What you see as a slippery slope I see as what we should do. If we can save the baby (fetus) by keeping the mother alive - I think that’s great (but tragic). the footholds I spoke of is (IMHO) built in the to the respect for human life that inherent in anti abortion . Basically you don’t use a woman’s braindead body as an object to create a child but if needed you can use that same braindead woman to save a child that was previously created.
dave, many prolifers do see a frozen embryo as an already created life - thus the lawsuits world wide relating to their ownership, their destruction, and their use in medical research.
We are not talking here about a father who asked for the wilful destruction of foetus his wife was carrying, but rather a father who asked that heroic measures not be carried out in order to preserve a non-viable foetus.
I’m not sure whether the body of a brain dead mother undergoes the normal adaptations that the body of a pregnant woman does and so adapts to meet the needs of a developing foetus. As I understand life support, it does little beyond maintaining circulation and respiration. Perhaps one our our resident medicos could clarify this for both of us.
I forgot to add props to everyone for keeping this a civilised debate.
reprise one of my concerns was that the life support machine would not be enough to allow the baby to develop properly. I admittedly oversimplified the situation.
In order for the mother to act as a ‘lifeboat’ it has to provide what the baby needs. (which I would guess we still don’t know)
If the fetus was truly non-viable then it would not be necessary to put the wife on LS. It might have been done (originally) to allow some time to evaluate the situation further.
I don’t see any connection between being pro-choice, and this particular issue. (This point was later made, apparently better than I did, by Lemur866). The fact that your title presumed that this issue would split along the lines of positions of abortions, suggested that your position on abortions was more than “pro-choice”.
I don’t think there is any disagreement with the notion that if the fetus could not survive she should not have been kept alive. She was being kept alive because there was a (remote) possibility that the fetus could live.
Q for those who make an issue of the husband’s opinion: my impression has always been that the sense that the woman’s right outweighs the childs is because it is her body. How does the husband enter into this?
Another Q: what does it mean to say that you find it “creepy”? Who cares about creepy?
The “woman” is no longer alive, so the point is moot.
(If this were America–I’m not familiar with Irish law)
Because she, being dead, has no more “rights” so far as decisions about her body go. Her husband, being next of kin, has those rights. Seeing as how her organs cannot be donated if her husband does not want them to be, regardless of how many organ donor cards she had signed, I’d assume he has the right to decide what else her body could be used for–including incubation of a child he does not want.
Pro-choice.
To me, it means that the people involved should have control over the sitation. That no one else has the right or the knowledge to make a good decision for them.
This is a good example for pro-choice stances because it is one of the tragedies that occurs when choice is removed from the people who have to pay the price of the actions.
The hospital staff who decided to go against that man’s wishes did not have to suffer through a long drawn out death of a wife and child. They simply can sit on thier high horse and dictate. They do not have to mourn for weeks, waiting and wondering. They may be concerned, yes, but ultimately they can go home. They have control over thier lives.
That poor man. to feel so lost. To lose a wife and have any control over an out of control situation taken from him, hopelessly. For a long time.
That does make me feel ill.
You can’t expect people to take responcibility for their actions if they are not allowed to choose their actions. Rant for another time though.
Interesting point- supposing the fetus was say 22 weeks gestation and the mother was brain dead. If the mother is kept on life support until 28 weeks there may be a good chance of a safe birth. Now we have a direct conflict between two nearly persons- one who is in the process of losing it, and the other in the process of gaining it.
Whose rights do we respect? The fetus has no rights in law in many jurisdictions. The father of the fetus has few rights in law in many jurisdictions.
We are then weighing the ‘rights’ of a person losing personhood with those of a potential person due to gain it. (Person here is not used philosophically, but legally- a person being a human (or corporation) with rights enshrined in law).
Does the father have a legal or moral standing in this case? Or does the state act as legal and moral guardian of a fetus due to become a person?
By people I assume you mean the mother not the baby. I guess you don’t see the unborn as a human life. Without that the whole issue becomes one of convienence.
Another reason that I don’t like the term is that I could make the argument that I am pro-choice (and I am limiting the issue to abortion) since I will give the baby a choice and since he can’t speak yet we have to assume he wants to live by his actions. One vote for letting him live one vote for killing him - tie vote no action taken.
Being a soon-to-be father for the first time (wife’s 5 months along) I would say that it would be my choice as to whether or not my wife’s body would be kept alive so that our unborn child could be given a chance at life. Would I? I don’t know because the situation has never presented itself (and hopefully never will).
But if the mother was kept alive and the fetus continued to develop, how would it affect the development? Would the child be “normal”? How does the nourishment from the feeding tubes vary from the normal food intake of the mother? Also, with the mother being brain-dead, how does that affect the fetus? Doesn’t the mothers brain regulate the growth and development of the fetus by making changes to her own body and by regulating hormones? Without those functions, could a baby develop properly?
If it were possible for the baby to come full-term in this situation, what are the chances that the baby would be brain-dead as well and was just “kept alive” by the mother’s life support machine. Or course, anything is possible and the baby may very well be healthy.
Again, I don’t ever want to be in that situation.
But on the flip side… What if I were brain-dead and on life support and my wife wasn’t pregnant? Would she be able to keep me alive so that they could take my sperm for her to be artificially insemanated? And if so, how useable would the sperm, if any, be?
Newlywed husband and wife are in car accident. Wife is brain dead, husband survives and wants children. He asks to keep his wife alive so he can impregnate her.
If the woman is brain-dead, how can there be anything morally wrong with keeping the rest of her alive? It’s not as if she’s suffering. The only problem is that in the incedent described in the OP, it was done against the father’s wishes, thereby causing him unnecessary suffering.
That can be done, and has been done. It can even be done immediately after complete death. They collect the sperm by using some kind of electrical stimulator attached to the genitals.
Not sure what to think aobut this one. My guess would be that if the husband’s request not to sustain his wife would normally be respected, than it probably be respected now.
It shouldn’t be the Dr.'s decision.
While we’re on the topic of terms, I guess I’d have to describe myself as an anti-choicer; after all, I think a convicted murderer absolutely should NOT have the choice to not go to prison. He made his choice when he pulled the trigger. When a woman has sex, she’s making her ‘reproductive choice’. She has to realize that, protection or no, there’s a chance she’ll get pregnant. I’m totally for abortion in the case of rape or medical danger to the mother. But in any other case, a woman has already made her choice. She chose to take that risk; she should not be allowed to avoid the consequences.
Of course, I also think the man should be just as responsible - a friend of mine got pregnant, decided to keep the child, and had to sue the guy to get him to take financial responsibility (although he still takes almost no repsonsibility for the raising of the child - just visits her every once in a while).
I am male, so I guess I’ll be getting responses telling me that I can’t possibly understand women’s reproductive ‘rights’ and have no right to take part in the debate. I think I can still understand the concept of choice and consequence, though.
I realize the idea of accountability is kind of a minority view in today’s victim society, but I’m still pro-consequence. You do something, you take the consequences, like them or not.
Um, jaloopuera, not to stomp on the enthusiasm of a newby (and welcome to the Boards, BTW), but what the hell does your post have to do with the OP? What “choices” and “consequences” are you referring to? The woman was pregnant, and the woman died. I seriously doubt the woman got herself tragically killed in order to avoid the consequences of being pregnant.
Sua
You’re right - I was responding to a comment in another post rather than to the OP. Gotta be more careful about those tangents.