A pregnant woman who collapsed after an embolism is being kept alive against her own and her family's wishes to incubate a 14-week-old foetus.
“All we want is to let her rest, to let her go to sleep"
According to The Dallas News, doctors believe that Marlise Munoz suffered a pulmonary embolism (a blood clot to the lungs) that cut off her oxygen. When her husband, Erick, found Marlise in their Tarrant County home, she wasn’t breathing and had no pulse.
And, while electric shocks and drugs have started the mum-of-one's heart again - it will continue beating with mechanical support - Marlise's brain waves are completely flat. She has gone without breathing for too long to ever recover.
But when the heartbroken family was ready to say goodbye to their mother, wife and daughter, hospital officials said they could not legally disconnect Marlise from life support.
Why?
Because, at the time she collapsed, she was 14 weeks pregnant. And because doctors can still detect a baby's heartbeat, state law says Marlise Munoz's clinically brain-dead body — against her own and her family's wishes — must be maintained as an unwilling incubator, her respiration monitored by machines.
“All we want is to let her rest, to let her go to sleep,” said Marlise’s 60-year-old father, Ernest Machado of Azle. “What they’re doing serves no purpose.
“That poor foetus had the same lack of oxygen, the same electric shocks, the same chemicals that got her heart going again. For all we know, it’s in the same condition that Marlise is in.”
Marlise, who worked as a paramedic, had discussed her end-of-life wishes with her husband Erick - and she always stated that she did not want to be kept alive on life support. She wanted to die with some dignity, to be allowed to slip away from this world, if there was nothing that could be done for her.
According to a 2012 report by the Centre for Women Policy Studies, laws governing end-of-life preferences for pregnant women vary by state. Texas is one of 12 that automatically invalidates a woman’s legal prerogative if she “is diagnosed with pregnancy.”
“These are the most restrictive of the pregnancy exclusion statutes, stating that, regardless of the progression of the pregnancy, a woman must remain on life-sustaining treatment until she gives birth."
Meanwhile, the distraught Munoz family has not only had to prolong its grieving through the holidays, but also fend off anti-abortion critics who've accused Erick Munoz of simply wanting to "pull the plug" so he could "get rid" of his wife and baby.
"Regardless of the progression of the pregnancy, a woman must remain on life-sustaining treatment until she gives birth"
“This isn’t about pro-life or pro-choice,” Marlise's father, who apologised for crying, explained to the press on Friday.
“We want to say goodbye. We want to let them rest.”