Pregnant Marlise Munoz, who has been officially brain-dead since a suspected pulmonary embolism in November, has finally been removed from life support machines.
"We are relieved that Eric Munoz can now move forward with the process of burying his wife"
Her husband Erick, alongside her family, have been fighting for the right to remove Marlise from life support machines for months.
However the hospital continued to keep Marlise alive, against her own and her family's wishes, in a bid to incubate her unborn foetus.
This was due to a Texas law which states that "a person may not withdraw or withhold life-sustaining treatment under this subchapter from a pregnant patient."
However a judge determined the law did not apply to Marlise because she was already legally dead; the suit also ruled that the hospital interpreted the law in a way that "makes no sense and amounts to nothing more than the cruel and obscene mutilation of a deceased body against the expressed will of the deceased and her family."
According to medical records, the baby, believed to be at about 22 weeks’ gestation, was “distinctly abnormal” based on medical records they received from the hospital, and had "water on the brain", a possible heart condition and genital deformities.
Doctors were ordered to remove Marlise from life support.
After the ruling, Munoz's husband, Eric, stood with his lawyers as they made a statement on his behalf.
"This is the decision we sought. There is nothing happy about today. This was a sad situation all the way around.
"We are relieved that Eric Munoz can now move forward with the process of burying his wife."
They later confirmed that Marlise had been removed from life support, saying:
"The Munoz and Machado families will now proceed with the sombre task of laying Marlise Munoz's body to rest, and grieving over the great loss that has been suffered."
"This is the decision we sought. There is nothing happy about today. This was a sad situation all the way around"
The family's heartbreak began on 26th November, when Marlise got out of bed in the middle of the night because her 14-month-old son, Mateo, had begun to cry.
When the baby continued to cry and his wife didn't return, Erick got up and found Marlise on the kitchen floor. She was not breathing and had no pulse. Her skin had taken on a bluish colour.
Doctors suspect she had a pulmonary embolism, or a blood clot in the lungs, but they won't know until an autopsy can be performed.
"It's hard to reach the point where you wish your wife's body would stop," Erick Munoz told ABC News' Dallas-Fort Worth affiliate WFAA-TV.