Posted on 01/26/2014 11:20:25 AM PST by Zakeet
A Texas hospital has agreed to remove a pregnant and brain-dead woman from a ventilator, after a wrenching court fight about who is alive, who is dead and how the presence of a fetus changes the equation.
Sunday's announcement came two days after a judge in Fort Worth ordered John Peter Smith Hospital to remove any artificial means of life support from Marlise Munoz, as her family had asked. The hospital had said it was following a state law that requires hospitals to maintain life-sustaining treatment for a pregnant patient.
[Snip]
[Breaking news update, 1:50 p.m. ET]
The brain-dead and pregnant Texas woman at the center of a wrenching court battle has been removed from ventilators, lawyers for her family said Sunday.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
Had you shown up in the ER or been hospitalized for observation you would have been questioned.
And for something that even according to you is the second most likely cause of maternal death, not asking you about your fall might be construed as malpractice.
Particularly since it occurred in each of your pregnancies? Hmmm...
If you’ve read all I have to say on this part of the discussion, you may see that I’ve been pretty careful to include women as the murderer (spouse doesn’t always mean man, as much as we want it to. It’s reality).
But thanks for the clarification, I saw your earlier reply with cites. Appreciate it.
And not every man is going to kill his wife, pregnant or not. I am living proof of that!!! I’m sure there are days when Hubby just wishes I would be gone, but we make it thru. I know that not all men are monsters!
>>”the hospital said as of Friday “this baby is not viable”>>>>>>
Do you know what “not viable” means?
This patient has been in the hospital for 2 months. Her body has been looked at with great detail , I am sure. Any type of assault would show bruising/fractures. Any type of poisoning would show on a drug screen. They would have done a drug screen. Sometimes, people just drop dead. It happens more frequently than you know. So it is pretty wild that everyone here is going Agatha Christie and trying to blame the husband of murder. Crazy talk.Or it could be Prof. Plum in the conservatory with a candlestick.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/10/111020191854.htm
Considerable racial disparities in pregnancy-related mortality exist. During 2006–2009, the pregnancy-related mortality ratios were
11.7 deaths per 100,000 live births for white women.
35.6 deaths per 100,000 live births for black women.
17.6 deaths per 100,000 live births for women of other races.
http://www.cdc.gov/reproductivehealth/MaternalInfantHealth/PMSS.html
you probably like people to look the other way and not say much
you get along great in the current political environment
Yes, I do. Do you? The baby would not be able to live on it’s own outside the womb. Would need NICU and life sustaining medical care. It DOES NOT have anything to do with “deformity” claimed by lawyers for daddy.
2nd most likely cause of TRAUMA related maternal death is not the same as 2nd most likely cause of maternal death.
As for not being asked, it might be because I live in a Mayberry like farm town and my spouse went to many of my appointments and attended all my deliveries as birth coach and was well known to the medical staff. And all my babies are winter babies so lots of ice and snow, the enemy of ungainly women who haven’t seen their feet in weeks every where.
Although once it was mud during an abnormal thaw and we hadn’t built a sidewalk to the front door yet and the path was like an otter slide. I was wearing a brand new matching maternity pant set in pastel blue too. I was sooo mad about that outfit.
Thank you for the info and cite. However, what’s left of my anylalitical mind points out that the study covers less than half of the states. I wonder why that is?
Again, thanks!
My hubby had attended all my appointments too. I fell in June though. ER and L&D nurses are all suspicious sorts. Because they’ve seen everything. And an obsessive husband who never leaves his wife’s side is also a symptom of abuse sometimes.
Professional staff treat all patients the same though. It’s difficult from outward appearance to tell just which wife is regularly having the crap beat out of her. One of my mom’s friends, who drove a mercedes and lived in a humonguous house, finally got beaten up good enough to require medical care. What she’d passed off as arthritis over the years had actually been untreated broken bones in her fingers. Defensive wounds as it were. No one would have EVER suspected the husband of abuse. He was the sweetest most soft spoken man. As it turns out, her major injuries were to parts covered with clothing. Only that one particular time he injured her enough that she started peeing blood clots. Oops (for him). Her grown son, who’d never seen the abuse but had suspected as he’d gotten older, absolutely insisted she seek medical care.
And no one in the community suspected a thing. She and her husband were inseparable. Went everywhere together. Turns out it was ‘togetherness’ because he was afraid of her getting out by herself and telling someone about it all.
Her grown son got her to file divorce papers as he was afraid for her life. Kidney damage is no picnic. She moved in with son and dil. The hubby shacked up with a twenty something and died of cancer. As luck would have it, the twenty something cut out on him when the cancer got bad.
The point here being, nurses have seen everything. Particularly those in L&D and the ER. They’re all suspicious of husbands. And wives. And anything that reeks of ‘domestic situation’. And gang bangers. And they all suspect that ‘we’ are all drug seekers. And not because they’re infected with feminism but because that’s what they see day to day.
Well, with the technology available these days, can’t almost anyone be kept on life support almost indefinitely? If a machine is pumping oxygen into your lungs and pumping your heart, you’re technically “alive”. However, most people realize that there is a time when natural life is over and its time to give it up.
This is still very sad for all involved.
It’s a new reporting system and I suspect some states haven’t made budgetary commitments for it yet. Possibly because lacking large urban centers and having low murder rates overall, they don’t see it as a priority for scarce dollars.
Or the CDC doesn’t want the info from that badly because then it will quickly become apparent that a large part of the problem isn’t pregnancy per se, but homicidal gangsta culture and the transitory nature of relationships in urban environments.
If we had a “like” button, I’d hit it for your post. Thanks.
No I am a person who does not spread malicious gossip against a person. I deal with facts not conjecture. Did they mention that concept in law school?
I agree with you. It was the person I was replying to who keeps yammering that the woman was murdered.
Oxford Dictionary ....viable......a. capable of living or surviving
It was the opinion of the doctors that the baby was not capable of living or surviving.
I just don’t think we have the technology to keep a fetus alive in that condition. It is hard enough to do it out of the womb.23 weekers are a tough save, some hospitals will not do it. I would think it is harder to keep everything going while the fetus is in the womb. The technology is just not there. If this happened when the fetus was further along, no anoxia, then I think it could have worked for a couple of weeks until they could do a c section. The fetus was too young, and had anoxia. Too many co morbidities.
My guess, too. So why did the hospital not just let nature take it’s course? Maybe they had lawyers scaring them to death. We just have too much law, too many lawyers who make a living stirring things up.
As of last Friday....moot point, anyway. The baby is now dead. Which pleases many.
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