In the theology of the Catholic Church, Limbo is a speculative idea about the afterlife condition of those who die in Original Sin without being assigned to the Hell of the Damned. For the family of Marlise Muñoz, their Hellish experience in limbo may finally be coming to a long-overdue end that took a Texas district court judge to make a ruling that should have been made over two months ago. Marlise Muñoz collapsed and died at home a week after Thanksgiving, but after being rushed to a hospital doctors used drugs, electric shocks, and machines to restart her heart, they could not undo the damage to her brain; Marlise Muñoz was legally dead. However, because Muñoz was pregnant, an absurd religious law forced the hospital to use Muñoz’s dead body as an incubator. Hospital officials refused to honor Marlise’s advance medical directive and her family’s wishes that she not be kept hooked up to the machines that have kept her body functioning for two months.
On Friday, a district court judge granted Marlise’s family’s request that she be taken off the machines so they could give her the rest she so rightly deserved over two months ago. The District Judge, R.H. Wallace, gave the hospital until 5 p.m. central time Monday to execute his order according to the Associated Press, but it is important to remember this is Texas and the religious right is not likely to allow a judge to overrule their demand that Muñoz’s dead body be used as an incubator for the distinctly abnormal fetus. It is unlikely that the fetus is in much better shape than Marlise’s body after being deprived of oxygen for over an hour, suffered electric shocks, and the same chemicals that restarted the dead woman’s heart. Marlise’s body has been kept functioning due to machines keeping her heart beating, but there is absolutely no brain activity. Muñoz was 14 weeks pregnant when she suffered a pulmonary embolism, went without oxygen for over an hour, and was declared legally dead when she was admitted to the hospital a week after Thanksgiving.
Marlise’s husband and parents had to file a lawsuit against John Peter Smith Hospital to put an end to their nightmare. It turns out the hospital misread, whether deliberately or out of ignorance, the obscure law that required them to keep Muñoz alive only because there was a fetus in her womb. At 14 weeks, the fetus was not viable, and attorneys for the family secured test results that provided a better look at the status of the fetus, and it is not good. According to test results, the fetus has severe deformities in its lower extremities, so severe in fact it is impossible to determine its gender, and it suffers from hydrocephalus, a condition that involves excess fluid in brain cavities that can lead to either mental disability or death. The fetus may also have heart deformities, but attorneys for the Muñoz family cannot comment on the extent of the heart problems “due to the immobile nature of Mrs. Muñoz’s deceased body.”
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It is the condition of the dead body that may have led to the judge’s ruling because the hospital cited the absurd and obscure religious law that forbids the state from removing “life sustaining treatment” from a woman carrying a fetus. Muñoz’s family argued all along that the law never applied because Marlise was already dead, and most legal experts who weighed in prior to the judge’s ruling sided with Muñoz, and argued the Texas hospital had misread the state law that may itself be unconstitutional. According to legal experts, “Hospitals cannot provide ‘life-sustaining treatment’ to a person who is dead, and that’s what brain dead means: death. This is not the same as being in a vegetative state, where you can breathe without a respirator. In all 50 states, brain dead means you are legally dead.” Marlise Muñoz has been legally dead since a week after Thanksgiving and hospital officials kept a badly damaged fetus incubating inside her dead body to satisfy a religious law demanding that regardless the damage to the fetus, the deceased woman’s advance medical directive, or her family’s wishes, a woman who dies while pregnant must be kept functioning with no regard for the health of the fetus.
The Muñoz family maintained from the beginning of their nightmarish ordeal that they were grieving for Marlise and her fetus and simply wanted to give them a proper burial. Marlise’s father, Ernest Machado said, “This isn’t about pro-life or pro-choice. We want to say goodbye. We want to let them rest.” The two attorneys representing the Muñoz and Machado family said of the condition of the fetus and debilitating grief the family is suffering, “Quite sadly, this information is not surprising due to the fact that the fetus, after being deprived of oxygen for an indeterminate length of time, is gestating within a dead and deteriorating body, as a horrified family looks on in absolute anguish, distress and sadness.”
It is sadness and anguish the family should never have suffered because as a paramedic who understood end-of-life issues better than most, Marlise made it clear that she would have never wanted to be kept alive in her current condition. Muñoz’s husband Erick, a paramedic, had told the court about Marlise’s requests, but hospital officials claimed that they were bound by a state law that banned them from withdrawing treatment from a patient who is pregnant; even if the patient was dead. At the earliest stages Mr. Muñoz said the fetus, at 4 ounces, was not viable and suffered the exact same conditions as Marlise’s dead body.
It is unclear why the judge gave the hospital until Monday at 5 p.m. to end the Muñoz family’s grief and suffering, but it is Texas and the religious right’s power extends to all facets of government. Throughout Erick Muñoz’s ordeal, pro-life advocates made vile and insensitive comments that his only regard was “getting rid of his wife and child,” but his wife was already legally dead, and the fetus (not a child) was certainly deformed, but there is no accounting for the lengths the religious right will go to prolong a grieving husband’s suffering. As of today, it will be prolonged until at least Monday at 5 p.m. when Marlise’s husband and family may finally get to say goodbye and lay their loved-one and fetus to rest and bring the religious right-induced nightmare to a long-overdue end.
Update: On Sunday, John Peter Smith Hospital in Fort Worth removed Marlise Muñoz from life support after acceding to the judge’s ruling. Marlise Muñoz’s body will soon be buried by her husband and parents putting an end to their nightmare. The abnormally deformed fetus will not be born.
Audio engineer and instructor for SAE. Writes op/ed commentary supporting Secular Humanist causes, and exposing suppression of women, the poor, and minorities. An advocate for freedom of religion and particularly, freedom of NO religion.
Born in the South, raised in the Mid-West and California for a well-rounded view of America; it doesn’t look good.
Former minister, lifelong musician, Mahayana Zen-Buddhist.
