Clinically dead Irishwoman being used as human incubator

[FayKorgasm]

I am on my phone so cannot link but I was reading an article about a pregnant Irish woman who is clinically dead being kept alive against her next of kins wishes. The Irish constitution gives equal right to life of both woman and foetus.

Very sad situation made a million times worse .

garlic i mentioned your name because I agree with your post. It might have looked like I was calling you out there, sorry.

Skud I think it's because the anti-abortion lobby is so vocal, so well financed and so politically active that it scares the politicians. Although i believe there is a significant number of irish people in favour of changes to the law they simply aren't as prominent and are much more passive about it. That and the way the broadcasting law is structured means that equal weight has to be given to both sides so again the anti-abortion side gains prominence there.

It reminds me of the horror of the magdaline sisters and the horrific things that happened there

Without her or her NOK's consent her organs couldn't be used to save multiple lives, yet with no-one's consent they're being used to save (optimistically) one life. It's awful.

As for whether she'd have chosen this, I can certainly imagine wanting my unborn baby to survive my death, but the chances of it being born unscathed seem so low, and that isn't something I would want to put my child through.

It reminds me of the horror of the magdaline sisters and the horrific things that happened there

In what way?

When women were held against their will for things like having babies out of wedlock, suffering domestic abuse, being mouthy, being pretty etc.

Having their children experimented on with vaccines. Seeing what happens.

This keeps coming up on this thread, the idea that this is an experiment/the implication that the medical team have something to gain from it. I agree the treatment is probably experimental, as there is little precedent, but it's not being done at a whim or out of curiosity. It's happening because of massive legal uncertainty and because the medical team feel they have no choice from a legal standpoint,

I see there's a massive temptation to suppose that the medical staff are all doctrinaire Catholics, in reality there's no reason to imagine this.

This situation has definitely not arisen because of the woman's marital status or appearance. I'm a bit flummoxed by the will to see a massive catholic conspiracy.

Apocalypse the Irish constitution was written with a catholic ethos probably because of years of oppression so Catholicism is a key part of why. The doctors could be any religion but they must stick to the constitution. Theres even a part of it that means women shouldn't have to work because it would neglect their duties ( ) in the home. Theres some very wonderful parts of it but some clear misogyny 101 lessons.

Catholicism likely isn't driving the decisions being taken from a medical standpoint at the moment but is historically in large part responsible for driving the political/legal situation that has led to this.

The family has spoken out www.independent.ie/irish-news/i-just-want-to-lay-my-poor-little-girl-to-rest-30851665.html

I don't see a catholic conspiracy or think the religion of the medical staff is relevant at all. The constitution and political game playing are both however grounded in a catholic ethos.

It seems very clear to me that this case, like the laundries, like the care home horrors are all inextricably bound up with Catholicism. The consequence is that the constitution like the religion prioritises men above women and children.

I wonder how much flexibility the High/Supreme Court in Ireland has, in terms of interpreting the Constitution/Amendments. Some people in the UK think we'd be better protected if we had a written Constitution, but law here has always been via Acts of Parliament plus Case Law - and that means that judges here do have some flexibility in individual cases. It is much more difficult to challenge a Constitutional Amendment - it's almost as though they're carved in stone, and hence why they are so difficult to challenge.

Thanks for the link, School. I wonder how significant it is that the family is apparently being represented in court by a former Attorney General. That does make me think that maybe the people who have become directly involved with these kinds of difficult situations have had their eyes opened to the consequences of such diktats; as opposed to those who think in simple terms of "thou must" and "thou must not".

If the fetus survives birth and is born severely disabled I wonder which of the pro-life lawyers/doctors will step forward to volunteer to love and care for the child? Or will he/she be slung into the care system and forgotten about? Imagine if this pro-life mentality actually extended further than seconds after a birth, the world might be a nicer place.

I really wouldn't want my fetus to be the subject of a medical experiment if this was me. And that's what this is, I agree with BertieBotts.

The medical profession is doing an enormous amount of harm here, it actually sounds incredibly cruel to me to germinate a baby in a cadaver without the normal sounds and feel of its mother. I think the idea that "oh well it's a chance of life" is really a sign that the whole process of pregnancy is really not properly understood or respected in this patriarchal culture. We have complete contempt for what women do when they mother, starting in pregnancy. It's part of undermining our status as human beings, to define us just as convenient carriers, rather than active agents in producing a child. It's part of male supremacist ideology pretending that it doesn't really matter where a baby is incubated, it's just a coincidence that we need real live human women at the moment to do it, we can change that by inventing artificial wombs or using dead people on life support, or other animals who have been bred especially for it.

What we do when we carry our babies in our wombs, is only just beginning to be understood (because women were excluded from medical and science research and men who carried it out assumed we were just vessels) but does anyone actually believe that a healthy, well-adjusted human can be the result of germinating anywhere other than a live woman's womb? It's so ironic that all those loons who go on and on about the sacredness of pregnancy etc., have actually no respect for it at all when it comes down to it. The one defining thing a baby needs to grow healthily in the womb, is a mother who is alive. Without that, you haven't got a growing baby, you've got a medical experiment. It's grotesque.

Excellent post Basil. Thank you.

Totally agree with AskBasil

I remember a quote I read on the FWR boards once; pro-lifers are really pro-birth. What happens to the child after birth they don't care about.

I hope this family gets their wish to allow their daughter to die with dignity.

"The medical profession is doing an enormous amount of harm here"

Basil, I agree with most of your post but it is the law that is doing the harm; I imagine many of the doctors involved do not see this as a good idea.

Then they need to up and lobby against the law Yonic and use the power they have as a profession, to put pressure on the government to change it. What are they as a profession, saying about this law?

Afaik most of the medical profession want clarity if not abolishment of the 8th but the various government do not want to address it for vote reasons.

Again, I wish posters would stop claiming the medical staff are doing this as an experiment or implying there is some patriarchal or misogynistic motivation on the part of the doctors currently treating the woman in this case. Yes, those cultural and historical factors are in large part how we have ended up here, but it isn't fair to the medical team to present it as driving their decisions in this particular case, however eloquently the view is presented. The doctors treating her initially advocated a different course of action

Neurosurgeons who treated the pregnant woman at the centre of current High Court proceedings recommended her life support be switched off after determining that she was clinically dead.
However, lawyers for the Health Service Executive became involved after another member of the medical team treating the woman expressed concern about possible legal issues arising in the case.
www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/woman-on-life-support-medics-feared-legal-position-1.2045891

It's an experiment in the sense that it's the first time it's ever happened and no-one knows what the effect on a fetus will be, of being gestated in a dead body.

Not in the sense that it's a thought out, peer-reviewed experiment with a control group.

Yes the treatment is experimental, although it's not the first time such a situation has arisen, but it certainly is very rare (and the other cases may have involved foetuses closer to or at the viable stage?).

What I was trying to argue was that there isn't, as far as is evident, any desire on the part of the medical team to carry out this course of action. No willingness or desire to be conducting this 'experiment' as seemed to be implied.

There is no reasonable prospect of the foetus surviving, according to evidence given today

www.thejournal.ie/woman-court-unborn-1849766-Dec2014/

I hope now this will be resolved quickly and the treatment finished so that the woman and her child allowed to die peacefully. I also hope that the legal issues are clarified once and for all so this doesn't happen again.

That's a good article. I'm glad it confirms her partner feels the same.