Marlise Munoz, in a state of brain death, was kept artificially alive. As Texas law requires since she is pregnant. Sunday, a judge ordered the cessation of all therapy.
“Marlise Munoz now rests in peace, and her family is seeking to end what has been a long and unbearable ordeal,” the young woman’s lawyers, Heather L. King and Jessica H. Janicek, said in a statement on Sunday. Press. In this story, a hospital in Texas (United States), on January 26, stopped artificially keeping this young pregnant woman alive, brain dead, following a pulmonary embolism. A court decision contrary to Texas law which is explained here by the poor condition of the fetus.
A “distinctly abnormal” fetus
In fact, last Wednesday, the family’s lawyers had let it be known that the fetus she had been carrying for 22 weeks was “distinctly abnormal”, which the family had feared since the accident. “Even at this early stage, the extremities of the lower body are deformed to such an extent that one cannot determine the sex”, had specified the lawyers of the family of the young woman. According to the doctors, the fetus present in the body of Marlise Munoz had been deprived of oxygen for an undetermined period, during this tragic accident
Yet since her pulmonary embolism, Marlise Munoz was hospitalized at John Peter Smith (JPS) Hospital in Fort Worth, where she was pronounced brain dead. However, she had been artificially kept alive because she was pregnant, as required by Texas law. The very conservative state of the south of the United States is indeed one of the 12 American states that have adopted strict regulations requiring the continuation of life support, regardless of the progress of a pregnancy.
Stopping artificial life support
However, a judge in Tarrant County (Texas) ordered last Friday that Marlise Munoz, 33, legally dead, no longer be kept alive artificially, as her husband Erick Munoz demanded in court.
In respect of this judgment, the young woman was disconnected yesterday and left. It is therefore the end of this judicial soap opera which has been making the headlines for weeks in the United States, following numerous disagreements between the family, the hospital and the courts who were arguing over the procedure to be followed.
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