What Happens When Fetal Rights Trump Women’s Human Rights
I’m breaking my hiatus to point out that this is exactly what it looks like when states value the fetus’s potential for life over the consent, expressed wishes, and bodily autonomy of women. In her husband’s words: Though Mr. Muñoz did not speak at the hearing, he said in court papers that it has been painful to watch his wife deteriorate from the woman he knew to what he described as a corpse being kept alive against his wishes. “Over these past two months, nothing about my wife indicates she is alive,” he said in an affidavit. “When I bend down to kiss her forehead, her usual scent is gone, replaced instead with what I can only describe as the smell of death.
I’m breaking my hiatus to point out that this is exactly what it looks like when states value the fetus’s potential for life over the consent, expressed wishes, and bodily autonomy of women.
In her husband’s words:
Though Mr. Muñoz did not speak at the hearing, he said in court papers that it has been painful to watch his wife deteriorate from the woman he knew to what he described as a corpse being kept alive against his wishes.
“Over these past two months, nothing about my wife indicates she is alive,” he said in an affidavit.
“When I bend down to kiss her forehead, her usual scent is gone, replaced instead with what I can only describe as the smell of death. As a paramedic, I am very familiar with this smell, and I now recognize it when I kiss my wife. In addition, Marlise’s hands no longer naturally grip mine for an embrace. Her limbs have become so stiff and rigid due to her deteriorating condition that now, when I move her hands, her bones crack, and her legs are nothing more than dead weight.”
What Texas is doing to this woman, to her family, in order to forcibly use her body as an incubator for her fetus while denying her wishes about her own death – it’s stomach-turning, cruel, and utterly predictable.
Recent news in the case of Marlise Muñoz, being kept on life support against her and her family’s wishes because she happened to be pregnant: Judge Orders Hospital to Remove Pregnant Woman From Life Support
Filed under: Access, Rights, & Choice, Ethics, Government, Laws, Legislation, & Courts, Pregnancy 
SOURCE: Women’s Health News – Read entire story here.
