She’s Already Dead, Let Her Rest In Peace

[Updated with tweet at 5.45 pm]

Marlise Munoz’s baby is not doing well:

“According to the medical records we have been provided, the fetus is distinctly abnormal,” the attorneys [for the Munoz’s husband] said. “Even at this early stage, the lower extremities are deformed to the extent that the gender cannot be determined.” The attorneys said the fetus also has fluid building up inside the skull and possibly has a heart problem.

Emily Bazelon pleads for the state of Texas to respect her and her husband’s wishes:

Marlise remains hooked up because the hospital is misreading Texas law. NYU bioethicist Arthur Caplan laid this out last week, explaining why the hospital is misinterpreting the law (and also why that law must be unconstitutional). “The fact that the fetus apparently has significant abnormalities shows just how awful, misguided and cruel the Texas law is,” he emailed me Thursday morning.

“The uncertainties about the pregnancy—damaged fetus, almost no cases of trying to bring a 14-week-old to term in this circumstance, what he the dad is able to cope with, his dead wife’s wishes about wanting to have a child if she cannot parent, the massive costs involved and the impact of a tragic outcome on his other child—they point clearly in the direction of who should be making the decisions and who should have been making them all along. Not the hospital, not the legislature, not pro-life or pro-choicers—the husband.”

Toobin takes a look at how anti-abortion ideology feeds into this tragedy and that of brain-dead California teenager Jahi McMath:

McMath’s family has no apparent politics; they are simply grieving. But their cause has been taken up by the anti-abortion movement, especially those members of Terri Schiavo’s family who sought to keep feeding her years after her brain activity ceased. As in the Schiavo case, the effort is to expand, or at least confuse, the definition of “life.” Brain death, though defined slightly differently throughout the country, has been accepted as actual and legal death for decades. There is no controversy about McMath’s status; the doctors and the coroner agree. Dr. Heidi Flori, a critical-care physician at the hospital, said in a declaration, “Mechanical support and other measures taken to maintain an illusion of life where none exists cannot maintain that illusion indefinitely.”

Earlier Dish on Munoz here.