Texas man wants pregnant wife off life support despite state laws

  • Thread starter Thread starter gracepoole
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
catholictiger said:
I mostly agree with this, but let us change some the situation slightly

let’s say for some reason the baby is either lightly effected or not effected at all by a traumatic for the mother which causes her to be brain dead. If the baby can make it to term or at-least viability should we keep her alive (well give life support to her) for the sake of the baby.
Click to expand...
The problem is that you want to draw a line where a line cannot be drawn.

Let’s take an easy example: A child has a strep throat. All the child needs is to acquire he medicine and take it. The medicine is fairly inexpensive, and taking pills is not hard for the parents. It would be negligent for the parents not to do this, right?

But say the parents are very poor people living in Sudan. They have already lost a child to starvation/illness. They are living on less than $1/day and the nearest place to get the medicine is 100 miles away, during which trip they would be not working and have nothing to live on each day and all of them would die.

So the Church cannot even declare that it would be sinful not to give antibiotics to someone who is ill. All that the Church can say is that to keep food and water away from a person who is ill would be wrong.

Each case must be looked at individually, but if the withdrawal from or refusal of extra-ordinary medical treatment is a sad recognition if a lack of resources rather than a desire for the patient (or oneself) to die, then it is not sinful.
Note: right to life trumps all other rights.
Click to expand...
There is no question of rights trumping rights. There is only an examination of reality and whether reality allows something or not. In some cases, the reality allows something which carries a great burden. Can the burden be carried is *also *a question which the Church considers a part of the issue.
A right to be burried a right to refuse extra ordinary medical treatment can’t be more important about the life of another.
Click to expand...
If there is no obligation to donate organs upon death, then there is a right to refuse to donate organs. If there is no obligation that a mother’s body be maintained on a ventilator, then there is a right to refuse that medical action.
If we know the baby can survive if brought to term, I don’t see how anyone who is pro life and fights for the life of the unborn would be ok with allowing a healthy baby to die just because his/her mother is brain dead.
Click to expand...
First, let’s say this: a woman, a beloved wife, dies at a time close to when the healthy unborn baby could survive outside the womb. There are no circumstances for this to be an excessive burden to the family and/or community.

Do you not think that in this case the family would be very grateful for the medical technology to do this?

Now, add in a burden. Say this is a remote community and there are others who need the ventilator, those for whom the use of the ventilator is more of a sure thing? Then the use of this experimental and unsure medical action would need to be balanced against the sure use of it in another case.

These are the types of questions with which one must grapple when considering these extra-ordinary medical treatments: the limits of human resources, and it is why we cannot draw firm boundaries but must look at the particular circumstances of each individual case.
 
estesbob said:
This baby was killed by a willful act. There simply is no away around that. this baby was alive until the plug was pulled. It would be alive to day if this action had not been taken
Click to expand...
I’m on your side with this one but every DNR and WMT are willful acts to end a life, what makes it different is that the object isn’t what kills the patient rather the consequence of that action. Just like in an ectopic pregnancy the object of the act is the removal of the tube or womb and the aftereffect is the death of the fetus. You have full knowledge that if you remove X it will cause Y to die.
 
St_Francis said:
The problem is that you want to draw a line where a line cannot be drawn.

Let’s take an easy example: A child has a strep throat. All the child needs is to acquire he medicine and take it. The medicine is fairly inexpensive, and taking pills is not hard for the parents. It would be negligent for the parents not to do this, right?

But say the parents are very poor people living in Sudan. They have already lost a child to starvation/illness. They are living on less than $1/day and the nearest place to get the medicine is 100 miles away, during which trip they would be not working and have nothing to live on each day and all of them would die.

So the Church cannot even declare that it would be sinful not to give antibiotics to someone who is ill. All that the Church can say is that to keep food and water away from a person who is ill would be wrong.

Each case must be looked at individually, but if the withdrawal from or refusal of extra-ordinary medical treatment is a sad recognition if a lack of resources rather than a desire for the patient (or oneself) to die, then it is not sinful.

There is no question of rights trumping rights. There is only an examination of reality and whether reality allows something or not. In some cases, the reality allows something which carries a great burden. Can the burden be carried is *also *a question which the Church considers a part of the issue.

If there is no obligation to donate organs upon death, then there is a right to refuse to donate organs. If there is no obligation that a mother’s body be maintained on a ventilator, then there is a right to refuse that medical action.

First, let’s say this: a woman, a beloved wife, dies at a time close to when the healthy unborn baby could survive outside the womb. There are no circumstances for this to be an excessive burden to the family and/or community.

Do you not think that in this case the family would be very grateful for the medical technology to do this?

Now, add in a burden. Say this is a remote community and there are others who need the ventilator, those for whom the use of the ventilator is more of a sure thing? Then the use of this experimental and unsure medical action would need to be balanced against the sure use of it in another case.

These are the types of questions with which one must grapple when considering these extra-ordinary medical treatments: the limits of human resources, and it is why we cannot draw firm boundaries but must look at the particular circumstances of each individual case.
Click to expand...
And the circumstance in this case was the Baby was alive until they turned off the Ventilator. There was no reason to kill this child. none.
 
estesbob said:
This baby was killed by a willful act. There simply is no away around that. this baby was alive until the plug was pulled. It would be alive to day if this action had not been taken
Click to expand...
The baby died because his or her mother died. The only reason the baby even lived as long as he or she did was due to human intervention. The act was what was keeping the baby alive. Since the original act was not obligatory, continuation of the act was not required.
 
estesbob said:
I’ve been hearing that since I first got involved in the pro-life ministry some 40 years ago.
Click to expand...
Then you must be very familiar with the Church’s position on the matter. Does the Church teach that a dead mother with a 14-week-old fetus MUST be kept on support? My question is serious: Show us the Church teaching on the matter.

Until you do so, your just asserting your own unsupported personal opinion.
 
St_Francis said:
The right to life is the right not to be killed, not the right to live under any and all circumstances.
Click to expand...
(emphasis mine)

I think that statement best sums up these difficult situations. There is a difference between killing and declining to keep someone alive through extraordinary means. Even JPII recognized that difference in his own end of life decisions…
 
TheWarriorMonk said:
Then you must be very familiar with the Church’s position on the matter. Does the Church teach that a dead mother with a 14-week-old fetus MUST be kept on support? My question is serious: Show us the Church teaching on the matter.

Until you do so, your just asserting your own unsupported personal opinion.
Click to expand...
The Church has no position on this. i do-i always err on the side of life. If i worked for that hospital i would have quit rather than turn that ventilator off.
 
seekerz said:
(emphasis mine)

I think that statement best sums up these difficult situations. There is a difference between killing and declining to keep someone alive through extraordinary means. Even JPII recognized that difference in his own end of life decisions…
Click to expand...
What about the baby? Would they still be alive if the ventilator had not been shut off?
 
Thanks to all for the lively discussion. this discussion is to emotional for me to continue.
 
estesbob said:
What about the baby? Would they still be alive if the ventilator had not been shut off?
Click to expand...
Maybe Pope JP would still be with us, living on a ventilator. He declined to choose that option. In this case, the woman being dead - her family was finally allowed to choose for her, and the science experiment was terminated.

If this were a fetus near viability and the mother had been killed in a car crash or something, I would be supportive of giving the baby a chance in this manner, but we have no idea of the harm that this artificial and highly experimental treatment has inflicted on the baby these past couple of months. The mother’s body was literally decomposing around the baby - yes, the body does need more than food and oxygen to thrive - it also needs toxin removal and hormone pathways and stuff…
 
estesbob said:
That abortion doesn’t kill a “child.” This child would still be alive if they hadnt removed life support from the Mother.
Click to expand...
Thanks, I didn’t know what you meant before.

When those who support abortion say that abortion doesn’t kill a child, they are not saying an action hasn’t taken place; they are saying that a child did not exist. They are denying some aspect of the unborn baby’s humanity. Once having tricked us by this, they can then say that a child was not killed.

What I am saying here is different: the child existed. However, the action that was taken was not the action of killing. What caused the baby’s death was that his or her mother died and this was a state incompatible with the baby’s life. The incompatible state was “suspended,” for lack of a better word, by ventilating the mother’s body.

However, this action uses resources. The use of resources causes a burden of some sort. When the burden is overly heavy proportionate to the goodness of the effect (the effect itself and the chances of that effect being realized), the burden may be laid down, or the medical treatment ended or initially refused, and the Church teaches that this is a moral decision.
 
I actually knew this lovely woman professionally, but I never had the pleasure of meeting her husband. I cannot imagine how he has made it through this trying time - especially with all the vitriol spewed on the internet! I wonder if he regrets doing CPR on his wife after seeing what she and their unborn child went through for two months. Would he have done it if he knew how this would turn out? Obviously he wanted to give them both a chance to live, or he wouldn’t have done CPR. I believe that as a paramedic who understands the reality of brain death and “life support”, he made the decision she would have made for herself, even though she was pregnant. It may not be your choice or mine, but we have to trust that he knew her better than any of us, and his decision should have been honored from the very beginning.
St_Francis said:
The Church teaches that is is *not *immoral to stop treatment, and that sometimes we have to recognize our limitations.
Click to expand...
I hope that some good comes of all of this; that we, as a nation, will have deeper discussions about end of life care and just how far we should go and when we should let nature take its course. Just because we CAN do something (like keep a brain dead body’s heart beating with mechnical ventilation and drugs) doesn’t mean that we SHOULD. I hope this helps people to not fear death, to understand that it is a natural part of life, and to let go instead of doing cruel and unnatural things to their loved ones’ bodies for their own personal, selfish reasons. I can only hope that this case can help others make the difficult decision to honor natural death when it comes.

I pray for Marlise and her baby, that they are with God at this moment. I pray for their family, that they may be comforted by God and be able to finally have peace after this ordeal.
 
Catholic_Wife said:
I actually knew this lovely woman professionally, but I never had the pleasure of meeting her husband. I cannot imagine how he has made it through this trying time - especially with all the vitriol spewed on the internet! I wonder if he regrets doing CPR on his wife after seeing what she and their unborn child went through for two months. Would he have done it if he knew how this would turn out? Obviously he wanted to give them both a chance to live, or he wouldn’t have done CPR. I believe that as a paramedic who understands the reality of brain death and “life support”, he made the decision she would have made for herself, even though she was pregnant. It may not be your choice or mine, but we have to trust that he knew her better than any of us, and his decision should have been honored from the very beginning.

I hope that some good comes of all of this; that we, as a nation, will have deeper discussions about end of life care and just how far we should go and when we should let nature take its course. Just because we CAN do something (like keep a brain dead body’s heart beating with mechnical ventilation and drugs) doesn’t mean that we SHOULD. I hope this helps people to not fear death, to understand that it is a natural part of life, and to let go instead of doing cruel and unnatural things to their loved ones’ bodies for their own personal, selfish reasons. I can only hope that this case can help others make the difficult decision to honor natural death when it comes.

I pray for Marlise and her baby, that they are with God at this moment. I pray for their family, that they may be comforted by God and be able to finally have peace after this ordeal.
Click to expand...
Catholic_Wife I am sorry for you loss.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top