Will an appellate court hear the case at all if Ms. Munoz is all-the-way dead? Wouldn’t it be moot?
This woman is no more! She has ceased to be! 'She’s expired and gone to meet her maker!
She’s a stiff! Bereft of life, She rests in peace!
Her metabolic processes are now history! ‘She’s off the twig!
She’s kicked the bucket, She’s shuffled off this mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin’ choir invisibile!!
THIS IS AN EX-PERSON!!
The trial court gave the hospital until Monday afternoon to comply with his order, presumably so they could file an appeal and ask that court for a stay if they are so inclined. Latest reports indicate the hospital is conferring with their attorneys now to decide if they will appeal. I’m not entirely sure the hospital will appeal now that they have a CYA decision from a court.
But the issue would become moot if she were to become all the way dead, as you put it, or if her pregnancy were to miscarry in the interim.
I have a suspicion that for some weird reason, the JPS attorneys would just as soon have pulled the plug on her, but weren’t willing to have the hospital do it.
The reason I have this suspicion is that the hospital’s own filing with the judge described her as brain-dead. If they were resolutely against pulling the plug, I have a feeling they’d have used wording that wouldn’t have played right into the “she’s dead, not a patient” angle that legal experts were using, and that the judge ultimately used. By wording it like that, they let the judge take the responsibility and get the outcome everyone wanted. Gutless, and very lawyerly.
The thing I don’t get though, is that the family wanted to pull the plug- who were the JPS people afraid of lawsuits from?
Crazy Texas Tea Baggers?
Not lawsuits, but IMHO they are afraid of donors and supporters that behind the scenes are pushing to make this an anti-abortion issue. Either that or the hospital and some people there are pandering to anti-abortion groups.
http://www.star-telegram.com/2014/01/09/5473242/family-of-pregnant-brain-dead.html
“She’s not only merely dead, she’s really most sincerely dead.”
(BTW, anything new on Jahi McMath, the girl who was left brain dead after a tonsilectomy, but her parents still insist she be left on life support? The only recent thing I could find was an editorial)
I can only hope the hospital finally respects her wishes and the wishes of her family and agrees to the judge’s orders. My heart goes out to her husband and my fury to the hospital for prolonging her death.
I don’t know what other wording would have been medically accurate. She’s not in a coma, or a persistent vegetative state or anything else. She’s brain dead, and therefore legally dead. Describing her in any way that made her sound like a living patient would have been an outright misrepresentation.
God, what an effing nightmare for her widower husband. Poor guy. 
Well supposedly a judge has ruled the hospital must remove life support by Monday. I hope so for the sake of her family. R.I.P.
Okay, I’ve being doing some reading on the situation. I was aware that Munoz was dead but I was not aware that her body could not be kept functioning indefinitely on life support. (I also got to read about the unfortunate McMath family.)
This does not change my overall opinion. I still maintain a woman’s pregnancy should not be terminated without her authorization - even if continuing the pregnancy requires artificial life support.
But I will concede there is no point in maintaining life support for Munoz if there is no medical reason to think her body can be kept functioning long enough to continue the pregnancy.
I still maintain that this is a significant defeat for the pro-choice movement. This decision pokes a hole in Roe v Wade and now the pro-life movement will work at widening it.
There was no recorded wish for the mother to do like the hospital wanted. It is then a choice of her next of kin. BTW Pro-choice does not mean that an abortion is the only choice for that next of kin. It is the anti-abortionists the ones that will not allow for any choices, and this case shows that.
The cluelessness. It burns. :rolleyes:
I’m glad to know that when all possible ethical, moral, legal, and intellectual support for your case fails, you declare victory. That’s a real winning attitude.
This case had nothing to do with abortion. Not even the state of Texas - one that is not exactly a pro-choice state - did not think this was about abortion. And it really isn’t one, no matter what extremist pro-lifers think (and no, many reasonable Texan pro-lifers had no real problems with this outcome).
Hell, I even mention it in first post in the thread. Let me refresh your memory:
And now, I have confirmation that at least one person (though not a Texan) takes exactly this tack.
This decision established the principle that somebody other than the woman who’s pregnant can make a decision about terminating a pregnancy. Now that the principle’s been established, pro-lifers (or anti-abortionists if you prefer) will work on expanding it to cover more situations. Their goal will be to make it increasingly difficult for a woman to choose to have an abortion without other people being able to legally interfere with her decision.
The cluelessness here is yours. You keep calling me a pro-lifer despite my repeatedly saying I am pro-choice. Assuming you’re pro-choice, we’re on the same side - and our side lost this case.
Please, please quite speaking for the pro-choice community, seriously. As had been repeatedly pointed out to you, while hardly the monolith that you are determined to speak for, the general consensus among the pro-choice community is Marlise’s rights are unequivocally being violated.
Failing to take outside medical intervention to terminate a pregnancy that would likely progress at 14 weeks naturally is not at all equivalent to taking outside extraordinary and experimental medical intervention to maintain a pregnancy that would otherwise terminate naturally. Marlise Munoz is dead, her pregnancy sadly terminated with her. What has been going on is nothing more than a gruesome science experiment with Marlise’s dead body against her wishes and the consensus of her parents and husband - who are the only people qualified to advocate for the deceased against the state of Texas.
For fuck’s sake, a dead person cannot MAKE that choice. Thus, it must fall to her next of kin. Jesus. It’s not about being anti-choice – the woman is dead. Thus it’s up to her husband, or whoever makes any legal decisions in her place. Gah!
No, the cluelessness is yours, in thinking you are better equipped to speak for Marlise’s wishes over her next of kin who are unanimous.