Does the mother or the baby take priority?

It's Texan law that life support cannot be switched off when a woman is pregnant. I suppose the state must pay. However, it has now been reported by the family's attorney that the foetus's lower body is deformed , it has hydrocephalus and lack of oxygen has probably caused additional problems that cannot currently be diagnosed because of the mother's immobility.

Her father says that touching his daughter is like touching a mannequin and that's not how he wants to remember her.

This really doesn't seem right.

For a country which prides itself on personal freedom, the US at least at State level, is curiously Old Testament in some areas.

I was going to quote 'Thou shalt not kill; but needst not strive
Officiously to keep alive:' but then I saw the full text of the poem it came from. It puts rather a different meaning to it.
www.bartleby.com/73/1805.html

I'm not indicating a blind pro abortion view by criticising the pro life organisations. The fact they feel it's ok to shoot doctors and terrify women going into clinics to make choices none of us would choose to have to make, makes it impossible for me to do anything other than be angry with them.

Nellie, great post. You are so right about the trauma's this poor woman's body will have gone through, and may continue to go through and the potential impact on the baby of going short of oxygen. I hadn't thought of the medical costs, that a good point. It makes we wonder if some pro life organisation is funding it. Or is that too cynical.

I have serious concerns about this. The pregnancy was still at the stage of not being viable! The woman appears to have had a serious thrombosis and herself suffered brain damage, presumably due to lack of oxygen. I find it hard to see how this could not have affected her foetus.

Would the trauma to the mother have also caused all sorts of stress hormone chemicals to flood into her and the foetus. These could cross the placenta and add to any damage. Not to mention the drugs etc that might be needed to keep the mother alive. How many more physical crises might this woman have on her life support in the next 5 months?

What I find interesting is who is paying the medical bill? How come a medical insurance company has agreed to take on such an incredibly expensive task, not to mention the possibility of funding care for a severely disabled child.

IMO It should not have gone ahead with such an early pregnancy. The same situation in the last few weeks of pregnancy would be very different. I feel they have gone way too far, some sense of dignity is needed.

Back in 1972. when I was pregnant with my DS2 there was a local tragedy involving a pregnant woman. She was full term and had gone into labour.Her husband was driving her to hospital and they were involved in a crash.Her husband was uninjured but the lady was dead on arrival at hospital from serious head injuries.She had an immediate section and her baby was born alive but seriously disabled from the lack of oxygen caused by her mother's death.She was never allowed to leave hospital as needed constant care, tube fed and blind and deaf.She died just before her first birthday.
It goes without saying that the father was in a terrible state over it all.He had two older children as well.There were even reports that he had been driving too fast but was exonerated due to the circumstances.
I still think of this even after all these years.

Riverwalk I used DNR as meaning Do Not Maintain Life Artificially. i am not sure what the medical term is. It was something it appears the couple had talked about and when it became clear she was not able to live without artificial support then they asked for life support to be switched off.

What a horrid predicament--makes one realize how lucky we are.

The use of the phrase 'DNR' is being mis-used in this case.

DNR (do not resuscitate) applies to someone with say a terminal illness who doesn't want CPR in the event of their collapse. That is very different from intervening when a young woman suddenly becomes unconsciousness - the doctors must attempt to resuscitate when she's brought into A&E. She was a young fit woman - she wouldn't have had a DNR directive, why would she?

Then when it became obvious that she wouldn't recover, that's when the legal wrangling starts, meanwhile the doctors have to continue to treat their patient.

A woman, 14 weeks pregnant becomes critically ill.
Her husband knows her wishes about DNR and asks hospital to turn of life support when, 3 weeks later, it is clear she cannot 'live' unaided by life support.

The state intervenes and keeps her breathing so a fetus can develop into a viable independent being. Against the will of all those who love her and would have loved her child.

What a dilemma. My instinct is to say that she and her child should have been allowed to die. If the unborn child had been at an independently viable stage I would probably think differently.

I think the point here is that the abortion law in Texas is cruel and inhumane. The poor father already has a very young child to care for and why should the state of Texas dictate that the foetus cannot be allowed to die with its mother - only perhaps to be severely disabled when it is born.
iam64 that is appalling delivering a baby from a mother that had been dead for more that long. Surely there cannot have been any foetal heartbeat by that stage?
I think sometimes medical staff should make the call not to strive too hard. When my GD was admitted for neonatal jaundice there was a child in the same ward who had been born with very little digestive system and the NHS had been working at keeping it alive for over a year. Child and parents doomed to misery. Children with such gross deformities are never going to achieve anything like a quality of life. It is one thing sticking up for the rights of disabled people and another thing failing to admit defeat in the face of accidents and disasters so early in life.

I'm still with the doctors on this.

What are they to do if all active treatment is withdrawn and the woman continues to breathe, but inadequately and intermittently, as often happens?

Taking her off the ventilator at this stage could result in even more damage to the foetus.

TV medical dramas are to blame for leaving the public with the impression that when machines are switched-off the patient peacefully passes away. It's not like that, things can get messy.

One of my close friends collapsed, and died when on the phone to her GP. She was 8 months pregnant. The GP didn't send an ambulance, but drove over 45 mins later. By then my friend had been dead for at least 40 minutes. Her baby was delivered by section. The baby was profoundly disabled, having been deprived of oxygen for so long. The paediatrician apologised, he told the father "we do some dreadful things to parents Mr x". The baby lived in hospital for 9 months. The father was repeatedly asked to take the decision to stop life support. He was unable to do this, for obvious reasons. The little baby was tube fed, and had repeated infections. The little one eventually died when the father was able to suggest that more antibiotics weren't in the child's interests.
I apologise for hijacking this thread. I know the OP isn't about the kind of situation my friends were in. But, the little baby suffered throughout life. The father suffered alongside his child.

It would be a different thing if the baby was in the third trimester.

Yes. When I read the original post it didn't register with me how early on in the pregnancy this poor woman was. This report here says that she was only 14 weeks gone when she collapsed.

Considering all this, I think the baby should have been allowed to die with the mother. It does sound as though this is all down to outdated, bigoted laws.

The state is Texas, Iam64.

I haven't googled, but if Joelsnans summary of the situation is correct, that makes me feel uneasy. At 17 weeks, it must be right to say the foetus would not be viable.
If family members were unhappy with the medical/legal decision, that must be heart rending for them. I hope that the family are able to care for this baby when s/he is born. If the child is subsequently adopted, I feel helping the child understand his or her origins will be even more difficult. I do understand the need to maintain life, and I'm not saying the decision was wrong, but that it's one of those decisions that I suppose, must be made by impartial medical/legal people. I don't know what state this is happening in. But, in my view, some the the US support for the right to life goes beyond reason. (Shooting abortionists for example, whose right to life is put first there)

This case brings the book 'Brave New World' (Aldous Huxley) to mind. Apparently the foetus was at 17 weeks gestation when the lady 'died'. This foetus would not be viable at this stage. The family were against the intervention. Whose interests are being served by this intervention? Not the lady's, not the family's, probably not the foetus when even if it born un damaged, the possible mental trauma of realising that it had been incubated in its dead mother for months must be mind blowing.
The medics are performing experiments here...sad and worrying.

An interesting article.

www.salon.com/2014/01/08/when_anti_abortion_law_hurts_a_grieving_family_texas_denies_brain_dead_pregnant_womans_rights/here

From my personal perspective I feel the DNR should be upheld.

Agree with Jing

I guess there might be an issue with the drugs needed to keep a pregnant woman alive for so long?

Is it any different from when they kept my sister on life support for several days so that they could remove her liver and kidneys for transplantation?

Many people make bold statements regarding DNR and no life-support when they are in good health and not expecting to die soon.

I'm sure this young mother would want her child to live.

On this occasion I'd say the authorities are right.

Let's hope that in a few months there'll be happy pictures of the baby with its remaining family.

I'd say if the foetus viable then keeping the mother's body going for a few more weeks is reasonable, to give the baby a better chance.
In most countries of course there would be no choice as the cost of keeping the mother's body going would be unaffordable. Os the state of Texas footing the bill I wonder?