The Louisiana legislature passed a bill this week that will require physicians to keep mentally incapacitated pregnant women on life support against their wishes.
HB 1274 requires physicians to to keep brain-dead women who are at least 20 weeks pregnant on mechanical support if there is a chance the fetus is viable. The law would override requests from family members for removal, and even the wishes of the pregnant woman, but will not apply if a woman has specified in her will that she was not to be resuscitated while pregnant.
“They’re making all these godlike decisions for people who should be making this decision on their own for their loved one,” Julie Schwam Harris, who testified during the Louisiana Senate Health and Welfare Committee hearing, told RH Reality Check.
A similar law in Texas led to a lawsuit by the husband of Marlise Munoz, who was found brain-dead after a possible pulmonary embolism. Even though she had made it clear while alive that she never wanted to be kept on life support with no hope of recovery if anything happened to her, and her family repeatedly requested that she be taken off support, her hospital would not allow it because she had been 14 weeks pregnant. The fetus was later found to be significantly deformed and nonviable due to the lack of oxygen it suffered when Munoz collapsed, so Munoz was removed from support.
Twelve US states invalidate a woman’s end-of-life wishes if she is pregnant, according to a 2012 report by the Center for Women Policy Studies. Governor Bobby Jindal is expected to sign the bill into law, making Louisiana the thirteenth.
Media Resources: Louisiana State Legislature; RH Reality Check 6/3/14; The Times-Picayune 6/2/14; Center for Women Policy Studies; Feminist Newswire 1/6/14, 1/24/14, 1/27/14
