Dead pregnant woman forced to stay on life support, due to TX State law (page 12)

adamah

FHN said- I don't know why people are making this about religion. Has the hospital really made this about religion?

You are seemingly unaware of the ongoing battles between Xian pro-lifers and pro-rights groups in TX, where the former have codified their beliefs in State law so as to force their religiously-motivated stance on everyone in the State. They're so extreme, that the policies even exceed the positions of the RCC. In their minds, THEY are doing God's will, even though they cannot justify their stance with an particular scriptural backing (only a "do unto others" vague application). Whether you see it or not, it IS driven by Xians (eg Westboro Baptist types).

There's a reason for concern, as this is America's version of the fundamentalist Taliban gaining control in Afghanistan or Iran, and as Sooner's callous and insensitive attitude demonstrates, shows a blatent disregard for not only current definitions in use by the American Medical Association, the American Bar Association, but medical providers and associations around the World. Texas is "going rouge", fueled by Tea Party type thinking run amok (Palin/Bachmann types, etc).

Justitia Themis

FHN said- I don't know why people are making this about religion. Has the hospital really made this about religion?

You are seemingly unaware of the ongoing battles between Xian pro-lifers and pro-rights groups in TX

FHN, while I appreciate your desire to examine only what JPS has expressly said, one can't ignore the underlying religio-political right-to-life issue and extremist Texas lawmaker's penchant for tyring to legally impose their beliefs.

I am more concerned that the hospital has an agenda since learning that the existing Texas case law directed them to disconnect "life" support when she was declared brain dead. And as I posted earlier, if it was truly confused as to the law, it could have filed a motion for clarification.

Additionally, I am in the midst of researching the JPS' executive officers' backgrounds because at best, their internal baises will affect their decisions, and at worst, will drive their decisions.

The CEO, Robert Early, is a former Republican Texas legislator who championed right-to-life issues.

However, I can't even find an in-house counsel! Someone please tell me they actually HAVE in-house counsel, and that the hospital was not relying merely upon its HR risk manager!!!

Edited to add:

Found the chief counsel under the parent company. He is a buddy of Rick Perry's and a staunch right-to-lifer.

Pojman remembers one local activist who helped get abortions banned at JPS: lawyer Neal Adams of Euless-based Northeast Tarrant Right-To-Life. Adams remains on that group’s advisory board along with Hancock and both Tarrant County Judge Glen Whitley of Hurst and County Commissioner Gary Fickes of Southlake, who help appoint the heavily Republican board of hospital managers

snare&racket

I'll be certificating death in a few months time, so knowing its definition is kind of important to me.

FlyingHighNow

This is not an abortion issue, folks. I'm pro-choice. I can see your concerns as to the similarity, though. We don't know what the mother's wishes in this particular instance would be.

sammielee24

I believe that Texas law means that the hospital is now legally bound to protect the child as it has advanced past the 20 week cut off under Texas law for abortions. In this case the mothers health is not an issue and therefore, there is no danger to the mother - based on this, and the date of the filing to have her removed, I don't think the husband will win. (bold type not mine)sw

Texas Law Protecting Pain-Capable Unborn Children Goes Into Effect Tomorrow

● October 28, 2013 ● 2013 PRESS RELEASES

WASHINGTON – Tomorrow, a law will go into effect that will protect unborn children in Texas who are capable of feeling pain. The Texas bill, HB 2, was signed by Governor Perry on July 18, 2013. Despite efforts to derail other elements of HB 2, the central portion protecting pain-capable unborn children was never challenged.

That central portion of HB 2, protecting pain-capable unborn children is based on the Pain Capable-Unborn Child Protection Act, drafted by National Right to Life. Texas will now join nine other states in prohibiting the excruciating deaths of the smallest members of our human family.
“While attacking smaller pieces of HB 2, opponents of pro-life legislation never challenged the protections on pain-capable children; even our opponents realize this legislation, and the extensive science behind it, is sound,” said Mary Spaulding Balch, J.D., National Right to Life director of state legislation. “Unborn children and their mothers deserve better than the violence of abortion.”
Forty years ago, the unborn child virtually did not exist in medicine. “Fetal medicine” was an oxymoron. Our understanding of pain was so primitive that even a newborn undergoing surgery did so without anesthesia! They received only a paralytic to keep them still. Today, pain-capable unborn children are treated as patients. And now Texas joins nine other states in protecting them from being killed by abortion.

In a nationwide poll of 1,003 registered voters in March 2013, The Polling Company found that 64% would support a law such as the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act prohibiting abortion after 20 weeks — when an unborn baby can feel pain — unless the life of the mother is in danger. Only 30% opposed such legislation. Women voters split 63%-31% in support of such a law, and 63% of independent voters supported it.

Some of the extensive evidence that unborn children have the capacity to experience pain, at least by 20 weeks fetal age, is available on the NRLC website at www.nrlc.org/abortion/fetalpain and also here: www.doctorsonfetalpain.com

Justitia Themis

I don't think HB 2 applies at all.

HB 2 is a "bill regulating abortion." Disconnecting Ms. Munoz and allowing the fetus to die as a natural consequence is not an abortion.

As FHN notes, this is not an abortion issue. However, after researching the extreme right-to-life positions of the hospital's leaders, I am MUCH more convinced that this case is being used to promote a political agenda.

rebel8

This is a legal matter. Opinions, feelings, religious beliefs, etc. are not supposed to affect the law.

TX law defines "dead" and this woman meets the criteria.

TX law allows a person to execute advanced directives, describing what is to be done if the person is no longer conscious to express her wishes. The decedent did that and the hospital is acting in violation of those stated wishes.

The decedent is dead in the eyes of TX law. TX law requiring life sustaining treatment does not apply, because her nonexistent life cannot be sustained.

TX law requires honoring of a decedent's posthumous wishes and the hospital is violating those.

TX law defines family as having decision-making authority and the hospital is violating that.

Justitia Themis

Yeah Rebel, we've gone over those issues ad nauseum.

Despite that, some posters can't get past the right-to-life issue, and they genuinely feel that the right-to-life overrides...well...everything, including the law.

Edited to add: Go Seahawks!!!!

rebel8

Ok. I guess I didn't read all the pages so I spared myself.

Off to stop beating dead horses, then.

adamah

Even those who helped draft the law agree it doesn't apply in this case:

But a Dallas-based Baylor Health Care System ethicist who helped write the law has disagreed with JPS’s interpretation. Dr. Robert L. Fine told The Associated Press that if Muñoz is brain-dead, she’s not an ill “patient,” she’s legally dead.

FHN said- This is not an abortion issue, folks. I'm pro-choice. I can see your concerns as to the similarity, though. We don't know what the mother's wishes in this particular instance would be.

So you're getting the point, FHN, as it's NOT an abortion issue, but an issue of whether or not individuals have the right to determine what happens to their own bodies, while alive and after death. She didn't leave her wishes in writing, but it wouldn't have done ANY GOOD anyway, since the State law overrides. Her husband is next-of-kin, and has the right to make healthcare decisions, but once again, State law overrides, and JPS is seemingly misinterpreting the law, as described by Dr Fine above.

If you're pro-choice (based on the women's right to choose of what happens to her body, since she is in it, i.e. patient autonomy), this is literally a no-brainer; it's the same legal premise that explains why people are able to express their desires of what happens to their bodies in life, and even after death, and society respects their wishes. It's a social contract, based on "do until others as they'd do unto you", since one day YOU and I will be dead, and we'd like to think that survivors will give us the respect and dignity to grant us our wishes when we're powerless to protest.

Combine that with a legal principle of priority of rights and basic fairness ("first come, first served"), and the concept of "those most effected by the decision who have to deal with the aftermath should be the ones who get to make the choice, so they get to pick their poison" and the solution becomes apparent: the State has insufficient compelling or over-riding interest to insert their nose into the family's situation and decide for them.

Adam

Dead pregnant woman forced to stay on life support, due to TX State law

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