Womb With A View, by Martha Thomases – Brilliant Disguise | @MDWorld

January 11, 2014 Martha Thomases 1 Comment

According to this story in the newspaper of record, the state of Texas has found a way to create the kind of woman that the American Taliban loves.

A young woman, Marlise Munoz, was found unconscious in her home.  When her family rushed her to the hospital, she was found to be brain dead.  She had left her husband and parents instructions that she did not wish to be on life support.

So far, a tragic but unremarkable story.  She and her husband have a child, and it is not uncommon for people, when they become parents, to make wills and other end-of-life documents.  My parents did it.  I did it.  My husband did it.  Nothing makes the death of a loved one easy, but there is some comfort in knowing that we are doing what our beloved wanted us to do.

That comfort is being denied to the Munoz family.  Because Ms. Munoz was pregnant, she is being kept “alive” by machines.  Her fetus is more important than she is.  To quote her parents (and the news story), “It’s not a matter of pro-choice and pro-life,” said Mrs. Munoz’s mother, Lynne Machado, 60. “It’s about a matter of our daughter’s wishes not being honored by the state of Texas.”

The hospital insists it has no choice but to follow the law of the State of Texas as they understand it (if you read the full story, you’ll see that legal experts disagree).  They must treat Ms.Munoz as a patient, and, in Texas, the wishes of the patient, if she’s a woman and pregnant, are less important than those of a fetus, no matter how far along the pregnancy might be.  Certainly, it is now farther along than it was when she was first brought in.

It should also be noted that there is no clarity about the condition of the fetus.  Because Ms. Munoz was unconscious for a long period of time, it’s possible that the fetus was developmentally damaged.  The entire process is profoundly cruel to her parents, her husband, and her surviving child.

As the news story says, “If she is dead, I don’t see how she can be a patient, and I don’t see how we can be talking about treatment options for her,” said Thomas W. Mayo, an expert on health care law and bioethics at the Southern Methodist University law school in Dallas.

She can’t be a patient, and most of us in the reason-based community would say that she’s not a woman, either.  She’s a womb attached to a bunch of machines.

As I said, that’s how the religious fundamentalists, the American Taliban, like their women.  And Texas also sees to it that even women who aren’t brain-dead don’t get an equal opportunity to have their voices heard.  They have some of the most restrictive voting laws in the country, laws that disproportionately affect women.

Ms. Munoz is the poster child for these people.  She doesn’t have any opinions.  She doesn’t have any ambitions.  She is just an incubator for the seed of her husband — whether her husband wants it that way or not.

Speaking only for myself, but I prefer to live in a society where we allow people their differences.  In fact, we celebrate them.  And we respect adults to know what is right for each individual body living each individual life.  Hence, because I have the freedom of a very portable job, I don’t live in Texas.

But what do I know?  My womb doesn’t even work anymore, so I’m of no use to the American Taliban.