Wednesday, January 8, 2014

Who owns your body?

If you are female, maybe you don't own yourself. Maybe the government owns your body and gets to decide what happens to it. This brain dead woman is being kept on life support against the wishes of her husband and her family because there was an embryo growing inside the woman's body when she died. According to the article there are 31 states where a woman's body becomes state property if she is pregnant at the time of her death. Maybe Marlise Munoz would have chosen to have her brain-dead body be hooked up on machines for months in order to incubate an embryo. Or maybe not. I would not want a child of  mine to come into this life via a dead mother. This pregnancy is not a joyful event filled with loving anticipation. It is a constant ongoing tragedy, and reminder of loss.  In this case the woman's closest kin does not want her to exist as a living incubator. Why are their wishes less important than the government's decision?

I wonder who is paying the bills for this medical torture? It must be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Will they bill the family who doesn't want it to happen? Will taxpayers pay the bills? Who has responsibility for the fetus if it does survive til birth?

This is an example of the sickness in our society. Women are not living incubators. They are living breathing human beings with volition, and consciousness and dreams, goals, and desires. When a woman dies, she deserves the dignity of a peaceful death. Her family deserves closure.
Shame on Texas and the bureaucrats who robbing her of the right to die in peace with dignity.

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