist".
Don't you realise how hypocritical that appears?
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Kevin, I have evidently expressed myself badly because you've got the wrong end of the stick.
I was trying to say, very jokily of course, that the pimps and foxes were a sign of the opposite thing to backwardness. I thought it was clear enough that I thought America, Texas included, enormous fun and very welcoming.
Don't get me wrong though: despite its undoubted virtues, Texas does seem to me to be politically backward and reactionary. Socially too probably to a large extent. But hospitality is one thing and the prevailing ethos perhaps another.
What have Nigeria and Somalia got to do with this? I am often regarded as unPC when I talk about them. When I talk about most things in fact.
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My two-pence worth (for what it's worth) is :-
As the Foetus was incapable of ANY independent life at that stage, it should have been deemed to be "part of the Mothers body", and as such her wishes should have been paramount. The pregnancy should have terminated with her, at her death. The consolation for the "family" (had they not previously known) is that she had her child with her.
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>> As the Foetus was incapable of ANY independent life at that stage, it should have
>> been deemed to be "part of the Mothers body", and as such her wishes should
>> have been paramount. The pregnancy should have terminated with her, at her death. The consolation
>> for the "family" (had they not previously known) is that she had her child with
>> her.
>>
I ran this thread past 'er indoors'...and she seems to see it like you devonite...which surprised me if I'm honest.
Maybe it's me out on a limb on this one?
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>> Maybe it's me out on a limb on this one?
If you're out on a limb it must be a strong limb because you are in numerous company Wp. A surprising number of macho men take a sort of pious, quasi-religious attitude to the sanctity of life especially the unborn. Among those one has heard of Norman Mailer springs to mind, not usually regarded as a sentimentalist.
It's so obvious though that in a civilized society women call the shots in this area owing to their undisputed 'control of their bodies'. And I don't know about you, but I wouldn't want to live in a place where women were subjugated by physical and intellectual violence.
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>> If you're out on a limb it must be a strong limb because you are
>> in numerous company Wp. A surprising number of macho men take a sort of pious,
>> quasi-religious attitude to the sanctity of life especially the unborn. Among those one has heard
>> of Norman Mailer springs to mind, not usually regarded as a sentimentalist.
I've definitely changed my view on the subject of abortion..when I was younger, if i'd got got someone 'up the duff', an abortion would easily have been an option...whereas nowadays i'm increasingly sliding towards restricting abortion a bit more...(with provisos e.g. rape victims, medical defects, etc).
Maybe it was wising up a bit when I saw the scans of my own kids when they were very small foetus..and realising how well formed they were quite quickly.
>>
>> It's so obvious though that in a civilized society women call the shots in this
>> area owing to their undisputed 'control of their bodies'. And I don't know about you,
>> but I wouldn't want to live in a place where women were subjugated by physical
>> and intellectual violence.
Can't really argue with that...which leaves my viewpoint all over the place.
>>
>>
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>> which leaves my viewpoint all over the place.
Not really. You have your view, but are aware that it can be overruled by force majeure. The essence of democracy and civilized conduct.
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>> I've definitely changed my view on the subject of abortion..when I was younger, if i'd
>> got got someone 'up the duff', an abortion would easily have been an option...whereas nowadays
>> i'm increasingly sliding towards restricting abortion a bit more...(with provisos e.g. rape victims, medical defects,
>> etc).
I wonder if your view will change again when your daughter meets some rake.....
It might seem a long way off now but once they're at senior school time runs like it does after the third pint......
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>> My two-pence worth (for what it's worth) is :-
>>
>> As the Foetus was incapable of ANY independent life at that stage, it should have
>> been deemed to be "part of the Mothers body", and as such her wishes should
>> have been paramount. The pregnancy should have terminated with her, at her death. The consolation
>> for the "family" (had they not previously known) is that she had her child with
>> her.
At 14 weeks, there was no baby. Just a collection of cells.
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My view exactly Devonite.
Pat
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>Kevin, I have evidently expressed myself badly because you've got the wrong end of the stick.
>I was trying to say, very jokily of course, that the pimps and foxes were a sign of the opposite
>thing to backwardness.
AC, if that was your intent it went straight over my head. I may have taken offence to your reference to "spade pimp types".
>Don't get me wrong though: despite its undoubted virtues, Texas does seem to me to be politically
>backward and reactionary. Socially too probably to a large extent. But hospitality is one thing and
>the prevailing ethos perhaps another.
Undoubtedly some areas of Texas are what we would consider as politically backward but that does not apply to the whole State. In fact, Austin, the State capital is remarkably liberal and the political/social scene is on a par with San Francisco.
Austinites have a motto - "Keep Austin Weird". You'd like it.
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>> Keep Austin Weird
Old fifties Oxford friend taught there for many years. His American wife is a collateral descendant of Abraham Lincoln's assassin. The Coen brothers' first and in many ways best movie, Blood Simple, is set there.
My thuggish hitchhiker, actually a nice kind man under the skin, lived in Dallas which he insisted was 'a beautiful town', despite its lurid reputation as a place where good guys get shot by we know not who... I was tempted to peel off and go there, but other needs prevailed.
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>> It's really only a stark example of the problems posed by the old argument at
>> what age does life begin, and at what age does a foetus have a right
>> to life, which cannot be over-ruled by the mother?
>> Society is divided down the middle on that one.
No, it's fractured into myriad different factions, all of which regard the commencement of life at happening a different point.
Don't forget the Spartans didn't consider life to have begun until some time *after* birth. Babies were left out overnight on the mountainside. If they survived they were fit enough to be allowed to live; if they didn't, they hadn't.
Meanwhile, just round the corner, the Jews regarded a man's "spilling of his seed upon the ground" as a great sin.
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Still going on. Family assert that law preventing withdrawal of treatment form pregnant women does not apply as subject is already brain dead.
www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/14/family-brain-dead-texas-woman-sues-hospital
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Court has now ordered that life support be ended by Monday. As well as assertion that mother is already dead and cannot be a patient it's become apparent that foetus is not developing normally.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-25889728
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It still seems a disgrace to me that in what ought to be a civilized country this obvious decision has been agonizingly delayed by interfering busybody laws based on, I ask you FFS, 'revelation' rather than a sober acknowledgement of the interests and in this particular case 'rights' of the parties involved, conscious and unconscious.
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"....it's become apparent that the foetus is not developing normally."
I hadn't seen this thread before now, but that was the point that struck me from the beginning: what was the risk of the foetus not developing normally? Surely very high with the mother in this tragic state and unable to nourish the foetus normally.
Let's hope that the court decision, in the light of that information, can be implemented and can give the husband his understandable wish.
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Both my children found this case an instructive example for their degree courses.
The Lad looked at the philosophical implications while his sister viewed it from the perspective of American politics after Roe v Wade.
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www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-25907874
A brain-dead woman kept alive by a hospital in Texas because she was pregnant has been taken off life support.
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>>what was the risk of the foetus not developing normally? Surely very high with the mother in this tragic state and unable to nourish the foetus normally.
I'm no expert in "foetal development in brain-dead hosts" but I would imagine the damage was done when the mother was found collapsed and unsuccessfully resuscitated: the lack of oxygen during this period probably killed the mother and damaged the foetus irreparably.
Comatose women have had healthy babies before.
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>> Comatose women have had healthy babies before.
Babies closer to term - viable outside the womb - when the brain injury/crisis occurred though? And is there in fact a distinction between 'comatose' and 'brain-dead'? Perhaps no actual dividing line, but a general difference? I have always thought so. But what do I know?
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Look at this for a can of worms - zippy
