to think it's wrong for a dead woman to be used as an incubator?

[twofingerstoGideon]

One of the most dreadful stories I've read in a long time. Could be triggering.

'Clinically dead' (that's dead, isn't it?) woman kept on life support machine to support 17 week fetus. Her own parents want the life support switched off. I really can't get my head around this at all.

AIBU to think we need to do everything possible to prevent our abortion laws becoming more restrictive and fight against the anti-choice demonstrators who are becoming more and more vociferous and ever-present outside clinics.

Surely even the most staunch anti-choicer can't argue that this is right.

story here

The point is that the decisions for the mother and the baby are being made by people who they don't affect.

they will do what will be medically possible to do as far as keeping both alive. that's where it ends. what happens after doesn't affect them. Their job is done once baby enters the world alive.

Surely, there is potential for conflict here. Their preservation of live stance taking over a situation that's so much more than whether the baby lives or dies.

Unfortunately there is very little chance of this baby being born completely healthy. If it survives unscathed from the event which caused the mother to die, there is still considerable risk of the mother developing pneumonia, thrombosis and other complications because she is not moving. The doctors will have to pump her full of drugs to try to prevent all of that happening.

There is a very sad report here concerning a similar issue. Sorry if this is triggering, but the husband describes the fact that his wife is hardly recognisable, her eyes have become blank, her limbs crack when they are moved and her usual scent is replaced by the "smell of death." In that case they already knew that the baby was damaged, and the decision was made to allow the mother to die.

Giles There is huge potential for conflict everywhere concerning medical life or death decisions.

Whether these decisions affect the medical professionals making them - well you would have to ask them. They do affect the child, definitely. They also affect the family, in so far as they cannot have a funeral straight away and consideration on how to provide quality of life for the child will affect them. However other people may be ready and willing to provide for the child, if they aren't.

So much depends on the individual circumstances and the motivations behind the decisions made.

I don't see a problem in keeping her alive to save the baby. Don't really understand why you'd choose not to give the baby a fighting chance also?

This is such an offensive thing to do, from so many different aspects. Keeping a brain dead woman artificially alive so her body is used as an incubator is not "embracing the wonderful things that a woman's body can do" but valuing the ability to procreate and give birth over a woman's life.

It is artificial, the woman would die without life support. Its yet another case coming out of Ireland whereby these offensive views towards procreation and anti-abortion at all costs become really offensive. We had the child who was raped by her uncle who was "persuaded" by the Catholic Church to give birth because they would give her money. Then we had the dentist who was refused an abortion on medical grounds and who died as a result.

I must say I'm not entirely unconvinced that this fervour over anti-abortion is not more about controlling women and taking autonomy over their own bodies out of their own hands (does a person have the human right to bodily autonomy once they are brain dead?) and just in case they have a male child.

How does this deviate from torture, in ideological terms? It is about someone else taking control of a person's body, for their own purposes.

TheChandler you are talking about someone who is already dead - you are not killing the woman or making her life any worse because she has already passed.

I am not saying it is right - I think that the viability of the child should have been weighed up here, and considering the lady was just 14 weeks pregnant I am not sure the outcome will be good.

There have been 30 cases of occurrences like this in 30 years and I am afraid most of the stories do not have a happy ending.

It is a very sad situation, but it has nothing to do with abortion.

There is no abortion involved here - if the lady doesn't have life support the baby will die, the baby is not intentionally being aborted here.

It is artificial, the woman would die without life support.

Where do you draw the line Chandler. So much is artificial, life to support full stop is artificial. Life saving operations are. What about a C-Section after the mother's death?

Because abuses of women have undoubtedly taken place in the past does that mean there is no grounds for keeping a woman artificially alive until the baby can survive independently? What is she and her family wanted this? If they didn't, is it fair in every circumstance to discriminate, concerning the child's life in this way?

IMO these are very difficult questions which should be answered on a case by case basis as far as possible.

TheChandler you are talking about someone who is already dead - you are not killing the woman or making her life any worse because she has already passed.

That's the whole point. She is dead but is not being allowed to pass. Death happens, and applying different rules to women who die, because they are pregnant, is offensive.

Its also incredibly offensive to many living women who object to being viewed as potential incubators, as opposed to real people. So you are making the lives of living women worse, because it encourages those sectors of society who are prone to seeing women as having less rights than men because they can give birth, to do so.

The European Convention on Human Rights, to which Ireland is a signatory, reads:

ARTICLE 3 "No one shall be subjected to torture or to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment."

ARTICLE 4 "1. No one shall be held in slavery or servitude. 2. No one shall be required to perform forced or compulsory labour." (obviously this refers to work, not giving birth).

ARTICLE 5 "1. Everyone has the right to liberty and security of person. No one shall be deprived of his liberty save in the following cases and in accordance with a procedure prescribed by law: (a) the lawful detention of a person after conviction by a competent court; (b) the lawful arrest or detention of a person for noncompliance with the lawful order of a court or in order to secure the fulfilment of any obligation prescribed by law;"

I don't see how the State can justify keeping this woman alive, as no other person has the right in law to insist on this. There is certainly no authority for the State to keep a brain dead woman artificially alive for the purposes of giving birth, particularly when that birth is so far in the future as it is here (and so likely unviable). So it boils down to using the slim possibility of a viable birth as an excuse to interfere with a human being's bodily autonomy.

I don't agree with what's being done here.

At 17 weeks the fetus is not independently viable, i.e. it could not survive on its own outside the mother's womb. Some might argue that the mother is clinically dead - she has no consciousness and that if her life support machine were switched off, she would stop breathing and die. But the same could be true of the fetus too - without the mother's placenta, it would die - why does the right of the fetus trump that of the mother in this case?

How long would the mother need to be kept on life support for? Until the bare minimum 24 weeks or longer to ensure the best possible outcome for the fetus? That would mean keeping the mother on life support for at least another 7 weeks, not without further risks such as blood clots and infection. The risk of these occurring would become higher as the number of weeks on ITU increases and at 24 weeks there would be a high likelihood of very poor outcomes for the fetus, even in a healthy pregnancy.

I can't imagine how distressing that would be to the woman's parents who have expressed a wish for her to be allowed to die. Intensive care units are not nice places, sterile, bright, loud, constant monitoring with machines, injections, lines, catheters; all of this knowing that their daughter is ultimately going to die after undergoing a caesarean section, presumably after which her life support machine would be switched off - after all there would be no reason for her to go back to intensive care.

In equity terms, ICU beds cost at least £1000 per day per patient, probably more depending on the condition. Is it fair and right that a patient who is brain stem dead and has no chance of recovery is kept alive at the expense of others who need the funding and indeed even the physical bed in order to stay alive? It might seem callous but it is a real consideration I think.

I think if the pregnancy was further along and there was a possibility of delivering it i.e. 24 weeks or more, it would be a very different ethical situation to consider, but for me it just seems wrong to not allow this woman to die.

A body does not need embalming if it is on life support, the life support is keeping her heart beating, blood circulating, she is only brain dead the machines are keeping the rest of her body alive in order to keep the baby alive. She won't decompose

Ignoring the grossly inappropriate grinning face you saw fit to put on the end of that sentence, it is not even entirely true. She may not decompose, but her body will certainly be deteriorating. As Icimoi said, the husband in the Texas case spoke of how his wife became so stiff that her limbs cracked, her appearance changed and she developed an unpleasant smell.

Should her family be subjected to seeing their child waste away before their eyes, unable to lay her to rest and grieve, suspended by this horrible situation for an unviable foetus with no guaranteed positive outcome? Oh and she also has 2 children already, born existing children. I wonder how they are coping with the idea that Mummy is dead but not really, sleeping but not really, carrying a sibling who may not survive. Shouldn't their mental well being and right to grieve be considered?

For those who are saying that they would want to be kept alive in these circumstances to save their baby, good for you. But what you seem to be forgetting is that it actually makes no difference in this case whether this woman would have wanted it or not, the law is that they would do it anyway. This isn't about respecting a dying woman's wishes, it is about the life of a foetus at all costs.

She is dead but is not being allowed to pass.

How do you know whether she has been allowed to pass or not?

And the danger is, as shown by the Irish case that I mentioned above, is that the interference with bodily autonomy is used to ascribe more rights to the fetous than the woman, and medical treatment that is not optimal for the woman is used which harms her, in favour of protecting the foetus.

Its a very harmful and offensive way to treat women's bodies.

capsium excuse my lack of Catholic terminology. Substitute the phrase "not being allowed to die" instead.

"There is a very grey area around consent in pregnancy for medical procedures. It has been used to prevent women having an abortion in all circumstances bar the imminent death of a mother. It is being used here as far as I can see to ignore the will of the next of kin of a dead woman who presumably died without making her wishes on anything of this nature clear.

It is an absolute abomination that this failed legislation is still enshrined in the constitution."

Completely, completely agree. The 8th is a horrendous piece of law, nobody under the age of 50 in Ireland actually voted for it at this stage, and it has had, as even our minister for health said recently, a "chilling effect" on the ability of doctors to make medical decisions when dealing with pregnant women.

If this situation was what the family wanted and what medical staff advised purely on medical grounds (eg likelihood of safe delivery, etc.) then maybe it would be something to applaud. But if the family and medical staff's hands are tied because they legally can't do anything that would endanger the foetus, that's an obscenity.

"But what you seem to be forgetting is that it actually makes no difference in this case whether this woman would have wanted it or not, the law is that they would do it anyway. This isn't about respecting a dying woman's wishes, it is about the life of a foetus at all costs."

Yup. Anything else would be contrary to the spirit of the 8th.

I think this should be like organ donation. If you are happy for your own pregnancy to continue past your brain death then you should have a card saying so. If you are willing for you womb to be used post brain death then that information should be on record too.

If not then this should not be happening.

There is a very grey area around consent in pregnancy for medical procedures.

The ECHR is actually very clear. Its simply that no-one has taken a case to the Court of Human Rights to enforce it. It is the Irish Constitution that is at fault, or more accurately, the purposive way it is being interpreted.

Admittedly, you could introduce a new right of a brain dead person to die. Obviously the founding fathers of the ECHR did not envisage a State acting in such a manner.

Intensive care beds are a scarce and expensive resource. Someone with a potentially reversible condition will be denied that bed and may therefore die where they could be saved. It may be unpalatable but it is true.

This doesn't feel right to me either. It feels like she is being harvested. It unsettles me on a really primal level which is hard to express.

Laws which give the foetus equal rights to the mother absolutely terrify me. I hope they will be changed.

Yes, and as others have stated - even if the mother had expressed a wish that she be allowed to die in these circumstances, that wish would not have been respected according to current law.

Some might argue that the mother is clinically dead - she has no consciousness and that if her life support machine were switched off, she would stop breathing and die. But the same could be true of the fetus too - without the mother's placenta, it would die - why does the right of the fetus trump that of the mother in this case?

The difference is that the foetus will develop and grow and at some point will be able to live independently from the placenta. The mother will never be able to live without life support. The mother is brain dead the foetus is not. To me, these things mean the mother is dead, and the foetus is not.

As I said upthread, I am completely pro choice and believe the (living) mother's rights trump the foetus's in pretty much every situation. But here we are talking about the rights of a dead person, who has no awareness of what will happen to her body and never will have.

There is also a father in the picture, who wants the foetus to live.

Posted too soon. The father wants the foetus to live. If there was a living breathing mother who disagreed, her choice would be paramount. But there isn't.

But being dead doesn't mean you cab treat the body any way you choose. She was still a person. A person who had people who loved her. A mother.

A dead person would have no awareness you were dancing on their grave. but if you cared about that person you just wouldn't do it.

This isnt a dying gift to her baby.

This is allowing a person to waste away in a cruel undignified manor having god knows what done to her in the hope the baby survives long enough to be born, that a family member somewhere will be mentally in a fit state after the trauma of the next few months to look after the baby, or that the baby is healthy enough to go to an adopted family.

All I keep thinking when reading all the posts is if it was me and I had planned to keep the pregnancy then if I was dead they could do what they dam like to keep my baby alive! They could chop my limbs off, paint me blue I wouldn't care what I smelt like etc
I am pro choice - I have had an abortion.
But if anything like this had happened to me whilst pregnant with dc bring it on.
It is only the parents choice. If the child is damaged that is an issue but unless someone was 100% certain it wasn't I would want to be sustained.
And if they turned me off come back and haunt the evil f*er who killed my baby by turning me off

And that's your choice. but there shouldn't be laws that make it compulsory to treat every woman that way.