The repugicans have no qualms using the government to come
between a patient and their doctor if the religio-wingnuts demand it,
and that is what is happening in…
The repugicans have made the claim, ad nauseum, that government has no
right getting between a patient and their doctor and they use that
phony argument to criticize the Affordable Care Act even though their
claim is patently false. However, they have no qualms using the
government to come between a patient and their doctor if the religio-wingnuts demand it, and that is what is happening in Texas since a week
after Thanksgiving.
Readers may remember the 2005 Terry Schiavo
case
when shrub cut short his vacation to return to Washington and
sign emergency legislation prohibiting Shiavo’s husband from
disconnecting his brain dead wife from machines and removing feeding
tubes that kept her body alive. A similar case is playing out in Texas
where a state
law
prohibits family members from fulfilling their daughter’s wishes
because she was 14 weeks pregnant at the time the pulmonary embolism
killed her and deprived her brain of oxygen for over an hour. The woman,
a paramedic, had expressed her wishes on several occasions that if she
ever was in a situation requiring machines to keep her alive, she wanted
to be disconnected and signed an advance medical directive to make sure
her wishes were fulfilled.
The woman, Marlise Munoz, collapsed and died at home a week after
Thanksgiving, but after being rushed to a hospital doctors used drugs,
electric shocks, and machines to restart her heart; they could not undo
the damage to her brain. Munoz is only alive because machines have kept
her heart beating since November 26 and doctors confirm there is
absolutely no brain activity. Her husband and parents want to honor her
wishes and properly grieve for the 33-year-old former paramedic if Texas
would allow it, but Texas is one of 12 states that regard pregnant
brain dead women suitable as natural incubators. The obscure Texas law
is serving its intended purpose to allow the religio-wingnuts, not
doctors, the woman, her husband, or family to decide when Marlise is
taken off the machines keeping her heart beating. Regardless of the
family’s wishes, they are secondary to the bible thumping crowd forcing the Munoz
family to wait until doctors take the likely severely damaged fetus to
prove a point that their wishes to keep a body alive as an incubator
takes precedence over the woman and her family’s wishes.
Munoz’s husband, Erick, said ”
I understood that the intent of the
law was to protect the fetus, to help it survive if it was viable, but
at 14 weeks, a fetus isn’t viable. We were told the fetus weighed
between four and five ounces.” Marlise’s husband, also a paramedic, said “
That poor fetus had the same lack of oxygen, the same electric shocks, the same chemicals that got her heart going again,” and that after such trauma, and an hour without oxygen, “
it’s likely in the same condition that Marlise is in.”
Doctors have not been able to assess the damage the drugs, electric
shocks and an hour without oxygen may have done to the fetus, but they
are bound by state law to leave her on machines despite her advance
directive and her family’s wishes to let her go in peace.
The family is likely sorry they brought the story to the media
because it ignited a firestorm of hatred and vitriol from the anti-choice mob who
accused the woman’s grief-stricken husband and father of wanting to “
pull the plug” and “
get rid”
of his wife and baby. Mr. Munoz has had to shield the couple’s son from
vicious comments coming from the religio-wingnut, anti-choice mob, and
is likely in a state of shock himself that besides losing his wife, he
has to deal with vile comments from so-called religious folk. He is
probably going to have to deal with astronomical medical bills before
the affair is finished, but he is too emotionally ravaged to even
consider that Texas is not going to pick up the tab for a lengthy
hospital stay due to their archaic and Draconian laws.
According to the Texas advance directives
statute “
a person may not withdraw or withhold life-sustaining treatment under this subchapter from a pregnant patient,” but
according
to some legal experts the hospital could take Munoz off life support
without violating the law. Still, it is Texas and wary hospital
officials continue to insist they must keep Munoz’s body alive to
sustain the pregnancy. Some other states have similar laws, but they
humanely take into account the fetal viability at the time of brain
death, but Texas and 12 other states are not remotely humane.
This case is a tragedy for Marlise Munoz’s family that is being made
worse by hate emanating from the anti-choice crowd, and may send Mr. Munoz
into bankruptcy when the hospital bill comes due. No insurance carrier
is going to pay for keeping Marlise alive, especially when she had a
legal advance medical directive expressing her wishes to be taken off
life-support. It is just further proof that the religio-wingnut, anti-choice mobs, and Texas law intends to make women into birth machines
even if they were dead for an hour, shocked back to life, and kept on a
machine to serve as an incubator for a likely severely damaged fetus.
