Bill Mandates Life Support for Pregnant Women (LA)

[MountainLaurel]

Passed out of committee without objection. I've never been so glad that I'm sterile as I am now.

Louisiana lawmakers are considering a bill that would require doctors and hospitals to use life support to keep a brain-dead pregnant woman alive until the birth of her child, no matter her family’s wishes.

The House Health and Welfare Committee backed House Bill 348 Wednesday without objection. The measure by state Rep. Austin Badon, D-New Orleans, moves to the full Louisiana House for consideration.

snip

“We have a responsibility to that unborn child, to give that unborn child a chance,” Badon told the committee.

snip

Lawmakers had little debate on the HB348 Wednesday. state Rep. Jay Morris, R-Monroe, said while concerns for the mother were understandable, “We need to look at the child.”

http://theadvocate.com/home/8983485-125/bill-mandates-life-support-for

[msanthrope]

1. This is a bad fucking Hollywood script.....like some SYFY Channel production...waiting to happen. nt

[MountainLaurel]

2. Pretty much

At least SYFY is fiction, whereas this will involve real people, real families in torment.

[tularetom]

3. A Democrat introduced that bill?

[Donald Ian Rankin]

4. I don't think the outrage is merited.

While I'm not convinced this bill is a good thing, I don't think that the balance between the rights of dead (and brain-death is, in all the ways that matter, death) women and living foetuses is anywhere near as one-sided as the balance between living women and living foetuses.

In a similar vein, I'd like to see organ donation made out rather than opt in. And, while the idea of making it mandatory makes me uncomfortable, I'm not convinced that that's not emotive rather than rational discomfort.

Living people matter. Dead people matter much less, as do living beings that are not yet people but may soon become them. So it's a toss up, I think.

[HockeyMom]

5. From what gestation?

Conception onward?????

[Donald Ian Rankin]

7. I'd say "third trimester, unless anyone wants earlier".

not sure there's an obvious right answer.

Certainly, from the start of the third trimester, when the foetus may actually have a mind, I think it's legitimate to refer to it having rights, or at least interests that the state has a duty to protect, and to those interests trumping those of what is morally a corpse.

Before that, it's much less clear-cut - it's not a person in any sense yet, so it doesn't have rights or interests. If there are any relatives who want it to be born, their wishes should take priority over those who want life-support turned off; if not, I see no reason not to honour the relatives wishes.

But, while I think that setting the cut-off at conception is misguided, and possibly a dangerous precedent, I don't think that it's anywhere near as outrageous as similar decisions involving living women would be.

[pnwmom]

6. It's a poor balance between the rights of the FATHER and the STATE.

If the father (or the mother's parents, if she is unmarried) want to use the mother's dead body as an incubator, they should be able to. But the state shouldn't force them to continue the pregnancy in a dead body. There are unknown and possibly terrible risks to such a procedure and the state shouldn't force that on anyone.

Is the state going to pay for the costs of the hospital care, and then the lifetime care of any handicapped baby born as a result of the state's decision?

[ismnotwasm]

8. Yes it is

People have the right to "Do Not Resesitate", or to not be kept alive artificially-- this Bill pisses all over that. I'm curious as well over the outcome of the fetus when such things are "mandated" because there are bound to be a variety of outcomes-- not all of them good.
Like you, I think it blurs the lines of "choice" and personal autonomy

I'm a transplant nurse, and I find people don't donate more out of a aviastic, superstious kind of fear more often than not.