Clicking into my Kansas City Star app, the first story I saw was entitled “Judge: Remove life support for pregnant woman.” The article told the story of Erick and Marlise Munoz. Munoz was 14 weeks pregnant when her husband found her unconscious Nov. 26, possibly due to a blood clot. The hospital and family agreed that Munoz met the criteria to be pronounced brain-dead (making her legally and medically dead); however, the hospital continued to treat her despite objections from her family.
Judge R.H. Wallace Jr. asserted that the hospital was misapplying a law prohibiting the removal of life-sustaining means from a pregnant patient—regardless of her end-of-life wishes—and ordered the removal of life-support. However the state’s attorney Larry Thompson, representing the public hospital, countered that the hospital had a responsibility to protect the unborn fetus. Lastly, the attorneys representing the Munoz family– Jessica Hall Janicek and Heather King, argued that the hospital was only keeping Munoz on life support as some sort of “science experiment.”
“There is an infant, and a dead person serving as a dysfunctional incubator,” King said.
This would suggest a belief that there could not be a normal path of development, birth or life expected for the infant from this point. However there was an article written in 2010 by BMC Medicine involving a study conducted of 30 cases similar to that of Marlise Munoz.
The women were, on average, 22 weeks along in their pregnancies when brain-death occurred. Of those 22 pregnancies, there were 19 births. From those births, 12 were considered “viable”—meaning the child lived—and there were follow-up results for six. Those six children all developed normally. Steven Ertelt wrote about a similar case—involving a woman name Susan Torres—in “Life News” in August of 2005. Torres was 17 weeks pregnant when she collapsed with a brain tumor. In this case, Torres’s family insisted on doing all that was possible to keep the child alive. After nearly three months on life-support, a baby girl was born.
On Jan. 28, according to another Kansas City Star article, the hospital had removed life-support over the weekend. What struck me as most interesting, though, is that before removing life-support, Erik Munoz made the decision to name the unborn child. He gave her the name Nicole. It was his wife’s middle name.
It is easy to see how this case could be a catalyst for argument in the Pro-Life debate. For those who are Pro-Choice, it would make perfect sense to say that taking Munoz off of life-support would be the logical thing to do based on her wishes. However, to those who are Pro-Life, as I am, it is heartening to see cases such as Susan Torres where the life of the child was the first priority.
In my opinion, it was wrong of the family to insist upon removing the life-support from Marlise Munoz. It ended the life of what would have been their second child. I think that even Erick Munoz felt this in some way or else he would not have named the baby. It is a terrible decision that he had to make, and I believe that he should not have even had the decision in his hands.
There are too many abnormal circumstances in these situations. Though I would usually argue that a person’s wishes are his or her own and should be respected, I believe that the life of a child—or any dependent life that is not likely anticipated in end-of-life wishes—should always be given priority over death. What wouldn’t most people do to have more time with a loved one? If there is any opportunity to give someone a fighting chance at life, then why would that not be the responsibility of others to carry out?