angelmom said:
AM, I'm sure many doctors would agree with your assessment under the Hippocratic Oath. I would.
But the husband (unless there is a slant to this case we haven't heard yet) did not take the Oath and is not held by it. (More on this later.)
Your initial example showed that instructions from a patient who is unable to consent are not binding on a doctor. But then you assume something else: that once a patient is unable to consent, any prior instructions are moot and the doctor is free (obligated, actually) to follow her conscience.
If this were true, no DNR would be worth the paper on which it is printed. Nor would any of the consent forms patients are required to sign before surgery. Once the ether kicks in, we're all at the mercy of physicians.
(Boil it down further and you seem to be arguing that once a person is unable to give consent, your wishes supersede hers.)
The case cited below is nicely analogous. It involves a Jehovah's Witness, but she too was at death's door after delivering. Her prior instructions forbade blood transfusions, but the doctor got a court to order one. The Connecticut Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the doctor (and his judge) acted illegally.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpa...e/Times Topics/Subjects/R/Religion and Belief
Here's a somewhat similar case from Michigan with the same result:
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0026-2234(196601)64%3A3%3C554%3AAOIBTF%3E2.0.CO%3B2-A
The bottom line is simple: the fact that you can no longer give consent does not invalidate your prior instructions. I suppose an exception would be if a doctor or loved one could prove the current emergency involved circumstances the patient could not have contemplated when the instructions were given. (I'm speculating, but let's imagine a woman who thought she was sterile turns out to be pregnant on the operating table. Maybe you could argue that her prior instructions are invalid because she had no way of knowing those instructions would someday also affect her baby.)
In the case we are discussing, the instructions were NO MEDICAL CARE (again, unless it turns out reports are incorrect). Pregnancy complications at home are reasonably foreseeable and there is no reason to believe the woman didn't intend her instructions to apply to such complications.
THAT BEING SAID, perhaps a case could be made on the basis of the husband's efforts to free the dead fetus. As far as I know, nothing in the Bible distinguishes between
amateur and
professional medical care. (In fact our concept of amateur v. professional didn't exist at the time.)
Once the husband took up his allegedly dirty scissors, he had already violated the wife's instructions. Perhaps a case could be made that at that point, the husband had a different obligation and should have called 911. This argument would be particularly ripe if it can be shown that his action contributed in any way to her eventual death. (I mean the overt action with the scissors, not his inaction otherwise.)
Still, the woman's inability to consent after beginning labor doesn't change her instructions or their validity.
