Pregnant women in Texas and 11 states lose rights to DNR

[micatite]

http://shine.yahoo.com/parenting/texas- ... 00388.html

Very disturbing that Texas and 11 other states have automatically invalidated pregnant women's advance directives to refrain from using extraordinary measures to keep them alive, and others have slightly less restrictive but similar laws.

Why does the circumstance of being pregnant suddenly invalidate the patient's previously expressed wishes and those of her family when such a violation of a patient's rights would not be tolerated in any other circumstance? Brain dead women in these states are literally being turned into incubators against their expressed will. Women deserve better.

[FloraKitty35]

Cue the perfect rational lawsuits over this bullshit in 5 4 3 2 1.....

[halfheartedheroine]

Fucking appalling. Seriously, if they combine this with the "all women of childbearing age are pre-pregnant", that means that women (or their proxies) could basically not be in charge of their own health choices from menarche to menopause.

[Minerva]

:shock: That's scary. Like, I don't want my empty body kept alive when it's got perfectly good organs that could help someone who's still in their body. But there's also something really horrifying about said empty body being used to grow and birth a baby who will begin their life with a dead parent. No horror movie stuff for my body, please. Just harvest my organs and bury me, for the love of God.

[NotALoserLikeYou]

So their next of kin can't make the decision either?

[formergothardite]

So their next of kin can't make the decision either?

No. :cry: The case going on now the husband and the woman's parents are trying to get her taken off life support because she did not want to be on it and she has no brain activity. But she was 14 weeks pregnant when it happened so the fetus trumps her wishes. The wishes of women don't matter to the anti-choice crowd. The suffering that they are inflicting on her family doesn't matter. They only care about keeping the heart of the fetus beating. These cases truly show that women are just incubators to anti-choicers.

[Coconut Flan]

Plus in that case the husband fears that his wife was deprived of oxygen long enough to cause serious harm to the fetus so they are quite possibly forcing not only the woman to suffer but the child may never have a good quality of life and could be a major burden to the family. In those circumstances it should be the husband/father's choice IMO. It should be anyway but I don't think the state should be allowed to willy nilly force a family into something like that.

[Lillybee]

I wonder who is paying the hospital bills or if the husband will be responsible.

[crazyforkate]

No. :cry: The case going on now the husband and the woman's parents are trying to get her taken off life support because she did not want to be on it and she has no brain activity. But she was 14 weeks pregnant when it happened so the fetus trumps her wishes. The wishes of women don't matter to the anti-choice crowd. The suffering that they are inflicting on her family doesn't matter. They only care about keeping the heart of the fetus beating. These cases truly show that women are just incubators to anti-choicers.

14 weeks?! I could see if it was late term, maybe, though the wishes of the patient or next of kin would trump that. But 14 weeks, you have got to be kidding me. Can you even keep a fetus alive on extraordinary measures for that long? Even viability would be 10-12 weeks from that point.

[Rachel333]

It's a sad story all around, but there was a woman who was raped while she was already in a coma and got pregnant. Her parents decided they wanted to keep the baby, so they continued the pregnancy and she eventually gave birth. In the case I'm thinking of, I know the baby survived but the woman died a few years later having never woken up. In googling this, though, it appears there were actually two similar cases in about the same time frame, and while I think it's the first one, I'm not completely sure which is the one I had already read about.

http://www.nytimes.com/1996/01/25/nyreg ... all&src=pm

http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1 ... 28,2660360

[iheartchacos]

I work for hospice and really it's ridiculous. Having a living will or medical power of attorney stating your wishes is not enough. There's a separate required by the state,Out of Hospital Do Not Resusitate, without it medics have to call a full code. But, families don't know this. Everyone thinks it's good to go with a will.

So I can leave my property/money in a will, but my wishes on resuscitation don't count. Ridiculous.

[formergothardite]

I work for hospice and really it's ridiculous. Having a living will or medical power of attorney stating your wishes is not enough. There's a separate required by the state,Out of Hospital Do Not Resusitate, without it medics have to call a full code. But, families don't know this. Everyone thinks it's good to go with a will.

So I can leave my property/money in a will, but my wishes on resuscitation don't count. Ridiculous.

In these states it doesn't matter if you have all the correct forms filled out, they will not honor them if the woman is pregnant. It is really scary how women's rights to even their bodies are being slowly stripped away.

Does anyone know what the other 11 states are that have the same laws? I have to say that I'm pleasantly surprised to see the in the comments of Yahoo most people are horrified that they are doing this to the woman.

[Handmaiden of Dog]

Oh this is grotesque. I wonder about the medical bills as well. I have a friend whose step mom had a brain aneurysm at 35 leaving her in a vegetative state. The husband had to divorce her because the medical bills bankrupted him. He lost his wife and then he lost his house. But the wife lingered on for 2 years and he and his family were left in a weird limbo where they could not grieve or move on. Every week they visited the woman in hospital until finally she died.

I wonder how that child will feel as he or she grows up? Will the thought of growing inside of a dead woman haunt them? How much joy can the father feel when the child is finally born? Will it be a relief or will it only be another step in the whole tragedy to get through?

[thoughtful]

What a nightmare.

[NotALoserLikeYou]

They are forcing her to be an incubator but her rights to DNR should supersede that. I hope this makes it to a higher court eventually and is overturned

[smittykins]

It's a sad story all around, but there was a woman who was raped while she was already in a coma and got pregnant. Her parents decided they wanted to keep the baby, so they continued the pregnancy and she eventually gave birth. In the case I'm thinking of, I know the baby survived but the woman died a few years later having never woken up. In googling this, though, it appears there were actually two similar cases in about the same time frame, and while I think it's the first one, I'm not completely sure which is the one I had already read about.

http://www.nytimes.com/1996/01/25/nyreg ... all&src=pm

http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1 ... 28,2660360

I remember the Rochester case(I live approximately 45 miles from there). IIRC, the baby boy was delivered about two months prematurely with a heart defect, which was corrected surgically. They were able to find and convict the rapist, a nursing home worker who shouldn't have been there in the first place, as he had a previous sexual-assault conviction on his record. :naughty:

[lizziesmom]

This makes me so angry for so many reasons. This is a FAMILY decision and the damn state should not be involved. The situation reminds me of the Terri Schiavo ( involving prolonged life support in the United States that lasted from 1990 to 2005) circus where members of Congress debated whether or not she should be taken off life support. There was no baby involved in that one -- difference of opinion between her parents' wishes and her husband. I am appalled at this.

[CallmeChaCha]

Unfuckingbelievable

[RosyDaisy]

Well, they don't call Alabama Talibama for nothing.

[treehugger]

Fuck - that is horrifying. Seriously, there are no words.

[Stephanie66]

I could see doing an emergency c section or saving the baby close to term. But at 14 weeks? So, since Texas also has a lw requiring uninsured and poor people who are terminally ill or have no chance of survival to be removed from life support, I second othe question of who is paying for it? Which law are they going with if the insurance runs out?

[GawkingToo]

So, since Texas also has a lw requiring uninsured and poor people who are terminally ill or have no chance of survival to be removed from life support [...]

Source??

[Stephanie66]

Source??

Here's one article. There is another about a hydrocephalic baby who was turned off life support, despite his mother's wishes. I will add it if I find it in time. Not broken because Houston Chronicle.

http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas ... 932133.php

Here's the baby:

http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Texas_baby_ ... 27s_wishes

And here is a more recent article about trying to revise this law. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/31/healt ... .html?_r=0

[GawkingToo]

Here's one article. There is another about a hydrocephalic baby who was turned off life support, despite his mother's wishes. I will add it if I find it in time. Not broken because Houston Chronicle.

http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas ... 932133.php

Here's the baby:

http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Texas_baby_ ... 27s_wishes

And here is a more recent article about trying to revise this law. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/31/healt ... .html?_r=0

Yes, there's a "futile care" law in Texas that allows medical providers, under certain conditions, to withdraw care over the parent or representative's objections. No disagreement there.

But you claimed that Texas law requires life support to be discontinued. Not the case at all. Not in "futile care" cases and certainly not simply on the basis of ability to pay.

EDIT: For those who are interested in the futile care law, check out Chapter 166 of the Texas Health and Safety Code.

EDIT2: I've already used up my 10 free NYT articles for the month, so I can't comment on the last link.

EDIT3: Okay, I realize I might have phrased it ambiguously above. Stephanie66's comment implied that in Texas, hospitals are required to cut off life support for "uninsured and poor people who are terminally ill or have no chance of survival." While "required" may ring true in the sense that, under certain circumstances, the family can't do a damn thing about it, it is by no means required that the hospitals go about discontinuing care. Not even in all "futile care" cases.

[Maggie Mae]

What are the other 11 states?