by adamah 285 Replies latest social current
Oxygen deprivation to the fetus is just as damaging to it as it is to the mother.
Well, if that's true, then it may well be that the baby's life would not be worth living. I did allow for that as an exception to the rule in an earlier post.
The baby's heart is beating though, so we already know that the baby is not as affected as the mother was.
That's the issue. A beating heart tells us nothing about cognitive abilities. All it shows is that the reptilian brain is still functioning.
But you are correct; the fetus is not "as" affected.
However, considering it takes only ~8 minutes of oxygen deprivation to render a person brain dead, seconds clearly matter. So the baby is what, 7 minutes, 6.5 minutes without oxygen? Severaly disabled as opposed to a functioning brain stem?
Why should the father AND his living son have to bear the burden of our scientific experiment?
Sure, the child's rights don't necessarily outweigh the parents'
Yet that is exactly what you are arguing.
The mother didn't want to harm her living family by forcing them to bear the emotional, physical, and financial burden of her being kept on life support. That is her right. You are saying the unborn child's right is superior to her right, so it should be able to OVERRIDE the mother's choice and use her body.
As next of kin, the father has the right to determine whether he wants to bear the emotional, physical, and financial burden associated with keeping his dead wife on life support, and whether he wants to place his living son's future at risk emotionally, physically, and financially by accepting the responsibility for a possibly (likely) disabled child. You are arguing the the unborn child's rights are superior to the father to the point it OVERRIDES his right to make that decision.
However, considering it takes only ~8 minutes of oxygen deprivation to render a person brain dead, seconds clearly matter. So the baby is what, 7 minutes, 6.5 minutes without oxygen? Severaly disabled as opposed to a functioning brain stem?
Scroll up and look at my ponderings on the mammalian dive reflex. Also, look at what Samswife posted about babies who were born later, after their mothers died, with a beginning similar gestational age, 15 weeks.
This is hardly a science experiment. Babies have survived and come out healthy from similar situations.
Scroll up and look at my ponderings on the mammalian dive reflex. Also, look at what Samswife posted about babies who were born with similar gestational age, 15 weeks, to braindead mothers.
I saw it and already addressed it.
The research in the piece Sammy posted does not address whether those fetuses experience oxygen deprivation. All it speaks to is the ability of the body of a brain dead woman kept on life support to gestate a fetus, which per the study was pretty lousy.
JT, neither the doctors, nor you or I know if the Texas festus suffered oxygen deprivation.
Yet, the state of Texas is forcing the expenditure of THOUSANDS of dollars when that money could be spent to save the lives of people already living! That is a moral travesty.
A wise mother once said to me, people are more important than things. Money is only a thing when it comes down to the brass tacks.
Why not wait the 3 weeks and have all the testing done? Wouldn't that be the middle ground of compromise?
There are some things that don't really add up in as far as the father claims that both he and his wife being paramedics, both did not want DNR or life support for themselves as they had seen enough in their line of duty. Yet - as adamant as he sounds about taking his wife off that support for those very reasons - neither he nor his wife were such strong advocates nor all that sure about it in that neither of them bothered to put it in writing. Something both of them knew was in their best interests if they felt that strongly. Just how strong was his wife's desire and would it have been the same with pregnancy?
Further - they worked in Texas and as part of the health services, would no doubt been fully aware of Texas law in these sort of cases and didn't have an issue with it - as long as it didn't affect them. Or was the wife accepting of the fact that should anything happen to her, that her unborn child would be the priority and all attempts made to secure the life of her child. Did she believe that no matter what her husband would have done all he could to make certian that their child was the priority in times of life and death? Who knows?
The father has said they don't know how long the fetus was without nutrients or oxygen - everything is a guess. A could have. A maybe.
Not in the U.S. We reject the British duty to render aid, except for those in certain positions (police, fire, doctors).
I'll admit that I just Wikipedia'd this, because I really thought we had this law in the U.S., and WP tells me that it does exist in certain jurisdictions. I thought it was a federal law, but there you go, at least there's something in some parts of the U.S.
Ironically, those who have no problem forcing a woman to have a child they do not want are some of the staunches advocates that the big, bad state can't compel them to help anyone.
Yes, that's hypocritical. What they secretly want is a powerful federal government that stands for what they believe in (with no taxes, ideally), but since they see they're not going to get that, they settle for saying, "States should have more autonomy" so they will have a better chance of being able to enforce their beliefs over the area they live in. Of course, 'everybody wants to rule the world'; that one political party is not solely guilty of this.
Sure, the child's rights don't necessarily outweigh the parents'
Yet that is exactly what you are arguing. [...] You are saying the unborn child's right is superior to her right, so it should be able to OVERRIDE the mother's choice and use her body.
Yes, I am saying that the life-or-death degree of the situation trumps the consideration of the mother to not place a burden on the family in order to keep her on life support. If the blind lady's scales have "fiscal+emotional burden" on one side, and "life or death" on the other, I'm arguing that "life or death" has to weigh more. It's not that all rights of a child outweigh their parents', but that degree should factor into the equation.
JT, neither the doctors, nor you or I know if the Texas festus suffered oxygen deprivation.
Well that's why this is a science experiment.
I would argue it is more correct to say that no one knows how MUCH oxygen deprivation was suffered, since the baby has no access to oxygen except from the mother. And the mother was deprived for ~ 8 minutes.
Well that's why this is a science experiment.
Respectfully, this sounds like an appeal to the emotions of people who might confuse this case with pro-life or pro-choice: is this fetus a human life or not? I doubt the mother, if she were alive and wondering about the health of this fetus, would number one call it a fetus and number two, consider it a science experiment, even if it had questionable health.
