Life support laws for pregnant women
“Persuasive speech
Imagine arriving home one day finding your wife unconscious on the kitchen floor. You immediately perform CPR and call an ambulance. Upon admission to the hospital it becomes clear that your partner has suffered a pulmonary embolism, a blood clot to the lungs.
Despite the best efforts of the medical staff, it is confirmed that your partner will never regain consciousness. She is legally declared ‘brain-dead’. She is 14 weeks pregnant, making your choice about life support all the more difficult.
Ultimately, taking into account previous discussions with your partner, you decide to suspend life-sustaining treatment, which is your right as next of kin.
But the Government tells you that you are no longer entitled the right to decide what’s best for your wife and unborn child. They intercept and make the decision for you, and decide to preserve your deceased wife’s body until the baby can be born.
On November 26 2013, Erick Munoz, a Texan paramedic found himself in this very situation when he discovered his wife, Marlise Munoz, unconscious in their family home.
Under Texan law, a person may not withdraw or withhold life-sustaining treatment from a pregnant patient, even if there is a “do not resuscitate” request from the patient or next of kin. This law, coupled with the enforcement of a new law that makes no exceptions for abortion in the case of rape, incest and detection of foetal abnormalities in pregnancy, has and will continue to not only violate basic rights of a patient and her family, but will also cost them a prolonged period of emotional and financial trauma.
This is exactly why these imposing and ineffective life support laws for pregnant patients should be reviewed and corrected.
These laws have very clearly violated rights to liberty.
Years before her death, Marlise, a former paramedic who frequently encountered loss of life, had made it very clear to her spouse and family that she never wanted to be kept
Imagine arriving home one day finding your wife unconscious on the kitchen floor. You immediately perform CPR and call an ambulance. Upon admission to the hospital it becomes clear that your partner has suffered a pulmonary embolism, a blood clot to the lungs.
Despite the best efforts of the medical staff, it is confirmed that your partner will never regain consciousness. She is legally declared ‘brain-dead’. She is 14 weeks pregnant, making your choice about life support all the more difficult.
Ultimately, taking into account previous discussions with your partner, you decide to suspend life-sustaining treatment, which is your right as next of kin.
But the Government tells you that you are no longer entitled the right to decide what’s best for your wife and unborn child. They intercept and make the decision for you, and decide to preserve your deceased wife’s body until the baby can be born.
On November 26 2013, Erick Munoz, a Texan paramedic found himself in this very situation when he discovered his wife, Marlise Munoz, unconscious in their family home.
Under Texan law, a person may not withdraw or withhold life-sustaining treatment from a pregnant patient, even if there is a “do not resuscitate” request from the patient or next of kin. This law, coupled with the enforcement of a new law that makes no exceptions for abortion in the case of rape, incest and detection of foetal abnormalities in pregnancy, has and will continue to not only violate basic rights of a patient and her family, but will also cost them a prolonged period of emotional and financial trauma.
This is exactly why these imposing and ineffective life support laws for pregnant patients should be reviewed and corrected.
These laws have very clearly violated rights to liberty.
Years before her death, Marlise, a former paramedic who frequently encountered loss of life, had made it very clear to her spouse and family that she never wanted to be kept