Keeping a body alive: women with fewer rights than the foetus.

Being more generous, I think that some of the people who hold those opinions are not so much motivated by hate but by an "ideal world" morality, and by a severe lack of joined up thinking.

Possibly. But I don't think those people are the spearhead of the anti-choice movement.

There must be a lot of people who are quite well aware what their goal is (controlling women) and how they are going to achieve it (taking away women's rights and teaching society that women are to be treated as walking wombs).

The well-meaning, naive woman who just doesn't like the thought of "killing babies" wouldn't, if left to her own devices, think about the matter much, would she? The idea of it being possible to have an abortion would likely not even appear on her radar. Much less would such a person think about rare situations where a pregnant woman is in a coma, and want to make a law about it.

A person with such a severe lack of joined up thinking would probably walk through life blissfully unaware of other women getting pregnant unwanted and having abortions.
If she was told that someone in her family is going to have an abortion because the fetus has no brain, such a person would probably emphatize, and still remain firmly convinced that that's the only reason why someone would have an abortion.

There needs to be a hard core of misogynists, who then recruit naive people to their cause by forcing them to think about it, and urging them to "think of the children".

Being more generous, I think that some of the people who hold those opinions are not so much motivated by hate but by an "ideal world" morality, and by a severe lack of joined up thinking.

It's not just this extreme where an unborn group of cells has more rights than an adult woman - just have a look at abortion and even birth control rights in some places. It is fucked in beyond belief.

Indeed.
Though the unborn group of cells isn't really the entity with the rights over the woman's body, it is the men around her.
The (potential) baby is an afterthought.

This blogger has a theory that the hatred of children is as widespread in patriarchy as the hatred of women:
francoistremblay.wordpress.com/2012/11/30/pedogyny-the-hatred-of-children/
(He was also a bit confused about which part of "misogyny" means hate; but has corrected that everywhere but in the site name in the meantime)

I must say (although some of his views are pretty weird) he has a point there.
The people who make misogynist laws around contraception and abortion do not really think of the children. Children don't profit from being born to parents who don't want them. They also don't profit from being born to teenage mothers, or from having twenty siblings because their parents can't use contraception.

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b02zc016
It does annoy me when the programmes I want aren't available on demand!

Ah, found it on TV Tropes:

tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/TheTestamentOfJessieLamb

Gruesome.

And again it proves that there's nothing in fiction more horrible than something real life people would actually do.

"If an expectant mother is aware she is dying and expresses a wish to be kept alive until the viability of her baby, that should be done if possible. But there should be no enforced preservation of life to allow growth of a foetus."
That's what I think too, lougle. If a woman has consented to being kept alive until her baby is delivered, then I definitely think her wishes should be carried out. If a woman has a more advanced pregnancy, and it can be reasonably expected that it is what she would have wanted then I think there is also a case for keeping her alive until the baby can be delivered, even though in that situation she couldn't have consented in advance because she didn't know she would be taken ill.
That's not what happened in the link though. In fact what the US judgement means is that a woman and her family wont even necessarily know she is pregnant, until she is hospitalised. Could it mean, therefore, that doctors must legally check for pregnancy before turning off the life support of any woman/girl of childbearing age? Should they be legally compelled to check for pregnancy before making the decision to stop CPR? Must a woman always be kept alive until any foetus (of any stage of development) has died/become unviable?
The case in Ireland is less shocking, because it seems like the situation arose due to uncertainty on the part of the doctors who were not sure how to interpret the rules. When these rules were written, I doubt anyone could have foreseen that exact situation occurring and the high court's decision ended that uncertainty.

Situations like the one in the op will be very, very rare, but that doesn't make them any less creepy, nor does it mean that there aren't wider implications for what that kind of legal judgement means.

I would say a lot of this aspect in modern America terrifies me. It's not just this extreme where an unborn group of cells has more rights than an adult woman - just have a look at abortion and even birth control rights in some places. It is fucked in beyond belief.

I think a once heard a bit of a R4 radio play like that Vestal, it sounds familiar.

No doubt that it would all be heavily romanticised "your mother achieved the pinnacle of feminine saintly-ness by sacrificing herself for her child, even beyond her own death blahblahblah..." So fucked up on so many levels.

Oh my god, I just realized I read a book once, where a disease had spread to everyone on earth, which meant pregnancy would kill any woman immediately,

A couple of scientists had unfrozen some egg cells and fertilized them with their own (all male scientists) sperm, and the resulting fetuses would not be infected with the disease.

Now, a woman could be kept alive during the first couple of pregnancy months if put into an artificial coma or something ...

The protagonist decided she wanted to volunteer for this scheme (they were looking for volunteers, calling them "Sleeping Beauties" and heavily idealizing the noble sacrifice), but her father, one of the scientists, was against it.

It was very creepy on so many levels, but so close to reality.

Will try to find out how it was called.

Ah okay I read theWikipedia entry properly,

I'm confused - it was established that she did not need to be kept on life support to keep the baby alive and it was turned off? Because she was legally dead so the Texan law did not apply?

Or have I misread that.

I agree with you lougle

There must be pretty extenuating circumstances for this situation to ever occur, and for a woman to be pregnant and then braindead in the relatively short space of time between conception and birth, maybe they are simply going on the assumption that some proportion of women probably wanted to carry those babies to term, and if they cannot obtain this information for sure because of the mother's condition (i.e cannot ascertain the pregnancy was unwanted anyway), isn't it safer to bring the baby to term rather than let them die?

It must be a difficult decision to make as a doctor but it's not the same as some blighted child being born of a rotted, festering corpse. If the mother is "only" (sorry for lack of more appropriate and sensitive word) then the body will continue to function on life support as a living body - otherwise this wouldn't work in the first place.

And what is happening to the women after birth? Genuinely I don't know - are they only on life support because they are pregnant, or because families have not consented to having life support turned off? BEcause that adds a whole other dimension as well, if the woman is not solely being kept alive to give birth to her baby.

I don't think it is necessarily an intentional oppression of womens rights, more of a very ethically difficult situation to navigate maybe?

It's either a grieving spouse who requests the attempt to save the fetus or grieving parents who then raise the child as their own. Women in theses cases generally are very loved and missed.

I find this very interesting.

I read an article on charlie gard from a us perspective, basically saying making him a ward of the state was the effect of socialised medicine, and the parents should have the right to decide on the childs medical care, choose how, where and when.

But this is basically the same isn't it? Removing the parents rights and handing decisions regarding the child to the state.

Americans are bizarre sometimes.

It's actually relatively rare for patients to become diagnostically brain-dead even if they are prognostically terminally ill. They can be in a state of deep coma which is non-recoverable, with extensive brain damage, without ever becoming brain-dead. How long they can then be ventilated for will depend on whether they contract any infections and whether they can be treated successfully with antibiotics.

There are all sorts of traumatic situations which children are born into. How those situations are communicated probably has more impact than the situation itself on the child. Children born as a result of rape, incest, and affairs all need sensitive communication. Children who are adopted need sensitivity around their birth stories. Children whose mother delayed treatment for cancer so they could be born, and then died as a result, will also need support with hearing their birth story.

I think it's a mistake to think that because you may find something distasteful, that the resulting life is not worth living. It will all come back once again to 'when is a life a life', I suppose.

I'm not sure what I think. In fact..... I'm surprising myself in thinking that, despite considering myself more 'pro-life' than many on here, I think that I come down on this issue in the middle: if an expectant mother is aware she is dying and expresses a wish to be kept alive until the viability of her baby, that should be done if possible. But there should be no enforced preservation of life to allow growth of a foetus.

How would they explain that?

Well, its every woman's obligation to incubate a child at whatever cost, and feel blessed to do so no matter whether she has consented to or not. How lucky, to be able to make the ultimate sacrifice! Logic would say that a sacrifice not freely made is not a sacrifice, but I bet it would still be spun in that heavily romanticised way to the child, whatever the medical notes and evidence said.

Medical records would be able to be requested though wouldn't They?

Surely the chikd all those years down the line would be able to view their parents advance directives etc see there was no consent to be kept alive?

How would they explain that

Is there a " how to deal with a child who grew inside his mother's dead deteriorating body" module?

No doubt that it would all be heavily romanticised "your mother achieved the pinnacle of feminine saintly-ness by sacrificing herself for her child, even beyond her own death blahblahblah..." So fucked up on so many levels. And like pps have said, the child is going to be disabled with serious problems even if it were to survive to full term at all (unlikely). The chances of a child being born with a decent quality of life who makes it into adulthood are going to be very slim. And once that heavily disabled, (possibly in pain) child is born, do they give a fuck about where it goes? Because I can't imagine many adoptive couples being willing (or able) to take on a baby with such complex needs and health problems anyway.

I'm a therapist and am aware how stress, cortisol in the mother affects the baby. I dread to think what the impact would be.

There are thousands in the care system as it is really can't see anyone jumping to take a baby where the effects from all the drugs etc used to keep the mother alive for weeks and weeks.

Plus I can well imagine alot of therapists are trained in attachment disorders and obviously loss of family members and the resulting grief.

Is there a " how to deal with a child who grew inside his mother's dead deteriorating body" module? :(

I suspect in the US a baby born this way would go straight to adoptive parents, as newborn adoption is pretty common there

But probably not if there are any disabilities ...

Though I wonder how long it will be until they make the body of any braindead woman officially property of the state and use her as a womb, impregnating the body again and again, to produce babies for couples who want to adopt.

It's dystopic.

I suspect in the US a baby born this way would go straight to adoptive parents, as newborn adoption is pretty common there

Oh the irony that potentially a male baby would be basically "sacrificed" mentally probably physically and emotionally just to prove a point...

Giles, I am not so sure those people really believe that it is better for the child.

Perhaps they say they believe that, and perhaps they convince themselves that's why, but the original sentiment that motivates them is not wanting women to decide what happens to their own bodies. Not even after death.

This is truly dystopian. It's terrifying.