In november Erick Munoz lost his wife, Marlise. She woke up in the middle of the night and went to check on their toddler son, who was crying. Mr Munoz found her unconscious on the kitchen floor of their house in Crowley, Texas. She was, Mr Munoz says, pronounced brain-dead at the John Peter Smith Hospital in Fort Worth, the apparent victim of a pulmonary embolism. That is where she remains, silent but the centre of a howling controversy. Marlise Munoz was a paramedic, and had considered her endoflife wishes. Her bereaved husband (a fireman) and her parents all say that she did not want to be kept on life-support in such a situation, and that they, the family, want the hospital to let her go. On the night she collapsed, however, she was about 14 weeks pregnant. A 1999 Texan law says that if a terminally ill patient is pregnant, "a person may not withdraw or withhold life-sustaining treatment." The hospital says it had no choice but to "follow the law", and keep her heart beating and her foetus alive.
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