Texas Uses Dead Woman's Body as Incubator
File this story under “sick”, “twisted”, and “disgusting”.
Marlise had a pulmonary embolism that left her brain-dead on November 26th. She was also pregnant. Erick [husband] wants to let nature take it [sic] course, but Texas has a law that pregnant women have to be kept on life support if there's any chance their fetus might survive. This is a case where the pro-life movement has literally gone Frankenstein.
I've lived in Texas the majority of my life and had no idea that such a theocratic/draconian law existed. Apparently, this family also didn't know about this disgusting violation of one's death wishes and bodily autonomy.
“The doctors told us that even if a pregnant woman has a DNR or a living will, the law supersedes that,” Munoz’s mom, Lynne Machado, told NBC News. “So any pregnant woman must be kept alive with life support because of the fetus. We had never heard of this and we wanted to get the information out there. No family should have to go through this. It’s been pure hell.”
I'm sure it is “hell” seeing your dead wife/sister/daughter used as a state-sanctioned incubator. Once again, theocrats made sure to enact laws that control our bodies. I have to completely agree with Cynda Hylton Rushton, professor of clinical ethics at Johns Hopkins University:
"We really need to engage in a new dialogue that takes us out of the debate of faith into science, into a conversation about what are the limits of our human knowledge and technology, and how do we accept the fact that all of us will eventually die?" Rushton said. "These are the kinds of situations where there are no easy answers. Medicine can't cure everything, but we act as though death is optional, she said. We may have technology called "life support," but even that can't last forever.”
If only we had a rational state government, tragedies like this wouldn't even exist. The state of Texas has let its citizens know that even in death, our bodies still belong to the state. Remind me again how that is “small government”?