(no subject)

[ironymaiden]

i don't know what to think about this. the whole situation makes me feel vaguely ill. brain dead woman may be ready to give birth...

what would i want to happen to me? what would i do in the husband's place? how would i feel if i was their child? is this making the best of a bad situation, or a zombie incubator horror?

Comments

[lilac-wine.livejournal.com]

If it were me and I was pregnant and brain dead, I'd want R to make the choice. If he wanted to keep the baby I can't see, non brain dead now, that I'd care if I were brain dead one way or the other. This is colored by being a mother of course and the fact that I have a deep level of trust with my partner.

One thing that freaks me out the most though is that the anti abortion and religious right folks will use this. I hate that. This is a personal thing that should stay in the family but it hasn't.

There's a big slippery slope quotient here that concerns me though because in the big picture, it's the life of the woman that should take precedent unless the family says otherwise.

[pixxelpuss.livejournal.com]

I dunno. I say creepy zombie incubator horror, but that judgement is mostly motivated by the fact that she must have been only Very recently pregnant when the stroke occurred, and he's keeping her on there for a long time. The article doesn't mention that the woman's greatest ambition in life was to be a mother or whatever. The whole thing is pretty nasty.

[mimerki.livejournal.com]

On the one hand: It's their choice and they can do whatever they want.

On the other: Try and use my braindead body to incubate your spawn and I will curse you with every ounce of braindead will I've got left.

[kyooverse.livejournal.com]

.... ok, that really fucking freaks me out.

[jfrog78.livejournal.com]

its like the telixu from dune using their women to make clones and other gene experiments.

[textualdeviance.livejournal.com]

Actually, this case doesn't bother me at all, unlike the Schiavo case. There was no reason at all to keep Schiavo on life support. In this case, there definitely is, and I think it's a good reason. I can imagine that her husband, devastated at having lost her, would be doubly devastated if they had lost the child as well. This may be his one opportunity to keep something of her.

There are caveats, of course. There's no sense in *getting* the woman pregnant after she's brain dead. Icky. And if her life would've been saved by having an abortion, sure. But neither of those cases were present.

[julesong.livejournal.com]

Although we don't have all the information about the case... frankly, it doesn't really bother me.

If the baby can be safely brought to term in a pregnancy where the husband and wife planned to do so, then in general, no problem for me.

[matt-ruff.livejournal.com]

No question, I'd want to carry through the pregnancy, 'cause "Brain Dead Man Gives Birth to Twins" is such a cool headline.

[livingdeadpan.livejournal.com]

Not that L and I have discussed the matter, but I'd want to bring the baby to term, because it'd be hers.

[mrdorbin.livejournal.com]

Most standard living will forms include an exception for exactly this case; my guess would be because they're afraid of it being challenged on the basis of the right of the fetus to live. That said, I think if the wife is incapacitated, and didn't leave clear instructions behind, it's the husband's call; he should presumably know better than anyone else what she would have wanted (if it were me, I think I'd use the same principle as my organ-donor status; I'm not gonna need my body anymore, if someone can use it more power to them).

[pixxelpuss.livejournal.com]

Does that mean when you're dead I can use your body to smuggle drugs? Pretty please?

"I'm just sayin'... Gold!"