I came across a little sidebar in one of the weekly newsmags about a woman being kept alive on ventilators until the child she is carrying is far enough along that she has a chance of surviving. The family of this woman apparently has no illusions that she is "alive" (in the way that Schiavo's family insisted that she would recover), and has no qualms about pulling the plug, once they get the baby out.
I'm slightly creeped out by this. Okay, more than slightly. I'm not sure why, because it's certainly her husband's right to try to keep the baby alive. And I mean, what do you do, just let the little fetus die? And should we assume that this man is working on his wife's feelings--that she would want to be artificially kept alive to keep the baby alive? Who really thinks of this wrinkle during a pregnancy? I'm baffled by this. This is really murky for me. In the little article, the last line was about how the father felt the baby kick for the first time, and was cheered up by the little kicks. Or something to that effect.
Honestly, all I could think about was that baby. Whose mother theoretically died when the fetus was 12 weeks old (I think, or sometime thereabouts). This child (although I struggle, calling her that) is basically developing in an unresponsive mother, and it really makes me wonder what kind of effect that will have on her. It's not a normal developmental process, right? I'm confused by this.
And as well, I think I have real questions about the surgery the mother goes through. Do they take the baby out and never hook the mother back up to the machines sustaining her? It seems eerily like some sort of science fiction novel, the brain dead body keeping the fetus alive. Doesn't it? Or am I just heartless?
Regardless, pro-lifers see this as some sort of victory, even though the family has made clear their plan is simply to keep this woman alive long enough for the baby to be viable. How exactly this is a victory for pro-life peoples, I'm not sure. In fact, all I am, after reading the article, is confused as to how I feel about this.
Assuming her endocrine system is still functioning normally (which at this point would be largely a matter of what brain damage she suffered, and of her nutrition) the baby should be fine to develop to term normally, as far as I can imagine (it has been a long time since I was in D. Bio).
They'd most likely have to do a c-section, though.
I guess the "pro-lifers" see it as a victory because, if the mother was removed from respiration etc, the baby would certainly die, so not doing so is a "victory"; personally, I see that as a victory for the pro-choice side, because it's just another clear example that a baby before about the end of the second trimester is NOT able to survive without the complicity of the mother, and is therefore much more like a parasite than a person.
Posted by: jwer | July 26, 2005 at 12:31 PM