“Right to Life” Horror in Texas

Anyone who doubts the depths to which the reactionary “right to life” forces will stoop should turn their attention to what is happening at John Peter Smith Hospital (JPS) in Fort Worth, Texas. Early on November 26, Erick Muñoz awoke to find his wife Marlise collapsed on the floor of their home. Despite his best efforts as a trained paramedic, he was not able to resuscitate her before the ambulance arrived. In the JPS emergency room, doctors restarted her heart but could not detect any brain activity after she had gone over an hour without oxygen. The diagnosis did not leave any room for hope. Her family members prepared to say their final goodbyes, only to learn that Marlise was going to be kept on life support simply because she was 14 weeks pregnant. Against the family’s express wishes, hospital officials plan to keep her body hooked up to machines for as long as it takes to see if the fetus develops.

The torture visited on the family throws into sharp relief the reactionary nature of the “fetal rights” crusade, a major front in the “pro-life” war on abortion. Fort Worth is located in Tarrant County, a nest of anti-abortion bigotry where right-wing politicians and hospital board members alike have helped weave rules and laws stripping pregnant women of their rights. Now, unable to bury his daughter, Marlise’s father, Ernest Machado, has told of the “pure hell” caused by the prolonged grief. “All she is is a host for a fetus,” he said angrily.

Adding to the family’s torment are the “right to life” ghouls who have taken to news programs and social media, not to mention the “save the baby” prayer vigils outside the hospital. Any doubt expressed regarding the health of the fetus, which was also deprived of oxygen after Marlise lost consciousness, is heresy to the religious zealots who ooze ignorance and disdain for the family. And with medical costs mounting daily, the family’s ordeal may well not end any time soon. After all, prying money from the insurance company parasites to cover vital care for the living is difficult enough. In a display of basic human decency, the fire department where Erick works has taken up a collection for the family.

Earlier this month, Erick filed a court motion to compel an end to the life support. For its part, the hospital board welcomed the opportunity to have it out in the courts. What it is doing with Marlise Muñoz’s corpse already goes beyond the bounds of a perverse state law that prohibits the withdrawing of life-sustaining medical treatment from a “pregnant patient.” By its doctors’ own determination, the “patient” in this case is a dead woman! If a judge signs off on the practice, however rare, of keeping the bodies of pregnant women warm long after their brains are gone, it would further legally enshrine the notion that women are first and foremost incubators. It comes as no surprise that the JPS general counsel in 1988 helped push through a ban on abortions at the hospital and currently sits on the advisory board of a local “right to life” group.

As written, the Texas law exudes contempt for pregnant women by invalidating their advance directives on end-of-life treatment. On this score, Texas is far from alone. A total of 30 other states have similar or identical pregnancy exclusions on the books, while 14 kick the issue to the courts, leaving only five states in the U.S. that respect a woman’s advance directive if she is pregnant. Marlise did not have a written directive, but as a trained paramedic she was clear on the matter and had told her family that she did not want to be kept alive artificially. That should have been the end of the debate. The capitalist state should have no right to interfere in any such personal decisions, particularly involving issues of life and death.

Rallying behind the hospital are sinister anti-woman forces pushing a “personhood” agenda that defines human life as beginning at conception. Among them is Texas Alliance for Life, whose executive director ranted about Marlise: “There is an unborn child who is alive and deserves protection.” Counteracting the religious-based notion that the fetus is a human with a “soul,” we wrote in “States Criminalize ‘Bad’ Mothers” (WV No. 1004, 8 June 2012): “Since a fetus and the mother are biologically united during pregnancy, all attempts to endow the fetus with rights come at the expense of those of the mother.” Indeed, the “personhood” campaign has served to abrogate abortion rights across the country and to throw the book at pregnant women for such activities as drinking and smoking marijuana.

In Texas, lawmakers made a mark last year with a bill that contains almost every one of the attacks on abortion rights recently enacted elsewhere in the nation. Its provisions include everything from a ban on abortions after 20 weeks due to supposed “fetal pain” to mandating clinics to make medically irrelevant upgrades to their buildings. The abortion providers not already forced to close their doors are now under tremendous strain, as the procedure is all but unobtainable in much of the state.

When it comes to general viciousness meted out to working people, minorities and women, the state of Texas takes a backseat to no other. Its execution chambers are the busiest in the nation. Its border guards are notorious for firing on desperate, unarmed immigrants from helicopters. Its health safety net is collapsing from too few resources, even as Republican governor Rick Perry opted out of the federal Medicaid expansion, keeping uninsured some one million black people and others who need coverage.

The bigots and bible-thumpers make it easy for Democratic Party politicians to pretend to be on the side of the oppressed. Last June, Democratic state senator Wendy Davis captured the national spotlight by staging a filibuster that delayed passage of the omnibus anti-abortion bill. Now she is a gubernatorial candidate. At best, the perspective of Davis and her Democratic Party cohorts is limited to preserving Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion but left the door open for state loopholes, a major factor in decimating abortion services across the country. The Democrats have also helped restrict access to abortion for poor and working women while coddling religious reactionaries. Democratic president Jimmy Carter signed the 1977 Hyde Amendment eliminating abortion coverage under Medicaid, a measure that has been renewed every year since, regardless of which party sits in the White House.

As the horror visited on Marlise’s family graphically shows in microcosm, such attacks on abortion rights redound against all women and all working people. Fighting for the democratic rights and needs of the mass of the population—including freely available, quality health care and abortion—requires mobilizing workers and the oppressed in struggle against both the Democratic and Republican parties that uphold the capitalist system of exploitation.