Texas Battle Over Marlise Munoz Continues

Marlise Munoz is brain dead but the hospital refuses to
remove life support despite the wishes of her family.

If the only way you could be kept alive were by machines, what would you choose to do? Many decide that they don’t want to live as a vegetable, asking loved ones to “pull the plug” should that situation ever arise. 

In normal circumstances, this is a tragic but straightforward situation. In Marlise Munoz’s case, things became a lot more complicated than she and her husband had foreseen. Marlise was 14-weeks pregnant when her husband discovered her unconscious on the floor and rushed her to the hospital. By the time she got there, doctors said she was, for all purposes, brain dead.

Marlise’s family unanimously agrees that she would have wanted to be taken off life support, but she has remained hooked up to machines for seven weeks now. The hospital has refused to remove life support because, according to Texas’s Advance Directives Act, “A person may not withdraw or withhold life-sustaining treatment under this subchapter from a pregnant patient."

But brain death is defined as “irreversible cessation of all functions of the entire brain, including the brain stem” and is considered legal death. Under that definition, Munoz’s husband, Erick, her parents, and many medical and legal advisors say that she should no longer be considered a patient and should be allowed to complete natural death. Marlise’s family is now suing the hospital for refusing to allow her natural death.

A recent MSNBC segment of News Nation with Tamron Hall brought in legal analyst Kendall Coffey to discuss the case. After discussing the ambiguity of the Advance Directives Act, which many believe has been completely misinterpreted in this case, Coffey questions the decision of the hospital not to respect the wishes of the Munoz family:

If Marlise “were healthy and alive, there’s no doubt she would have the constitutional right to terminate the pregnancy in these circumstances,” he says. “Given the fact that she lacks cognitive power, but there are individuals, loving individuals, who are apparently unanimous… why wouldn’t they have the same constitutional right expressing her will to say this pregnancy should be terminated?”

While the hospital and others are pushing for the pregnancy to continue, there are risks with that, too. The Munoz family believes that Marlise fell unconscious due to a pulmonary embolism, or a blockage of the main artery of the lung—though a full autopsy cannot be completed while she is still on life support. If that is the case, the baby would have suffered from the same lack of oxygen and could very well be brain dead as well.