Texas hospital ends life support for 'brain-dead' pregnant woman

January 27, 2014

On January 26 a Texas hospital removed life-support systems from a pregnant woman who had been declared "brain dead" in November, ending a long legal battle over the life of the woman and her unborn child.

Doctors at John Peter Smith Hospital in Fort Worth, Texas, had refused to end life-support care for Marlise Munoz, saying that state law required such care for a pregnant woman in order to preserve the life of the child. But the woman's husband, had won a court order requiring removal of artificial means of sustaining life, saying that the continued care amounted to "curl and obscene mutilation of a deceased body." Doctors had said that the unborn child was seriously deformed and could not survive to natural birth.

 

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Further information:

• Brain-dead Texas woman taken off ventilator (CNN)