Target: Texas Governor Rick Perry
Goal: Allow grieving family to let wife and mother die peacefully instead of serving as an incubator for her fetus
A Texas wife and mother is being sustained on life support, against her family’s wishes, to serve as an incubator for her weeks-old fetus. Marlise’s family is ready to let her go, but the hospital is not legally allowed to disconnect her from life support. This is because of a little-known statute under state law that strips pregnant women of varying human rights.
Marlise does not have the right to die with dignity. Since then, she has been propped up on artificial respiration in order to serve as an incubator for the fetus in her stomach. The fetus was 14 weeks old when she collapsed and likely suffered the same lack of oxygen, electric shocks, and chemicals that Marlise suffered during the emergency.
Marlise Munoz suffered a pulmonary embolism, or a blood clot in her lungs, that cut off her oxygen. Erick Munoz, the woman’s husband, performed a cardiopulmonary resuscitation, but by the time she was rushed to the hospital she was not breathing and had no pulse.
Hospital workers delivered electric shocks and drugs that started her heart again, but her brain is dead. She had stopped breathing for too long to ever recover. As active paramedics, both Marlise and her husband Erick had had end-of-life conversations before the tragedy occurred, so Erick knew his wife never wanted to be kept artificially alive with no hope of recovery. Marlise’s father agrees, saying, “All we want is for her to rest, to let her go to sleep.”
Marlise’s mother has said that the family is “in hell”. All they want is for their child, their wife, their mother, to pass peacefully away, as she specifically requested. It is an outrage to deny pregnant women the same human rights that others enjoy, and it is downright cruel to force this family to suffer for months while their beloved family member is used by the state to produce an unwanted child.
Please sign this petition to demand that Marlise Munoz be taken off of life support as she would have wanted and to allow her family the right to say good-bye.
Dear Governor Rick Perry,
Marlise Munoz is a young woman in Fort Worth who has tragically died of a pulmonary embolism. However, in a bizarre dystopian twist, your state laws are keeping her body propped up on life support in order to act as an incubator for her fetus, against her own wishes and the wishes of her family.
We demand that this woman’s body be taken off of life support immediately and her family allowed to properly grieve the loss of their wife, mother, and daughter. It is absurd to allow this charade to continue. A woman’s body is not a medical tool, and it is an outrage to deny this woman the right to die with dignity because she happened to be pregnant.
[Your Name Here]
Photo Credit: Antonu via Wikimedia Commons