Brain-dead pregnant woman being kept alive in Georgia until fetus is viable

[quote]Newkirk told WXIA that doctors told the family that the fetus has fluid on the brain and that they are concerned about his health.

[quote]“She’s pregnant with my grandson. But he may be blind, may not be able to walk, may not survive once he’s born,” Newkirk said. She has not said whether the family wants Smith removed from life support.

Feels like Alice in Wonderland.

She’s also being kept alive by the brain dead.

Once she delivers, does the husband have the right to decide if they have another baby?

Seems like a gratuitously cruel hellscape to me, r1.

If she’s brain dead does her body know not to attack the fetus?

A woman with literally no functions remaining except fetus incubation is the GOP's deepest wish. I'm sure Elon dreams of giant Incubation Chambers full of such women.

And yes, the answer cannot be to simply allow the baby to die.

By my quick reading and math, the woman was about 9 weeks pregnant when she "died". I disagree with R6. 9 weeks is not a "baby", you moron. Are you a MAGAT? Christian?

The egg should have died with the mom.

Perhaps. But you’re just as wrong to call a fetus an egg as I am to call fetus a baby.

You are literally the same asshole you’re complaining about.

You’re also why we lost this last fucking election.

From the article:

[quote] “She’s pregnant with my grandson. But he may be blind, may not be able to walk, may not survive once he’s born,” Newkirk said. She has not said whether the family wants Smith removed from life support.

Nowhere does a family member explicitly state that the hospital is acting counter to their wishes wrt keeping her on life support, even though the article allows that implication to be drawn. I suspect this is PR positioning related to a lawsuit. If I’m wrong, and the hospital is acting against the family’s wishes, then this is truly horrific.

[quote] Newkirk emphasized that they don’t know if they would’ve chosen to end her daughter’s pregnancy, but not being given the choice makes the experience more painful.

This article has a little more detail. It says they were not given a choice. Not impossible that the family is exploiting the situation (I probably would, sincerely not trying to frame them as grifters. I got a CT scan when I went to the ER with a migraine and I was not a pregnant woman. I’d be heartbroken and angry). But maybe the hospital realized this was going to be a problem, no matter what, so they decided to fall back on the letter of the law after the family verbally expressed their wish for her to remain on life support.

That seems less likely, though, and no reason not to give the family the benefit of the doubt. They shouldn’t have to publicly share a hypothetical decision. It’s just hard to believe that humans would do this. I want to think that common sense would prevail, but have to admit it looks like I’m wrong.

R6 is Correct, the answer is to let the non viable fetus, embryo or zygote to die; It’s not a baby.

Maybe the child can sue its family for damages once they reaches maturity.

[quote] You’re also why we lost this last fucking election.

Wrong, you moron.

R8 Oh, Hortense. Here you are again.

Wouldn't you be happier over at "Truth" Social, where everyone will think your posts are strokes of sheer genius and not the ramblings of a mentally ill cult member?

Republicans don't just have death panels. Now they have zombie panels.

[quote]You’re also why we lost this last fucking election.

Good Lord, these "anti-woke Democrats" are ridiculous. No, Harris/Walz did not lose any votes by supporting the right to take a brain-dead pregnant woman off life support.

Imagine if the fetus survives into full viability, & remains alive for 2-5 years or beyond?

Georgia does NOT offer extensive/comprehensive healthcare to individuals & families who don’t have private health insurance either via work or the marketplace. This current administration will make life much harder on individuals barely getting by. This unborn fetus’ family could easily go bankrupt while attempting to manage this hypothetical child’s medical care.

The state of Georgia will not give one single fuck once a disabled child is born. They literally encourage struggling men, women & children to show up to church & beg other parishioners for alms, which makes everyone at church feel good about themselves for donating 20-200 bucks, while the financially desperate individuals will be right back in the same dire straits within a few weeks.

I’m so sorry this family is experiencing this. It’s like a horror film, truly.

[quote]It would be bad enough if the state were just forcing the family to keep Smith “alive” on life support in order to be an incubator for the fetus, but they’re also requiring them to pay for it. While it’s not exactly easy to track down exact costs, an ICU bed in a Georgia non-profit hospital costs, on average, $2,402 a day on its own, without any additional treatment. According to a report from the Agency for Health Care Research and Quality, mechanical ventilation costs, on average, “$3,900 per day after the fourth day.” So that’s $6302 a day just for the basics. Then there’s everything else on top of that. And health insurance doesn’t cover life support when there’s no chance of survival or improvement.

Ahh, so they’re already in the process of going bankrupt, according to R17’s post.

This is one of the many reasons I’ll never set foot in that shithole state, ever again.

Time for this family to sue, & take it all the way up to the SCOTUS, if it gets that far. The hospital should also sue, because they MUST know that these people aren’t paying for any of this, because they, along with millions of Americans simply can’t.

The pussy is the last part to go.

At this point, I would advise any young woman to really consider whether or not they ever want children and if the answer is "no", go have your tubes tied. Ideally, we'd have an easily reversible procedure that would allow a woman to guarantee no pregnancy unless they have the procedure reversed. The risk, in America today, to leave yourself vulnerable to the whims of religious loons who can and will destroy your life, your family's lives, and anyone they can rope into that net is simply too great.

The religious loons running the show in America do not care about babies, protection of life, or any of that hoo-haw. It's about controlling women, period. Take back your agency and refuse to give them the opportunity, women!

[Quote] You’re also why we lost this last fucking election.

There’s no “we” here. Give it up Matt and go back to Breitbart for more talking points.

The Hortense troll is just another cosplay, just like teacake. Same cosplayer too.

[quote]Good Lord, these "anti-woke Democrats" are ridiculous.

No way in hell R8 is a Democrat, but he plays one on DL.

Republiqans kill living women who have dead fetuses inside them while turning dead women who have embryos inside them into medical devices.

ABORT ABORT ABORT!

CHUCK IT DOWN THE PAN!

R8 is an idiot. By far, and that includes Repukes, the voters of this country prefer that reproductive rights are protected. It’s the idiot minorities that don’t.

It's not a fucking moral quandary. It's misogyny in action.

A case just like this one was one of the occurrences that lead to Ireland legalizing abortion. What a terrible way for this woman’s life to end. Horrific treatment by the state.

this is a HORROR FILM!

how DISGUSTING!

the fetus has water on the brain too, will likely be born with defects like blindness and paralisis

Nasty work forcing a birth just so that you immediately impoverish the disabled kid. But it gets yahweh off or whatever, I guess.

Hence the quotations marks, R23.

[quote]Oh, Hortense. Here you are again.

Who the fuck is Hortense?

Is that supposed to lend an air of British sensibility to your stupidity?

Stop embarrassing yourself.

[quote]No way in hell [R8] is a Democrat, but he plays one on DL.

I used to call myself a Democrat, but I agree, with the Democratic party having been taken over by delusional leftists, I would now describe myself as right of center. Like most Americans.

And I am not embarrassed or ashamed to admit it. Your extreme idiocy has driven many people away from the Democratic party and you are, in fact, exactly why the Democrats lost the last election. It's the truth and you know it.

Now soak in it, loser.

[quote]At this point, I would advise any young woman to really consider whether or not they ever want children and if the answer is "no", go have your tubes tied. I

This is a good example of the extreme stupidity driving leftist politics these days.

And you are providing this advice from what point of view? Your point of view as a gay man?

Talk about misogyny. The number of young women who want your advice on this topic is most likely zero.

That’s rich, r34, calling Dems idiots, when the top idiot in the world is Dump.

R33 You know who you are, Hortense. You're the MAGA troll who keeps defecating all over these threads.

Your name is "Hortense" because it fits what you likely are - obese, slovenly, smelly, and unable to walk ten feet from your computer to the refrigerator without stopping to rest.

R34 actually expects us to believe that "most of Americans" reject the "delusional leftist" idea that a brain-dead woman should not be kept alive to bring her dubiously viable fetus to term. I suspect his idea of the political "center" comes from Fox or worse.

Really sad

Am I wrong to imagine this scenario isn't that super rare. Braindead women in a hospital with couple week old "foetuses" inside. Didn't some prick at this hospital have to make a point of "don't let that baby die" and wouldn't it just have been assumed and arranged by wise doctors to just quietly wait for the family to say pull the plug and it would have been done and dusted so people could move on with their grief and recovery. What is happening in this case seems like political theatre and very macabre.

Maybe someone can arrange for the room/hospital to have a sudden and long lasting power outage, no generator. Oopsie.

Generally I support these cases if the embryo or fetus is healthy and viable and the family wants to continue the brain dead mother's wish of a healthy baby and wants the kid - a father in Victoria BC did this, his healthy son was delivered at 25 weeks as the placenta was failing - but why keep this poor woman on life support if her offspring's brain is damaged to the point of no awareness? That's assinine.

OK, cradle Catholics, tell me if I'm wrong, but I don't think even the Catholic church would get behind this. AFAIK, Catholics do not believe in keeping people alive by artificial means, and thus would have let the fetus die with the mother. Am I right?

When you're more Catholic than the Pope, there's definitely a problem.

R43 As a former Catholic, I can tell you that the Catholics will find lots and lots of ways to wriggle around all the stuff they DON'T believe in when it comes to this woman's case in order to affirm their "abortion is murder" stance.

There is NO WAY the hospital is going to come out ahead of the women’s family financially. The article at R17 is stupid, even by 2025 standards, and it’s disturbing that anyone could take it seriously.

Yeah, maybe as of right now she is accumulating charges. But they aren’t paying them and if the hospital she is in is the same one that sent her home with a splitting headache, they will be the ones receiving payment.

It’s annoying to see some stupid angle being misrepresented to try and create outrage when core facts should be enough.

R42 I’m not surprised based on your other output on this site that you value a fetus over the dignity of how a woman will die in hospital. Out of interest why do you think the placenta started failing at 24weeks? The irony in what you included in your sign off is cherry on cake.

[quote]Catholics do not believe in keeping people alive by artificial means

That's not true. .

I think they should keep a fleet of them alive to keep pumping out babies. They voted for this bullshit, why not take it all the way?

r45, the woman is dead, this is horrendous

I was molested by the guy who played Festus on Gunsmoke.

There was a Picket Fences episode about this very issue. Judge Bone ordered the machines turned off, but the woman miraculously woke up

This situation honestly has the distinct wiff of a storyline in Gilead.

r42 And you deserve a response from me because...?

Passive-agressiveness gets you nowhere, sweetie. Blocked.

Oh dear R53. You're both talking to yourself and blocking yourself now...

*loony tunes*

If the pregnancy was much further along I could understand this, but nine weeks? And if it were a significantly/fully developed baby, I’d assume they could deliver it prematurely via cesarean anyway. Can a fetus at nine weeks even develop normally if the mother is on life support?

I’m glad I had an abortion!