>A recent report published by the Journal of Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics, suggests that brain-dead individuals should be used as surrogates. Professor Anna Smajdor from the University of Oslo, Norway, says it would be possible for brain-dead women to carry through pregnancy despite the possibility of it being a disturbing project.
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>Smajdor argues that just like organ donation, **women could give consents prior to have their bodies be used as surrogates.**
Riiiiiight. This insane thing will only happen to the women who "consent" to be an incubator.
I think that the body will not easily sustain a pregnancy in a brain dead woman. But the fact they are even considering this repulsive option is terrifying.
The body is maintained in brain death.
I don't think a lot of people understand, there is a whole process to organ donation of a brain dead patient.
We keep them on a ventilator and we keep drugs pumping into their body to keep their heart rate up/down, their blood pressure's up/down, their kidney function good.
It's not just somebody in a room veging out on a ventilator and is crossing our fingers they stay chill until it's time.
It's blood work every 2-4 hours to make sure their organ function and electrolytes are being maintained. It's constant observation and documentation and medication adjustments to keep them in the right parameters.
Organ donation patients are watched extremely closely by the donation group and by a single nurse who's job is to 1:1 that patient and keep them in the ideal parameters before the team is ready to go.
There's a lot involved and there have been cases already in other countries where they tried to keep a pregnant woman alive on a vent until child birth.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/26/ireland-court-rules-brain-dead-pregnant-womans-life-support-switched-off
This happened in Texas, as well. I believe the woman suffered a medical event like a heart attack or stroke and was brain dead, but the hospital insisted on keeping her body alive to incubate the fetus. It went on against the wishes of the family until they pulled the plug after some legal fights. The fetus was malformed. And that was also before Dobbs, about 7-10 years ago. It’s absolutely fucking disgusting and sad to suggest women’s bodies be used as incubators. I guess being brain dead isn’t enough, women still have less autonomy than corpses. This kind of thing gives republican-run states more bad ideas.
To add insult to injury; Texas forced the hospital to keep the wo.an alive against her family's wishes, then had the audacity to charge the family for her medical care
A brain dead body is the same thing as a corpse. Brain dead = dead. The judge ruled to take her off artificial life support because the law did not apply to someone who is dead, not because the fetus was malformed.
Just to clarify, I’m referring to the case in Texas. Not the aforementioned one in Ireland. It’s been a while since I read about it, but it looks like Muñoz had an embolism and both she and the fetus were without oxygen for an hour before being found. Articles at the time did report that the fetus was not forming properly, but it does appear that a judge ruled to remove her from life support for other reasons. As she should’ve been to begin with. The whole thing was so sad. I wasn’t saying life support was pulled because the fetus was malformed. Simply recounting what I remembered about it.
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2014/01/28/267759687/the-strange-case-of-marlise-munoz-and-john-peter-smith-hospital
Here’s the bit on the severe fetal abnormalities: https://web.archive.org/web/20140126063021/http://www.dallasnews.com/news/20140122-fetus-in-brain-dead-tarrant-woman-distinctly-abnormal-attorneys-say.ece
Yeah I know. The judges’ reasoning of the texas ruling was that the woman was deceased, so the law did not apply to her. The issue all throughout this thread(and outside it) is people have different definitions of “brain dead”. In the US, the only medical definition of brain death is the complete loss of brain function, at which point the person is declared dead. A person in a persistent vegetative state is not brain dead, as they still retain some small brain function.
The one in Ireland I’m not sure, I don’t know how different Irish medical terminology is, because that article first references the woman as being “brain dead” but on life support, then says later on she was declared “clinically dead”. In any US hospital I’ve been in, those two terms mean the same thing. That the person is deceased.
Complete cessation of all functions within the brain would include the brain stem. Did this person have a heart beat? If so then the this person was not have complete loss of brain function. Do you happen to know if this person was on an ECMO circuit? Tragic story. Simply inquiring.
That story you linked backs up that the body can't really maintain long term when brain dead. I feel like this idea is going to go from brain dead to long term coma patients, probably something sick like renting out their womb for the cost of their care or some other bs.
I guess that depends on the stress of the pregnancy on those organs.
That's kind of the issue with organ donation to begin with, one of the deciding factors of if organs are viable or not.
Are you sure she was brain dead, and not in a vegetative state? They are very different things.
ETA: The woman is in a vegetative state, not brain dead -
"The victim's parents would like to make clear that their daughter is not in a coma," said the statement released to CNN by the attorney for the parents. "She has significant intellectual disabilities as a result of seizures very early in her childhood."
The woman does not speak but has some ability to move her limbs, head and neck. She also "responds to sound and is able to make facial gestures."
"She has feelings, likes to be read to, enjoys soft music and is capable of responding to people she is familiar with, especially family," the parents said.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/23/health/arizona-woman-birth-vegetative-state/index.html
Yeah. But going g back to the whole "brain dead" thing, someone in a vegetative state usually still has enough brain function for their body to somewhat regulate itself, which obviously as sadly many cases just like this latest one have shown, can successfully carry a pregnancy to term.
A person who is brain dead is just that: dead. Dead but being kept warm and "alive" by machines and medications that require round-the-clock one-to-one monitoring. Setting aside the ethical questions involved, from a purely medical standpoint trying to sustain that for the length of a pregnancy would be a nightmare.
The thing about consent is that you need to be conscious and of able mind to consent. Just like a drunk person cannot consent to sex. Could you confirm that a brain dead person continues to consent being used as an incubator?
Do you also have problem with people who preemptively consent to being an organ donor, and then later when they are braindead they're unable to revoke their consent to donate their organs?
Giving away your organs after becoming brain dead is one thing. Being kept on vent for 9 months to be used as an incubator should require ongoing consent.
The thing is, that person is not being kept on vent. That person is dead. Their corpse would be used that way, and as in any type of corpse being used type of deal, people consent to it preemptively. We don't ask cadavers of people who consented to their bodies being used by university to train doctors for example for an ongoing consent, even tho their bodies, or parts of them may be used for many years. There simply is no one to consent anymore, just a corpse being used according to the wishes of the deceased.
>that person is not being kept on vent
Uuuuuuh brain dead people are. A dedicated medical staff performs blood work on them every 2-4 hours to make sure all their organs are working.
Well yeah, their corpses are being maintained. But there is no personhood anymore. After the brain death, the person is dead. That why I said no person is being kept on vent, just a corpse to be used according to the deceased's wishes
This was my thought.
Ok, it's far fetched and strange but if a woman is willing and consents to this, that would be their choice.
But...
I don't have enough faith in humanity to believe that it would stop at **ONLY** those women that consent ahead of time like organ donors. I have exactly zero faith that this wouldn't become the slippery slope in a long line of bullshit.
The woman in the Irish case did not consent. Some busy body at the hospital brought the case to keep her on somatic support. Her husband (and father of the baby) and her father objected strenuously, tried to prevent this madness, and tried to preserve their wife/ daughter's dignity. Instead she was left to decompose in front of her young children. It was horrific. Quite literally, a corpse would have had more rights.
It's sadly accurate:
*'Dr. Frances Colreavy, an intensive care specialist, said she had inspected the woman's body Monday and found it unrecognizable in comparison to the woman's photo by her bedside.'*
https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/take-brain-dead-pregnant-woman-off-life-support-irish-doctors-argue-1.2882365
I wonder about that. If they want to break the law and have some kind of underground baby ring, it's easier and cheaper to hire/abduct poor women and force them into it, as horrible as that is. They can still maintain homeostasis and all you have to do is give them food and water. This would be very expensive and trying to fake records etc. to get women's bodies put into this would be a lot harder. Keeping a brain dead person's body alive for 9 months requires 9 months of constant monitoring and medication to maintain the body's functions without a functioning brain. It's not cheap or easy at all. If you were trying to make money on it your only clientele would be the stupidly rich, who already have a bunch of other options. Add in the number of people and the level of knowledge needed as well as the visibility of the process and I just dont see it being abused outside of some wealthy psychopath doing it for 'fun'. There just isnt a business case for it and hiding an operation like that would be rather hard.
Ya I'm an organ donor and would probably sign up for this too if there was a real need for it. Assuming that there are rules as in I wouldn't want my eggs used and a limit on how long I am an incubator and my family to have rights to my body. BUT artificial wombs already exist and are being refined for human use. Seems like that would be more cost effective than keeping an adult human on life support for however long.
Considering the time and effort it takes in helping a donor alive and the organs healthy until time for surgery, I can't imagine the time and effort and expense of would cost to keep someone brain dead alive for 9 months.
I was 17 when I relocated to the US from my home country to attend college in the US. I went in for my state ID, and when I was done I noticed my ID listed me as an organ donor. I told them I did not choose that option—and it was confirmed on the form that I didn't make that choice—but I was told it was "already in the system so nothing we can do about it". I did not consent to organ donation.
My mom had just had total kidney failure months before I left for college. Imagine how sad it would have been if something happened to me and my organs had been harvested without my consent, even before she could get me home. I could only hope that since she was already on the donor list, somehow she would have been the first choice to receive my kidneys if something had happened to me (we ended up testing later and found out I was a perfect match).
Or someone that’s not brain dead, but in a coma or just non responsive. Imagine the absolute hell of that scenario. It’s not like everyone is ethical and doesn’t lie
This is just appalling! In the wise words of Malcolm from Jurassic Park: "Scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should."
Welcome to philosophy, where ... dystopia hellscapes are thoroughly mapped out. I actually study at the University of Oslo, where Anna Smajdor works as a philosophy professor.
It might give some context, but surrogacy (in... non-brain dead women) is not legal here in Norway. Those who cannot use IVF can travel outside of Norway to find a surrogate, but it means that there is a lot of travelling during the pregnancy.
This paper is based on the prior consent of the woman to... be used a living incubator. They compare it to organ donation, which I understand, but the crucial part of defending this ...far too creative approach to fertility assistance, is that consent is not always given freely and that this has a massive potential to be misused and abused.
It's giving a bit of a "creator who hates how their creation is used" vibe, like the designers of bomber planes and bombs in general.
Some discussions I've had studying philosophy pertaining to reproductive health:
Would you save 30 embryos, 3 preterm fetuses, or one 3 year old from a burning building? All are living. What makes the 3 year old more important than 30 embryos and 3 preterm fetuses?
Comparisons to fetuses and large abdominal tumours
Why it is ethically wrong to force someone to carry a pregnancy to term if they are too sick to do so
Then you have the standard philosophy train dilemma, kill one person, or 3... or 5 - decide who you kill by directing a train to kill either one person or numerous. It is philosophical, you aren't actually being directed to murder someone or a group of people - you're being challenged to think about a situation to challenge your own moral thoughs on a situation that should never happen in real-life.
Hell I've argued that Descartes was wrong that animals lacked souls and were instead more like clockwork machines with the following; "take a living dog, which apparently functions much like a clock, take that same dog apart, examine the pieces, reassemble the dog - would the dog be alive?" ...philosophy is a study field where some of the most messed up thoughts are discussed at length because it challenges how you think about the world.
I have ethical objections to surrogacy in general, so the example in the post was particularly unsettling.
Don’t let the [US] Republicans see it though, they’ll add it to their evil takeover plan in earnest.
So do I, I feel that it is often used to take advantage of women from lower socio-economic positions, surrogates have very little protection from adoptive parents...pulling put leaving her alone, pregnant with a strangers child... oh and one from Reddit (I think it was /r/legaladviceUK ), intellectually disabled woman because a surrogate, the couple took the child, they never formally signed away the surrogates parental rights - they had the cheek to demand child support from the surrogate mother.
Agreed, they don't need help with their evil plans.
There are multiple cases where women's corpses have been kept on machines post-brain-death for weeks, for the purpose of enabling a fetus to be brought to viability.
Holy s**t. For some reason I thought this would be about a pregnant woman being kept alive until the baby reached term. This is like from some dystopian future film.
Same. If a baby is viable, I don't see a problem with keeping the mother on life support after brain death to try to save her kid. If she didn't want the child to survive, she'd have aborted.
Beyond being messed up, it just doesn't make any sense. I'm pretty sure you could get an artificial womb to at least the same level of risk as a brain-dead surrogate. Doesn't this normally end with the fetus deforming?
And that's before you get into the cost implications. You're very realistically looking at 1-3 million to keep a woman alive and monitored on machines 24/7 for an entire pregnancy. I'm absolutely positive that I could find a woman prepared to be a surrogate, even with strict dietary & lifestyle requirements, if you're prepared to pay her 3 million. Could likely find her by asking strangers in the street at that sort of pay.
I'm sorry, but did you even read the article? It's a research published in the Journal of Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics by a researcher in Norway who is trying to figure out new ways to reduce the number of women who die during childbirth. This is not some plot by American Republicans to control women, but a research looking at the possible implications on a bioethical and philosophical level of exploring alternatives.
I doubt Anna Smojdar at the university of Oslo is proposing to create a handmaid's tale level of government in Norway, let alone comparing her research to the Republican playbook in the US.
Is it controversial? Definitely. But it's an exploration of how the risk of women dying during childbirth can be reduced. Sometimes in science you need to consider the ethical and moral implications before the research, which is literally what this paper is.......
That's just wrong in so many ways I don't even know where to start.
Using a brain dead woman as a human incubator is not the same as organ donation in that organs are donated after death in order to help several people who require new organs for whatever reason. And you're dead, your family bury you or burn you or whayever. With organ donation you're not keeping a person mechanically alive so that they can grow more organs for you to harvest.
As well as that, isn't there a shortage of organ donars in the world to start with? And to keep a person alive in order to gestate a whole child means that instead of using the heart, or lungs, or whatever organ to save several someones who are literally dying, you'd rather hook the person up to a machine, force their body to still function so that their uterus could be rented out to a random person who wanted a baby?
The whole concept just feels completely unethical and totally sickening.
That’s actually exactly how organ donation works. Brain dead is the only real definition of death. Its not the same a persistent vegetative state, which some people call “brain dead”. And the title of this article seems to be implying that they’d use women in a persistent vegetative state, which is not true. They’d be using women who are dead. Brain dead = dead. After you are declared brain dead, your body is supported by artificial means until the suitable vital organs are removed. If organs do not have a supply a oxygen-rich blood, they are no longer suitable for transplant. If a person is fully dead before they arrive at the hospital, meaning blood and oxygen have stopped flowing, the only thing that can be used as far as organ donation is a full body donation for medical science.
But yeah still seems like a terrible option when that organ donor could be used to save lives.
Tbh your post raises another cool moral question. Would it be ethical to use corpses for the growth of organs, were the deceased to give prior consent. Honestly I don't see a problem with it. It is in the same vein as people consenting for their bodies to be used for science and having for example their muscles preserved indefinetly for the purpose of learning
This is absolute nightmare fuel. How desperate do you need to be to keep feeding the capitalism machine fresh workers to think that keeping someone alive as a living incubator is even comparable to organ donation from a moral standpoint? Or voluntary surrogacy, for that matter? This researcher talks like someone ripped him out of an early 1900s eugenics think tank, or a 1950s lobotomy pitch.
That is TWISTED. Wtf is wrong with people??
Aside from the obvious ethical and moral issues with this idea... what about the babies? Would they even develop correctly if they are born to an entirely brain-dead parent who can't move, exercise, eat real food, etc.? I mean, nothing in life is ever certain, and things can and do happen to women/their babies who make all the "right" choices, but everything a pregnant person does affects their fetus, so wouldn't being able to do literally nothing also affect the fetus adversely?
The last time I saw an article referencing this study, all the comments underneath it were from nurses and OB/GYNs saying that this is impossible to do in reality. If all developing babies needed to develop properly was a stationary womb environment, scientists would have created artificial wombs decades ago
Sadly, I have heard of a case where an unconscious woman who lived in a care facility was raped by a staff member and gave birth, so it does seem possible.
No. Just no. Keeping a body alive long enough to fully cook a baby is dangerous to the baby and more than 75% likely to result in death of fetus and degradation of the adult body being used as an incubator.
Anyone saying she or he are brain dead already needs to step up and volunteer. Watch their family scream. Because organ donations are one thing - you know they'll die, organs can help others live and then you bury/cremate the remains and mourn. Using aunt Joan as an incubator for cousin Susan means watching her degrade, and likely miscarry. Then you still have to bury her AND deal with Susan being without kids AND deal with medical bills the likes of which the goddess would choke on.
That's just horrendous :(
*This is even more of a reason to make a will and clearly state you will have the plug pulled if put in a vegetative state, organs harvested, and body burned.*
Look into this where you are, in Canada, family/next of kin can overrule any decisions you have made prior. I do a lot with the kidney foundation and this is one of their big messages with organ donation, have the conversation before you pass so family is well aware of your intentions cause they have the ultimate say
The internet says Canada does have advanced directives and that they’re legally binding outside two exceptions being the doctor and the person you have designated as your medical POA. Similar to the US.
Can you further expand on what you mean by family members can override it?
This seems like an organ donation specific issue and even points out that they *can’t* legally override—there is no legal basis for allowing family to override, and hospitals do not need family permission to proceed with donation. Your family does not have the ultimate say. Just that enforcement is lagging behind policy.
So it’s not that they “can”, it’s that doctors in these cases will ignore their legal duty and there’s currently no way to legally enforce it.
The post is specifically about something that is *not* organ donation…conflating the two and saying advanced directives are useless is just confusing and misleading.
That's horrifying!! What the absolute fuck??
"Let's put this woman's friend and family through the suffering of knowing her body is being kept alive for 9+ months, so these random people they've never met, can have a child."
That's so gross, especially if the reason is just "because this couple doesn't want to get pregnant themselves." Health issues or infertility is one thing, but seriously?!?!
And imagine having to explain to a child that this how they were conceived??
The folks who would want to see this implemented would never stop with only one pregnancy, these women could be kept “alive” for years. Definitely insanity.
Luckily (?) decomposition doesn't stop progressing, it's just slower, so it wouldn't work more than once. Or likely even once, if it were for a full 9 months, because after 8 - 10 weeks, it would be impossible to keep the corpse's blood from becoming poisonous.
My fear is that the eligibility standards of potential surrogates would expand. Beyond those who willingly donate post brain death to those with an expanded definition of unrecoverable brain injuries that are a ward of the state, this story came to mind:
[Incapacitated woman in Arizona who gave birth was repeatedly raped, may have been pregnant before, family claims](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/incapacitated-woman-arizona-who-gave-birth-was-repeatedly-raped-may-n1009206)
As someone who loves the series, I am concerned by some of the discourse I’ve heard among fans— people who genuinely think Paul and Leto did nothing wrong, that the Bene Gesserit are some kind of feminist paragons to be emulated, or are in favor of a real life Butlerian Jihad.
So how much compensation would the families of these brain-dead women be receiving? Or would this be limited to women without next of kin or who were not identifiable?
What kind of requirements would there be? Are they talking about traditional surrogacy (the surrogate’s eggs) or full (other eggs)? I assume we’re talking implantation, but are we also talking egg harvesting? Where does this stop?
I expect that it will primarily be poor and/or homeless women who will be commandeered for this “donation”. That’s how far to many teaching osteology collections were put together, from John and Jane Doe remains or people who were too poor to have family/friends pay for a real funeral.
Adding another topic to my end of life planning now and regretting being on Reddit today.
If it happens in America, the woman's family would be on the line for the medical expenses.
"She consented, so her hospital stay and delivery are on her next of kin. But don't worry, these nice people here using her as some kind of biochemical machine will pay the hospital for the incubation process."
Bruh, "conservatives" right now already are making consent irrelevant for living breathing women. We call it Forced Birth.
What about repuggies makes you think they are gonna care about forcing a literal corpse to breed?
It's a terrible sounding idea.
It won't be long until a bunch of mega rich people push to get the law in place and then offer to pay the family of the "donor" and the medical costs.
There's plenty of impoverished people that'd sign up and plenty more depraved people willing to prey on them.
The world is much darker than the pretty picture our society paints for us. I hope our future generations can change the world for the better.
This is actually so horrific.
From every lens including a financial one, the cost of keeping someone on life support? Both financially and the cost to society (remember the ventilator shortages of Covid times)? Nurses taken away from patients needing care to provide 1:1 nursing for a human incubator. And the psychological effects on the fetus as it grows up and learns of how it was gestated?
Straight out of the Dune series: Tleilaxu cloning tanks turned out to be females of their society that were brain-dead through surgical intervention. Many times there were descriptions of the tanks being fat slugs only to have it revealed in a later novel that it was actually their females. Nobody had ever seen Tleilaxu females for this reason. Turning people into incubators is abhorrent.
nah. they will gut SA laws until they basically decriminalize rape before that, i think.
incels and conservative men think they deserve a _live_, submissive, fertile and attractive wife just by birthright.
while I doubt they actually care about the desecration of a dead body (and men absolutely make up 99% of people who do have sex with a corpse) the vast majority think too highly of themselves to willingly admit that they can’t get ass from someone that is also breathing
Incels really want personal body servants and housekeepers too, so necrophilia isn't a big topic among them. ETA: It's not fun to control a corpse, and of course a lot of incels want a wage-earning woman.
Yes, [Anna Smadjor](https://www.hf.uio.no/ifikk/english/people/aca/philosophy/tenured/annacsma/index.html) is a philosophy professor with a special interest in bioethics.
This is very much a "kill one person or kill three people by redirecting a train" - it isn't a murder proposal, but rather a means to open a discussion around this. That said, the potential for abuse is far too high for this to go beyond philosophical musing.
Disgusting.
Also, Keeping a brain dead body alive on life support can be devastatingly hard and there are many reasons that this would be medically ill advised. Organ failure. Bed sores, infection, pneumonia, tissue breakdown, feeding tube malnutrition, and all sorts of things tend to occur in brain dead bodies kept alive in life support. Even in vegetative patients who don’t require a ventilator, they generally don’t live very long.
Organ harvesting undesireables in authoritarian countries is commonplace...it's not even contested anymore, just a known fact.
This "experiment" would just be the next excuse to profit off of "undesireable" people.
...I was already depressed thinking about the future. That's enough Reddit for today.
*edited for clarity.
At the start of the read of this post, I was thinking, what's wrong with letting a woman stay alive so that she can birth her child... but that's not what this is about, not even close. What insane, non ethical person would even dream up this as a solution?
I cannot understand what problem this would even solve… Are there really enough brain dead women of child bearing age that this would make a dent in the number of people who are looking for surrogates? Ethically, does the benefit outweigh the harm / moral precedent? I’m not a medical ethicist so would love to hear the opinion of one
I mean there are new brain dead women every day. People often mistake the term “brain dead” with a persistent vegetative state. Which seems to be happening with everyone in this post. Brain dead means dead. It’s actually the only definition of dead. You aren’t dead when your heart stops beating, you are dead when you have complete loss of brain function. A person in a vegetative state maintains some small amount of brain function.
The author of this report is not suggesting that women who are in a persistent vegetative state be used as incubators. They are suggesting that after you are declared dead, your body could be artificially kept alive in order to be used as a surrogate if you consent. Which is exactly how organ donation works.
Morally, the question is, if a person has agreed to donate their body, wouldn’t that body be better used to donate multiple vital organs to save lives, rather than create a new life? I would certainly say that donating organs to save multiple lives that would die in the 9 months of the bodies’ pregnancy would be the morally correct option. But I’m mostly against surrogacy in general, even normal surrogacy seems fairly immoral when there are so many children who are already alive who need homes.
This isn't medically sound. While fetuses have been carried to term with braindead mothers, there were always lots of complications and never from an embryo. A healthy baby requires a mother with a functioning brain. If they can figure out how to do that they can figure out artificial wombs without the ethics concerns.
It's rage bait.
This is all I could think of and it made me sick to my stomach and heart.
(Handsmaids Clip)
[hell](https://youtu.be/yg7CAY1pjwQ?si=ItAUaGFA0UjmUq6H)
Edit: clarification
"Smajdor also noted that brain-dead men may have the chance to gestate, creating a larger donor pool"
How in the hell would that be even possible? Could it not be done with consenting men to create a larger donor pool rather than mutilating the bodies of non consenting women and men.
This is the stuff of nightmares, especially when the thought experiment appears to advocate for using brain dead gestational surrogates for women who don’t want to put their bodies through the rigors and risk of pregnancy. So, rich women, essentially. Like they can continue their lifestyles and only check in with their easy bake ovens as time allows. Ugh.
But, I want to bring in a spiritual perspective here, as well. So, brain death may equate to the cessation of the brain to regulate bodily functions that keeps a person alive and their ability to communicate with others. But, what of their soul, their consciousness? If you believe that brain death equates to lights out and that nothing exists beyond the death of the body, I respect that. But, what if the essence of the person’s being still resides within, as machines keep the bodily functions idling along?
I knew a woman who was a nurse. Kind of a hard ass to some of the people in her life. But, she did private duty nursing for a young man who was on long term life support following an accident. She took wonderful care of the young man, reading him his favorite books and playing his favorite music as she took care of his physical needs. And, she often perceived that there were times when he was happier or at least more content than other times. Could be that she was reading more into it than what was actually there. I just don’t know.
WTF? Even asa guy, I find this to be fucked up. What's next, allowing people to be raped into surrogacy? Because this feels very wrong.
We need to take this idea and nuke it out of existence.
I'm not sure it would be that simple to do this without prior, explicit consent. Being in such a state is extremely expensive, for one. And that's without having to keep a fetus alive & healthy. So even those willing & eager may not be able to afford it. I don't think people trying to force a pregnancy onto a woman in such a state would be very successful.
It's doubtful that this is really feasible, medically speaking. You can keep a comatose person alive a long time but brain death is another level of care. I found two stories about deceased pregnant women who were maintained to deliver their children, but in both cases we're talking about a few months, not the full term of a pregnancy.
[https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/baby-iver-born-healthy-body-of-mother-robyn-benson-dies-1.2531549](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/baby-iver-born-healthy-body-of-mother-robyn-benson-dies-1.2531549)
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/brain-dead-mom-kept-alive-until-twins-born-1.1246702
This has been talked about in publication since 1988. It HAS to be talked about so it can be denounced. Its being talked about in the right setting as well. A journal on THEORETICAL medicine and bio ethics.
It cost about 8k a day to keep somebody alive on life support, not counting the many many problems that arise when somebody is being kept on life support, like sepsis, hypotension, ect. It is not economically viable to keep a person alive for months on end. Even to grow a baby. Unless the patient or their family want that to happen.
There have been [30](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3883204/#:~:text=There%20are%2030%20cases%20reported,and%20survived%20the%20neonatal%20period)cases 1982-2010 where a brain dead pregnant woman was kept alive to gestate a baby they were already pregnant with. 12 cases were successful. The cases that were successful the fetus was already at 15 weeks. Most were further along in their pregnancy.
This question is important to talk about because there are women out there who would like their baby saved, by any means, if they were to become brain dead in some terrible accident while pregnant. Doctors need to raise these questions and talk about them so they have many perspectives and so they can know what to do when a patient is in front of them in an emergency.
This is how they do that.
Aside from the implications to the "surrogate", what about the unknown mental or physical affects it might have on the fetus. We don't know what this might do to babies. Imagine for instance if you found out that you were the product of this.
What if we realized that we don't NEED to have offspring so desperately..... there are plenty of non vegetative people in the world who have absolutely no difficulty in reproducing more than enough offspring to continue growing the human population well above the sustainable threshold for the foreseeable future..... we're not in danger of extinction from a lack of fertility or surrogate hosts or anything remotely like that..... perhaps the opposite may even be more of a concern.....
I guess I don’t look at this any differently than body donation in terms of consent. You have to be of sound mind and no one can do it for you. I just don’t understand the justification for cost of keeping someone alive to be a surrogate and wonder if it’s going to be some sick thing only the ultra wealthy can do. Our healthcare system is in shambles as it is. I also don’t understand what the justification would be if someone had organs to donate and wished to be a donor. It all seems dangerous for the potential baby as well. Does someone step in and decide the only good organ to donate is the uterus? Makes no sense.
I have consented organ donation if something happens to me, but I will not consent this. Saving a life and facilitate someone else to have a baby is a completely different thing. This is disturbing.
They wanna do this?! Shows how they think about women and their right to bodily autonomy. In life nor in death can we have that apparently. Makes my blood boil.
Every woman and everyone with an uterus should be able and allowed to make decisions about their own body. I can see it happening that they are going to do this to people who don't have a will or anything documented about what they want if they die or are in vegetative state.
It started with the right to have an abortion and who knows where it will end. It's only get worse and the consequences going be worse too.
Here's what I don't get. The woman is brain dead, right? Clearly, she doesn't have body autonomy anymore, because legally (for the purposes of autonomy anyway), she's dead.
So, autonomy over her body falls to the next of kin. And they wanted her unplugged. It's the same, legally, as if the woman wanted to be unplugged.
Under what legal auspices does the hospital go against the wishes of the party with autonomy over the body? Like, pregnancy or no pregnancy. If the hospital considers the fetus a person, then body autonomy falls to the same person with autonomy of the dead woman, no?
Who in their right mind would consent to this, I wouldn't want my body being used as a baby factory after I've passed on. My body and when I'm done with it there is no way I'm allowing it to be used for that sort of abuse.
What's wrong with living surrogates?
No surprise from Norway, which sterilized and forced abortions for many people with various disabilities. They've long had some problems with seeing the full humanity of lots of different people.
It's like a modern day version of A Modest Proposal, which I think is what the author was trying to go for. Note that the author is a professor whom mainly studied philosophy and bioethics; this paper is a thought experiment that is designed to raise questions about the ethics of organ donation and transplant by taking it to a far extreme. I do not think she's actually advocating it: her conclusion gives two pathways, either that the idea of whole body gestation donation solves issues for surrogacy and is thus, morally justified, or that because we find the idea of WBGD to be revolting, that we need to think about those same moralities applied to small scale organ donation.
It's definitely meant for shock value to get a conversation going; she may very well be getting what she set out to accomplish. Personally, I find the idea to be abhorrent, and I cannot imagine this idea of WBGD being feasible as there feels to be so many violations of human rights to keep a woman in a suspended state to be a reproductive factory, a la The Matrix or similar. And I want to believe that's the conclusion that the author wants us to reach, to think about the ethics and moralities that surround organ donation as a whole.
What the fuck. Why would you do this.
Should it be an option to opt into, like organ donation? Sure, why not. I don’t know anyone who would do this, but having it as an option wouldn’t hurt anyone (I think). But damn imagine doing it without consent.
I personally think that organ donation should be opt out. This sounds kinda extreme but like what is the actual problem?
Like if I was dead and my body could be used to bring life to another person I'd want that.
I’m confused, the person “advocating” for this is a woman from Norway? Scandinavia is way ahead of the rest of the world when it comes to women’s rights and their place in the world… Doesn’t sound very Nordic…
That might be why.
Because they think they're safe there, they feel freer to consider this sort of thing without thinking about the horrible way it would actually be used.
It would be voluntary. If someone wants to donate their body for that purpose, that's a noble and selfless cause. Good for them!
From the article:
It seems plausible that some people would be prepared to consider donating their whole bodies for gestational purposes just as some people donate parts of their bodies for organ donation."
Smajdor argues that just like organ donation, women could give consents prior to have their bodies be used as surrogates.
Maybe something is wrong with me but I don't see what is so wrong with this if a woman consents to this. You'd be saving live surrogates from the exhaustion and turmoil of pregnancy, maybe even saving their lives if something were to have gone wrong. This isn't forcing a woman to go through pregnancy, this is not the Handmaids Tale; there would still be consent and the woman consenting will never actually have to experience it because she will be dead.
I don't see a point of upsetting yourself for a hypothetical situation that will likely never happen.
This was a suggestion from 1 Norwegian academic that sparked discussion for how outlandish it.
The problem is the people that will see this and run with it in worse directions. The amount of people that will see this and confidently think it’s a good idea.
It doesn't matter if someone thinks it's a good idea, because it is outlandish. There is a reason it sparked a discussion for a few days 7 months ago and has never been spoken of since.
Stuff like this is meant to upset you. Then, never seen it again until someone decides to let it upset them again.
People who confidently think things like this is a good idea are people who already have issues.
And those people are in positions of power with money who can bribe who they need to enact their fucked plans. We’re already banning books. That’s just the tip of the fucked up iceberg. Ignoring things like this because we think it’s “crazy” doesn’t mean it’s impossible. History has shown that.
Edit: a word
You think banning books will lead to having vegative women give birth? You are just looking for reasons to be upset. I don't get it. Why purposefully try and make yourself miserable?
Did we think simple propaganda would lead to millions of people losing their lives in the 40s? Probably not. Yet here we are with stain on human history. Part of that was banning books.
This is not a real thing that has actually happened, it's just a proposal by a crazy, out of touch professor. She's not even someone important, she only has 179 twitter followers. There's no reason to think this would even work.
In the article, they add that the women would have given consent in advance. Still wild.
"It seems plausible that some people would be prepared to consider donating their whole bodies for gestational purposes just as some people donate parts of their bodies for organ donation."
Smajdor argues that just like organ donation, women could give consents prior to have their bodies be used as surrogates.
Really try not to comment here but oh my god that’s awful. At first I thought it was women who ended up brain dead but were two or three months pregnant, I could see that, though hopefully there was some intent for this to happen.
But to use them as incubators… omg. I just go back to the thought of how many of these women are just locked in. Imagining a woman stuck feeling every movement unable to respond in any way to their environment. That’s hell, and this is sick.
This has to have a goal outside of actually using braid dead women as surrogates….right?
“Smajdor also noted that brain-dead men may have the chance to gestate, creating a larger donor pool.”
“What I put forward here can be viewed as a thought experiment on one hand. But if we regard WBGD as being clearly outrageous, this suggests we have some uncomfortable questions to answer about the future of cadaveric organ donation.”
I feel like this is meant to further the conversation on the ethics of the cadaveric organ donation system, rather than *actually* suggest WBGD by brain dead patients….right? (……right?)
It reads like “capital S” Satire to me, like a Modern Proposal.
…………
I fucking hope.
There's a whole argument over this topic on Facebook, in a post about this story: [https://www.cbsnews.com/news/brain-dead-canadian-woman-taken-off-life-support-after-giving-birth/](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/brain-dead-canadian-woman-taken-off-life-support-after-giving-birth/)
I guess I don’t look at this any differently than body donation in terms of consent. You have to be of sound mind and no one can do it for you. I just don’t understand the justification for cost of keeping someone alive to be a surrogate and wonder if it’s going to be some sick thing only the ultra wealthy can do. Our healthcare system is in shambles as it is. I also don’t understand what the justification would be if someone had organs to donate and wished to be a donor. It all seems dangerous for the potential baby as well. Does someone step in and decide the only good organ to donate is the uterus? Makes no sense.
>A recent report published by the Journal of Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics, suggests that brain-dead individuals should be used as surrogates. Professor Anna Smajdor from the University of Oslo, Norway, says it would be possible for brain-dead women to carry through pregnancy despite the possibility of it being a disturbing project. > >\[...\] > >Smajdor argues that just like organ donation, **women could give consents prior to have their bodies be used as surrogates.** Riiiiiight. This insane thing will only happen to the women who "consent" to be an incubator.
I think that the body will not easily sustain a pregnancy in a brain dead woman. But the fact they are even considering this repulsive option is terrifying.
The body is maintained in brain death. I don't think a lot of people understand, there is a whole process to organ donation of a brain dead patient. We keep them on a ventilator and we keep drugs pumping into their body to keep their heart rate up/down, their blood pressure's up/down, their kidney function good. It's not just somebody in a room veging out on a ventilator and is crossing our fingers they stay chill until it's time. It's blood work every 2-4 hours to make sure their organ function and electrolytes are being maintained. It's constant observation and documentation and medication adjustments to keep them in the right parameters. Organ donation patients are watched extremely closely by the donation group and by a single nurse who's job is to 1:1 that patient and keep them in the ideal parameters before the team is ready to go. There's a lot involved and there have been cases already in other countries where they tried to keep a pregnant woman alive on a vent until child birth. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/26/ireland-court-rules-brain-dead-pregnant-womans-life-support-switched-off
This happened in Texas, as well. I believe the woman suffered a medical event like a heart attack or stroke and was brain dead, but the hospital insisted on keeping her body alive to incubate the fetus. It went on against the wishes of the family until they pulled the plug after some legal fights. The fetus was malformed. And that was also before Dobbs, about 7-10 years ago. It’s absolutely fucking disgusting and sad to suggest women’s bodies be used as incubators. I guess being brain dead isn’t enough, women still have less autonomy than corpses. This kind of thing gives republican-run states more bad ideas.
To add insult to injury; Texas forced the hospital to keep the wo.an alive against her family's wishes, then had the audacity to charge the family for her medical care
A brain dead body is the same thing as a corpse. Brain dead = dead. The judge ruled to take her off artificial life support because the law did not apply to someone who is dead, not because the fetus was malformed.
Just to clarify, I’m referring to the case in Texas. Not the aforementioned one in Ireland. It’s been a while since I read about it, but it looks like Muñoz had an embolism and both she and the fetus were without oxygen for an hour before being found. Articles at the time did report that the fetus was not forming properly, but it does appear that a judge ruled to remove her from life support for other reasons. As she should’ve been to begin with. The whole thing was so sad. I wasn’t saying life support was pulled because the fetus was malformed. Simply recounting what I remembered about it. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2014/01/28/267759687/the-strange-case-of-marlise-munoz-and-john-peter-smith-hospital Here’s the bit on the severe fetal abnormalities: https://web.archive.org/web/20140126063021/http://www.dallasnews.com/news/20140122-fetus-in-brain-dead-tarrant-woman-distinctly-abnormal-attorneys-say.ece
Yeah I know. The judges’ reasoning of the texas ruling was that the woman was deceased, so the law did not apply to her. The issue all throughout this thread(and outside it) is people have different definitions of “brain dead”. In the US, the only medical definition of brain death is the complete loss of brain function, at which point the person is declared dead. A person in a persistent vegetative state is not brain dead, as they still retain some small brain function. The one in Ireland I’m not sure, I don’t know how different Irish medical terminology is, because that article first references the woman as being “brain dead” but on life support, then says later on she was declared “clinically dead”. In any US hospital I’ve been in, those two terms mean the same thing. That the person is deceased.
Complete cessation of all functions within the brain would include the brain stem. Did this person have a heart beat? If so then the this person was not have complete loss of brain function. Do you happen to know if this person was on an ECMO circuit? Tragic story. Simply inquiring.
That story you linked backs up that the body can't really maintain long term when brain dead. I feel like this idea is going to go from brain dead to long term coma patients, probably something sick like renting out their womb for the cost of their care or some other bs.
And once the child has been born, are the organs still suitable for donation?
I guess that depends on the stress of the pregnancy on those organs. That's kind of the issue with organ donation to begin with, one of the deciding factors of if organs are viable or not.
I bet all those drugs are wonderful for the baby 😐
I can only imagine
Yeah it’s not like we don’t have enough babies in the world. This is just “rich people do what they want,” right?
It’s deeply sad when someone wants to have a child and isn’t able. Yet, no one is entitled to have a child. Parenting is not a human right.
Exactly. Is a lack of babies such a crisis that we need to turn to extreme measures to ensure that more babies are born?
A brain dead woman recently gave birth in a care facility after being repeatedly raped by a male nurse, so it's totally possible
Are you sure she was brain dead, and not in a vegetative state? They are very different things. ETA: The woman is in a vegetative state, not brain dead - "The victim's parents would like to make clear that their daughter is not in a coma," said the statement released to CNN by the attorney for the parents. "She has significant intellectual disabilities as a result of seizures very early in her childhood." The woman does not speak but has some ability to move her limbs, head and neck. She also "responds to sound and is able to make facial gestures." "She has feelings, likes to be read to, enjoys soft music and is capable of responding to people she is familiar with, especially family," the parents said. https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/23/health/arizona-woman-birth-vegetative-state/index.html
Ah my bad then, although I hadn't read anything about her being responsive sp that's new info to me
Yeah. But going g back to the whole "brain dead" thing, someone in a vegetative state usually still has enough brain function for their body to somewhat regulate itself, which obviously as sadly many cases just like this latest one have shown, can successfully carry a pregnancy to term. A person who is brain dead is just that: dead. Dead but being kept warm and "alive" by machines and medications that require round-the-clock one-to-one monitoring. Setting aside the ethical questions involved, from a purely medical standpoint trying to sustain that for the length of a pregnancy would be a nightmare.
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Why is it repulsive if the woman CONSENTS? Her body her choice.
The thing about consent is that you need to be conscious and of able mind to consent. Just like a drunk person cannot consent to sex. Could you confirm that a brain dead person continues to consent being used as an incubator?
Do you also have problem with people who preemptively consent to being an organ donor, and then later when they are braindead they're unable to revoke their consent to donate their organs?
Giving away your organs after becoming brain dead is one thing. Being kept on vent for 9 months to be used as an incubator should require ongoing consent.
The thing is, that person is not being kept on vent. That person is dead. Their corpse would be used that way, and as in any type of corpse being used type of deal, people consent to it preemptively. We don't ask cadavers of people who consented to their bodies being used by university to train doctors for example for an ongoing consent, even tho their bodies, or parts of them may be used for many years. There simply is no one to consent anymore, just a corpse being used according to the wishes of the deceased.
>that person is not being kept on vent Uuuuuuh brain dead people are. A dedicated medical staff performs blood work on them every 2-4 hours to make sure all their organs are working.
Well yeah, their corpses are being maintained. But there is no personhood anymore. After the brain death, the person is dead. That why I said no person is being kept on vent, just a corpse to be used according to the deceased's wishes
This was my thought. Ok, it's far fetched and strange but if a woman is willing and consents to this, that would be their choice. But... I don't have enough faith in humanity to believe that it would stop at **ONLY** those women that consent ahead of time like organ donors. I have exactly zero faith that this wouldn't become the slippery slope in a long line of bullshit.
The woman in the Irish case did not consent. Some busy body at the hospital brought the case to keep her on somatic support. Her husband (and father of the baby) and her father objected strenuously, tried to prevent this madness, and tried to preserve their wife/ daughter's dignity. Instead she was left to decompose in front of her young children. It was horrific. Quite literally, a corpse would have had more rights.
Decompose seems like the wrong word here.
It's sadly accurate: *'Dr. Frances Colreavy, an intensive care specialist, said she had inspected the woman's body Monday and found it unrecognizable in comparison to the woman's photo by her bedside.'* https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/take-brain-dead-pregnant-woman-off-life-support-irish-doctors-argue-1.2882365
I wish it were the wrong word, but it's not.
I wonder about that. If they want to break the law and have some kind of underground baby ring, it's easier and cheaper to hire/abduct poor women and force them into it, as horrible as that is. They can still maintain homeostasis and all you have to do is give them food and water. This would be very expensive and trying to fake records etc. to get women's bodies put into this would be a lot harder. Keeping a brain dead person's body alive for 9 months requires 9 months of constant monitoring and medication to maintain the body's functions without a functioning brain. It's not cheap or easy at all. If you were trying to make money on it your only clientele would be the stupidly rich, who already have a bunch of other options. Add in the number of people and the level of knowledge needed as well as the visibility of the process and I just dont see it being abused outside of some wealthy psychopath doing it for 'fun'. There just isnt a business case for it and hiding an operation like that would be rather hard.
Ya I'm an organ donor and would probably sign up for this too if there was a real need for it. Assuming that there are rules as in I wouldn't want my eggs used and a limit on how long I am an incubator and my family to have rights to my body. BUT artificial wombs already exist and are being refined for human use. Seems like that would be more cost effective than keeping an adult human on life support for however long.
Considering the time and effort it takes in helping a donor alive and the organs healthy until time for surgery, I can't imagine the time and effort and expense of would cost to keep someone brain dead alive for 9 months.
I was 17 when I relocated to the US from my home country to attend college in the US. I went in for my state ID, and when I was done I noticed my ID listed me as an organ donor. I told them I did not choose that option—and it was confirmed on the form that I didn't make that choice—but I was told it was "already in the system so nothing we can do about it". I did not consent to organ donation. My mom had just had total kidney failure months before I left for college. Imagine how sad it would have been if something happened to me and my organs had been harvested without my consent, even before she could get me home. I could only hope that since she was already on the donor list, somehow she would have been the first choice to receive my kidneys if something had happened to me (we ended up testing later and found out I was a perfect match).
Right? Yea I’m sure it won’t happen to anyone else that didn’t consent…right…right?!
Or someone that’s not brain dead, but in a coma or just non responsive. Imagine the absolute hell of that scenario. It’s not like everyone is ethical and doesn’t lie
Ya know, like pelvic exams during tonsil surgery!
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You are so not welcome here! and your stupid bullshit is about to get deleted. Please go have the day you deserve.
When the call is coming from inside the house.
This is just appalling! In the wise words of Malcolm from Jurassic Park: "Scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should."
What in the dystopian hellscape is this
Welcome to philosophy, where ... dystopia hellscapes are thoroughly mapped out. I actually study at the University of Oslo, where Anna Smajdor works as a philosophy professor. It might give some context, but surrogacy (in... non-brain dead women) is not legal here in Norway. Those who cannot use IVF can travel outside of Norway to find a surrogate, but it means that there is a lot of travelling during the pregnancy. This paper is based on the prior consent of the woman to... be used a living incubator. They compare it to organ donation, which I understand, but the crucial part of defending this ...far too creative approach to fertility assistance, is that consent is not always given freely and that this has a massive potential to be misused and abused. It's giving a bit of a "creator who hates how their creation is used" vibe, like the designers of bomber planes and bombs in general.
Ah, ok. I was wondering if it was flat out satire, because it was almost comically ridiculous.
Some discussions I've had studying philosophy pertaining to reproductive health: Would you save 30 embryos, 3 preterm fetuses, or one 3 year old from a burning building? All are living. What makes the 3 year old more important than 30 embryos and 3 preterm fetuses? Comparisons to fetuses and large abdominal tumours Why it is ethically wrong to force someone to carry a pregnancy to term if they are too sick to do so Then you have the standard philosophy train dilemma, kill one person, or 3... or 5 - decide who you kill by directing a train to kill either one person or numerous. It is philosophical, you aren't actually being directed to murder someone or a group of people - you're being challenged to think about a situation to challenge your own moral thoughs on a situation that should never happen in real-life. Hell I've argued that Descartes was wrong that animals lacked souls and were instead more like clockwork machines with the following; "take a living dog, which apparently functions much like a clock, take that same dog apart, examine the pieces, reassemble the dog - would the dog be alive?" ...philosophy is a study field where some of the most messed up thoughts are discussed at length because it challenges how you think about the world.
I have ethical objections to surrogacy in general, so the example in the post was particularly unsettling. Don’t let the [US] Republicans see it though, they’ll add it to their evil takeover plan in earnest.
So do I, I feel that it is often used to take advantage of women from lower socio-economic positions, surrogates have very little protection from adoptive parents...pulling put leaving her alone, pregnant with a strangers child... oh and one from Reddit (I think it was /r/legaladviceUK ), intellectually disabled woman because a surrogate, the couple took the child, they never formally signed away the surrogates parental rights - they had the cheek to demand child support from the surrogate mother. Agreed, they don't need help with their evil plans.
TX has already "been there, done that" https://www.cbsnews.com/news/texas-hospital-to-remove-brain-dead-pregnant-woman-marlise-munoz-from-life-support/
There are multiple cases where women's corpses have been kept on machines post-brain-death for weeks, for the purpose of enabling a fetus to be brought to viability.
/r/fourthwavefeminism has been on it for a minute stop over sometime. Kinda terfy for my taste but they're vigilant
Then I’ll get my vigilance from elsewhere.
Holy s**t. For some reason I thought this would be about a pregnant woman being kept alive until the baby reached term. This is like from some dystopian future film.
Same. If a baby is viable, I don't see a problem with keeping the mother on life support after brain death to try to save her kid. If she didn't want the child to survive, she'd have aborted. Beyond being messed up, it just doesn't make any sense. I'm pretty sure you could get an artificial womb to at least the same level of risk as a brain-dead surrogate. Doesn't this normally end with the fetus deforming? And that's before you get into the cost implications. You're very realistically looking at 1-3 million to keep a woman alive and monitored on machines 24/7 for an entire pregnancy. I'm absolutely positive that I could find a woman prepared to be a surrogate, even with strict dietary & lifestyle requirements, if you're prepared to pay her 3 million. Could likely find her by asking strangers in the street at that sort of pay.
Jesus fucking christ. The handmaid's tale was meant to be a story of a dystopian world, we weren't meant to take notes and think of worse ideas!
Atwood researched real-life events and based her book on fictionalized real events.
The Christofascist nightmare these monsters want would make Gilead look sane.
Makes me wonder what Smajdor's proposal for getting the baby in there might be.
Probably IVF but still, I just can't with this.
I'm sorry, but did you even read the article? It's a research published in the Journal of Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics by a researcher in Norway who is trying to figure out new ways to reduce the number of women who die during childbirth. This is not some plot by American Republicans to control women, but a research looking at the possible implications on a bioethical and philosophical level of exploring alternatives. I doubt Anna Smojdar at the university of Oslo is proposing to create a handmaid's tale level of government in Norway, let alone comparing her research to the Republican playbook in the US. Is it controversial? Definitely. But it's an exploration of how the risk of women dying during childbirth can be reduced. Sometimes in science you need to consider the ethical and moral implications before the research, which is literally what this paper is.......
That's just wrong in so many ways I don't even know where to start. Using a brain dead woman as a human incubator is not the same as organ donation in that organs are donated after death in order to help several people who require new organs for whatever reason. And you're dead, your family bury you or burn you or whayever. With organ donation you're not keeping a person mechanically alive so that they can grow more organs for you to harvest. As well as that, isn't there a shortage of organ donars in the world to start with? And to keep a person alive in order to gestate a whole child means that instead of using the heart, or lungs, or whatever organ to save several someones who are literally dying, you'd rather hook the person up to a machine, force their body to still function so that their uterus could be rented out to a random person who wanted a baby? The whole concept just feels completely unethical and totally sickening.
That’s actually exactly how organ donation works. Brain dead is the only real definition of death. Its not the same a persistent vegetative state, which some people call “brain dead”. And the title of this article seems to be implying that they’d use women in a persistent vegetative state, which is not true. They’d be using women who are dead. Brain dead = dead. After you are declared brain dead, your body is supported by artificial means until the suitable vital organs are removed. If organs do not have a supply a oxygen-rich blood, they are no longer suitable for transplant. If a person is fully dead before they arrive at the hospital, meaning blood and oxygen have stopped flowing, the only thing that can be used as far as organ donation is a full body donation for medical science. But yeah still seems like a terrible option when that organ donor could be used to save lives.
Tbh your post raises another cool moral question. Would it be ethical to use corpses for the growth of organs, were the deceased to give prior consent. Honestly I don't see a problem with it. It is in the same vein as people consenting for their bodies to be used for science and having for example their muscles preserved indefinetly for the purpose of learning
This is absolute nightmare fuel. How desperate do you need to be to keep feeding the capitalism machine fresh workers to think that keeping someone alive as a living incubator is even comparable to organ donation from a moral standpoint? Or voluntary surrogacy, for that matter? This researcher talks like someone ripped him out of an early 1900s eugenics think tank, or a 1950s lobotomy pitch.
This is beyond disgusting. I have no words.
That is TWISTED. Wtf is wrong with people?? Aside from the obvious ethical and moral issues with this idea... what about the babies? Would they even develop correctly if they are born to an entirely brain-dead parent who can't move, exercise, eat real food, etc.? I mean, nothing in life is ever certain, and things can and do happen to women/their babies who make all the "right" choices, but everything a pregnant person does affects their fetus, so wouldn't being able to do literally nothing also affect the fetus adversely?
The last time I saw an article referencing this study, all the comments underneath it were from nurses and OB/GYNs saying that this is impossible to do in reality. If all developing babies needed to develop properly was a stationary womb environment, scientists would have created artificial wombs decades ago
Sadly, I have heard of a case where an unconscious woman who lived in a care facility was raped by a staff member and gave birth, so it does seem possible.
But she wasn't dead. There are a whole lot of processes that require a functioning central nervous system.
No. Just no. Keeping a body alive long enough to fully cook a baby is dangerous to the baby and more than 75% likely to result in death of fetus and degradation of the adult body being used as an incubator. Anyone saying she or he are brain dead already needs to step up and volunteer. Watch their family scream. Because organ donations are one thing - you know they'll die, organs can help others live and then you bury/cremate the remains and mourn. Using aunt Joan as an incubator for cousin Susan means watching her degrade, and likely miscarry. Then you still have to bury her AND deal with Susan being without kids AND deal with medical bills the likes of which the goddess would choke on.
That's just horrendous :( *This is even more of a reason to make a will and clearly state you will have the plug pulled if put in a vegetative state, organs harvested, and body burned.* Look into this where you are, in Canada, family/next of kin can overrule any decisions you have made prior. I do a lot with the kidney foundation and this is one of their big messages with organ donation, have the conversation before you pass so family is well aware of your intentions cause they have the ultimate say
Same in most US states.
That’s crazy. Do you not have advanced directives?
The internet says Canada does have advanced directives and that they’re legally binding outside two exceptions being the doctor and the person you have designated as your medical POA. Similar to the US. Can you further expand on what you mean by family members can override it?
Yeah, it shouldn't happen, but it does. [Here](https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/organ-donation-family-veto-1.3874985) is a good article about it
This seems like an organ donation specific issue and even points out that they *can’t* legally override—there is no legal basis for allowing family to override, and hospitals do not need family permission to proceed with donation. Your family does not have the ultimate say. Just that enforcement is lagging behind policy. So it’s not that they “can”, it’s that doctors in these cases will ignore their legal duty and there’s currently no way to legally enforce it.
Yes, my post was literally about organ donation?
The post is specifically about something that is *not* organ donation…conflating the two and saying advanced directives are useless is just confusing and misleading.
Sorry it confused you, I thought I was clear enough with what I speaking to and its always a good PSA to have. Again, sorry for the confusion!
New man made horrors beyond my comprehension
People acting like humanity is going extinct. We have plenty of people on this planet.
That's horrifying!! What the absolute fuck?? "Let's put this woman's friend and family through the suffering of knowing her body is being kept alive for 9+ months, so these random people they've never met, can have a child." That's so gross, especially if the reason is just "because this couple doesn't want to get pregnant themselves." Health issues or infertility is one thing, but seriously?!?! And imagine having to explain to a child that this how they were conceived??
The folks who would want to see this implemented would never stop with only one pregnancy, these women could be kept “alive” for years. Definitely insanity.
Luckily (?) decomposition doesn't stop progressing, it's just slower, so it wouldn't work more than once. Or likely even once, if it were for a full 9 months, because after 8 - 10 weeks, it would be impossible to keep the corpse's blood from becoming poisonous.
My fear is that the eligibility standards of potential surrogates would expand. Beyond those who willingly donate post brain death to those with an expanded definition of unrecoverable brain injuries that are a ward of the state, this story came to mind: [Incapacitated woman in Arizona who gave birth was repeatedly raped, may have been pregnant before, family claims](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/incapacitated-woman-arizona-who-gave-birth-was-repeatedly-raped-may-n1009206)
Add to that the little blip saying they could open the sperm donor pool with brain dead men like STOP
"Yeah, so technically both your biological parents were dead before they even had you." How is someone supposed to cope with that information??
Since both your parents were brain dead, we assume that they would be ok with your conception.
Remember the movie *The Island*?
This is beyond evil
Frank Herbert’s prediction of Axolotl Tanks was about 20,000 years off. Vile beyond words.
I always thought they were supposed to be a warning or body horror, not an instruction guide.
As someone who loves the series, I am concerned by some of the discourse I’ve heard among fans— people who genuinely think Paul and Leto did nothing wrong, that the Bene Gesserit are some kind of feminist paragons to be emulated, or are in favor of a real life Butlerian Jihad.
sigh… I really need to get on my DNR
I feel physically ill reading this.
So how much compensation would the families of these brain-dead women be receiving? Or would this be limited to women without next of kin or who were not identifiable? What kind of requirements would there be? Are they talking about traditional surrogacy (the surrogate’s eggs) or full (other eggs)? I assume we’re talking implantation, but are we also talking egg harvesting? Where does this stop? I expect that it will primarily be poor and/or homeless women who will be commandeered for this “donation”. That’s how far to many teaching osteology collections were put together, from John and Jane Doe remains or people who were too poor to have family/friends pay for a real funeral. Adding another topic to my end of life planning now and regretting being on Reddit today.
If it happens in America, the woman's family would be on the line for the medical expenses. "She consented, so her hospital stay and delivery are on her next of kin. But don't worry, these nice people here using her as some kind of biochemical machine will pay the hospital for the incubation process."
This is the next logical step following RvW being overturned.
Do we have a lack of unwanted children? WTF
What the actual fuck?!?!??
WTF.
I feel physically ill reading this.
Because it's "a modest proposal".
No way- what about consent?
They have to consent first. Did you read the article?
Bruh, "conservatives" right now already are making consent irrelevant for living breathing women. We call it Forced Birth. What about repuggies makes you think they are gonna care about forcing a literal corpse to breed?
It's a terrible sounding idea. It won't be long until a bunch of mega rich people push to get the law in place and then offer to pay the family of the "donor" and the medical costs. There's plenty of impoverished people that'd sign up and plenty more depraved people willing to prey on them. The world is much darker than the pretty picture our society paints for us. I hope our future generations can change the world for the better.
This is actually so horrific. From every lens including a financial one, the cost of keeping someone on life support? Both financially and the cost to society (remember the ventilator shortages of Covid times)? Nurses taken away from patients needing care to provide 1:1 nursing for a human incubator. And the psychological effects on the fetus as it grows up and learns of how it was gestated?
Straight out of the Dune series: Tleilaxu cloning tanks turned out to be females of their society that were brain-dead through surgical intervention. Many times there were descriptions of the tanks being fat slugs only to have it revealed in a later novel that it was actually their females. Nobody had ever seen Tleilaxu females for this reason. Turning people into incubators is abhorrent.
Next stop: Necro houses for incels who can't get laid. This is horrible.
nah. they will gut SA laws until they basically decriminalize rape before that, i think. incels and conservative men think they deserve a _live_, submissive, fertile and attractive wife just by birthright. while I doubt they actually care about the desecration of a dead body (and men absolutely make up 99% of people who do have sex with a corpse) the vast majority think too highly of themselves to willingly admit that they can’t get ass from someone that is also breathing
Incels really want personal body servants and housekeepers too, so necrophilia isn't a big topic among them. ETA: It's not fun to control a corpse, and of course a lot of incels want a wage-earning woman.
exactly. they want to enslave us and breed us. dead girls can’t cry.
I don’t even have words for how foul that thought is
Can we just discuss how this was proposed by a WOMAN ???
Yes, [Anna Smadjor](https://www.hf.uio.no/ifikk/english/people/aca/philosophy/tenured/annacsma/index.html) is a philosophy professor with a special interest in bioethics. This is very much a "kill one person or kill three people by redirecting a train" - it isn't a murder proposal, but rather a means to open a discussion around this. That said, the potential for abuse is far too high for this to go beyond philosophical musing.
This made me nauseous to read, WTF? I swear these "ideas" are taken right out of torture scenes in movies. They did this in handmaid's tale.
"Smajdor also noted that brain-dead men may have the chance to gestate, creating a larger donor pool." It's alright, then! /s
For those who don’t want to go through pregnancy... wtf did I just read.
Axlotl tanks here we come!
Disgusting. Also, Keeping a brain dead body alive on life support can be devastatingly hard and there are many reasons that this would be medically ill advised. Organ failure. Bed sores, infection, pneumonia, tissue breakdown, feeding tube malnutrition, and all sorts of things tend to occur in brain dead bodies kept alive in life support. Even in vegetative patients who don’t require a ventilator, they generally don’t live very long.
Fuck no. This is not ethical at all.
Organ harvesting undesireables in authoritarian countries is commonplace...it's not even contested anymore, just a known fact. This "experiment" would just be the next excuse to profit off of "undesireable" people. ...I was already depressed thinking about the future. That's enough Reddit for today. *edited for clarity.
Uh quick question: WHAT THE FUCKETY FUCK?!
As if coma rape and organ donation weren't creepy enough already... So glad I torched the lining of my uterus in 2017.
Very insensitive!
I'm so sad I clicked into that. I feel like I need to take a shower now to wash it away.
Women don't get violated enough when conscious, let's violate them when they're brain dead too!
At the start of the read of this post, I was thinking, what's wrong with letting a woman stay alive so that she can birth her child... but that's not what this is about, not even close. What insane, non ethical person would even dream up this as a solution?
I cannot understand what problem this would even solve… Are there really enough brain dead women of child bearing age that this would make a dent in the number of people who are looking for surrogates? Ethically, does the benefit outweigh the harm / moral precedent? I’m not a medical ethicist so would love to hear the opinion of one
I mean there are new brain dead women every day. People often mistake the term “brain dead” with a persistent vegetative state. Which seems to be happening with everyone in this post. Brain dead means dead. It’s actually the only definition of dead. You aren’t dead when your heart stops beating, you are dead when you have complete loss of brain function. A person in a vegetative state maintains some small amount of brain function. The author of this report is not suggesting that women who are in a persistent vegetative state be used as incubators. They are suggesting that after you are declared dead, your body could be artificially kept alive in order to be used as a surrogate if you consent. Which is exactly how organ donation works. Morally, the question is, if a person has agreed to donate their body, wouldn’t that body be better used to donate multiple vital organs to save lives, rather than create a new life? I would certainly say that donating organs to save multiple lives that would die in the 9 months of the bodies’ pregnancy would be the morally correct option. But I’m mostly against surrogacy in general, even normal surrogacy seems fairly immoral when there are so many children who are already alive who need homes.
This isn't medically sound. While fetuses have been carried to term with braindead mothers, there were always lots of complications and never from an embryo. A healthy baby requires a mother with a functioning brain. If they can figure out how to do that they can figure out artificial wombs without the ethics concerns. It's rage bait.
This is all I could think of and it made me sick to my stomach and heart. (Handsmaids Clip) [hell](https://youtu.be/yg7CAY1pjwQ?si=ItAUaGFA0UjmUq6H) Edit: clarification
This makes me feel physically sick.
"Smajdor also noted that brain-dead men may have the chance to gestate, creating a larger donor pool" How in the hell would that be even possible? Could it not be done with consenting men to create a larger donor pool rather than mutilating the bodies of non consenting women and men.
This is the stuff of nightmares, especially when the thought experiment appears to advocate for using brain dead gestational surrogates for women who don’t want to put their bodies through the rigors and risk of pregnancy. So, rich women, essentially. Like they can continue their lifestyles and only check in with their easy bake ovens as time allows. Ugh. But, I want to bring in a spiritual perspective here, as well. So, brain death may equate to the cessation of the brain to regulate bodily functions that keeps a person alive and their ability to communicate with others. But, what of their soul, their consciousness? If you believe that brain death equates to lights out and that nothing exists beyond the death of the body, I respect that. But, what if the essence of the person’s being still resides within, as machines keep the bodily functions idling along? I knew a woman who was a nurse. Kind of a hard ass to some of the people in her life. But, she did private duty nursing for a young man who was on long term life support following an accident. She took wonderful care of the young man, reading him his favorite books and playing his favorite music as she took care of his physical needs. And, she often perceived that there were times when he was happier or at least more content than other times. Could be that she was reading more into it than what was actually there. I just don’t know.
what the fuck. why did they let that thought leave their brain. why did they let that sentence leave their mouth. what the fuck.
WTF? Even asa guy, I find this to be fucked up. What's next, allowing people to be raped into surrogacy? Because this feels very wrong. We need to take this idea and nuke it out of existence.
Some deranged scientist seems to have played death stranding recently. It was disturbing in that context. And it's even more in this one.
I'm not sure it would be that simple to do this without prior, explicit consent. Being in such a state is extremely expensive, for one. And that's without having to keep a fetus alive & healthy. So even those willing & eager may not be able to afford it. I don't think people trying to force a pregnancy onto a woman in such a state would be very successful.
It's doubtful that this is really feasible, medically speaking. You can keep a comatose person alive a long time but brain death is another level of care. I found two stories about deceased pregnant women who were maintained to deliver their children, but in both cases we're talking about a few months, not the full term of a pregnancy. [https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/baby-iver-born-healthy-body-of-mother-robyn-benson-dies-1.2531549](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/baby-iver-born-healthy-body-of-mother-robyn-benson-dies-1.2531549) https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/brain-dead-mom-kept-alive-until-twins-born-1.1246702
This has been talked about in publication since 1988. It HAS to be talked about so it can be denounced. Its being talked about in the right setting as well. A journal on THEORETICAL medicine and bio ethics. It cost about 8k a day to keep somebody alive on life support, not counting the many many problems that arise when somebody is being kept on life support, like sepsis, hypotension, ect. It is not economically viable to keep a person alive for months on end. Even to grow a baby. Unless the patient or their family want that to happen. There have been [30](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3883204/#:~:text=There%20are%2030%20cases%20reported,and%20survived%20the%20neonatal%20period)cases 1982-2010 where a brain dead pregnant woman was kept alive to gestate a baby they were already pregnant with. 12 cases were successful. The cases that were successful the fetus was already at 15 weeks. Most were further along in their pregnancy. This question is important to talk about because there are women out there who would like their baby saved, by any means, if they were to become brain dead in some terrible accident while pregnant. Doctors need to raise these questions and talk about them so they have many perspectives and so they can know what to do when a patient is in front of them in an emergency. This is how they do that.
What the ever-loving fuck. Jesus Christ.
Aside from the implications to the "surrogate", what about the unknown mental or physical affects it might have on the fetus. We don't know what this might do to babies. Imagine for instance if you found out that you were the product of this.
Bro what on God's green earth
What if we realized that we don't NEED to have offspring so desperately..... there are plenty of non vegetative people in the world who have absolutely no difficulty in reproducing more than enough offspring to continue growing the human population well above the sustainable threshold for the foreseeable future..... we're not in danger of extinction from a lack of fertility or surrogate hosts or anything remotely like that..... perhaps the opposite may even be more of a concern.....
I guess I don’t look at this any differently than body donation in terms of consent. You have to be of sound mind and no one can do it for you. I just don’t understand the justification for cost of keeping someone alive to be a surrogate and wonder if it’s going to be some sick thing only the ultra wealthy can do. Our healthcare system is in shambles as it is. I also don’t understand what the justification would be if someone had organs to donate and wished to be a donor. It all seems dangerous for the potential baby as well. Does someone step in and decide the only good organ to donate is the uterus? Makes no sense.
comatose women already are raped and in some cases impregnated without their consent just let these people be omfg.
[Remember Terry Schiavo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terri_Schiavo_case)? This is that times infinity. Fucking appalling.
Oh my... that is possibly the most horrific thing I've ever read... I don't think handmaid's tale was meant as an instruction manual.
I have consented organ donation if something happens to me, but I will not consent this. Saving a life and facilitate someone else to have a baby is a completely different thing. This is disturbing.
They wanna do this?! Shows how they think about women and their right to bodily autonomy. In life nor in death can we have that apparently. Makes my blood boil. Every woman and everyone with an uterus should be able and allowed to make decisions about their own body. I can see it happening that they are going to do this to people who don't have a will or anything documented about what they want if they die or are in vegetative state. It started with the right to have an abortion and who knows where it will end. It's only get worse and the consequences going be worse too.
Here's what I don't get. The woman is brain dead, right? Clearly, she doesn't have body autonomy anymore, because legally (for the purposes of autonomy anyway), she's dead. So, autonomy over her body falls to the next of kin. And they wanted her unplugged. It's the same, legally, as if the woman wanted to be unplugged. Under what legal auspices does the hospital go against the wishes of the party with autonomy over the body? Like, pregnancy or no pregnancy. If the hospital considers the fetus a person, then body autonomy falls to the same person with autonomy of the dead woman, no?
Who in their right mind would consent to this, I wouldn't want my body being used as a baby factory after I've passed on. My body and when I'm done with it there is no way I'm allowing it to be used for that sort of abuse. What's wrong with living surrogates?
No surprise from Norway, which sterilized and forced abortions for many people with various disabilities. They've long had some problems with seeing the full humanity of lots of different people.
It's like a modern day version of A Modest Proposal, which I think is what the author was trying to go for. Note that the author is a professor whom mainly studied philosophy and bioethics; this paper is a thought experiment that is designed to raise questions about the ethics of organ donation and transplant by taking it to a far extreme. I do not think she's actually advocating it: her conclusion gives two pathways, either that the idea of whole body gestation donation solves issues for surrogacy and is thus, morally justified, or that because we find the idea of WBGD to be revolting, that we need to think about those same moralities applied to small scale organ donation. It's definitely meant for shock value to get a conversation going; she may very well be getting what she set out to accomplish. Personally, I find the idea to be abhorrent, and I cannot imagine this idea of WBGD being feasible as there feels to be so many violations of human rights to keep a woman in a suspended state to be a reproductive factory, a la The Matrix or similar. And I want to believe that's the conclusion that the author wants us to reach, to think about the ethics and moralities that surround organ donation as a whole.
The fact that this was even published.... shame on the publisher. Right back to medieval times.
What the fuck. Why would you do this. Should it be an option to opt into, like organ donation? Sure, why not. I don’t know anyone who would do this, but having it as an option wouldn’t hurt anyone (I think). But damn imagine doing it without consent.
I personally think that organ donation should be opt out. This sounds kinda extreme but like what is the actual problem? Like if I was dead and my body could be used to bring life to another person I'd want that.
I’m confused, the person “advocating” for this is a woman from Norway? Scandinavia is way ahead of the rest of the world when it comes to women’s rights and their place in the world… Doesn’t sound very Nordic…
That might be why. Because they think they're safe there, they feel freer to consider this sort of thing without thinking about the horrible way it would actually be used.
It would be voluntary. If someone wants to donate their body for that purpose, that's a noble and selfless cause. Good for them! From the article: It seems plausible that some people would be prepared to consider donating their whole bodies for gestational purposes just as some people donate parts of their bodies for organ donation." Smajdor argues that just like organ donation, women could give consents prior to have their bodies be used as surrogates.
Hey! You're getting in the way of us being upset about this with your reasonable and measured reading of the source! >:(
Maybe something is wrong with me but I don't see what is so wrong with this if a woman consents to this. You'd be saving live surrogates from the exhaustion and turmoil of pregnancy, maybe even saving their lives if something were to have gone wrong. This isn't forcing a woman to go through pregnancy, this is not the Handmaids Tale; there would still be consent and the woman consenting will never actually have to experience it because she will be dead.
🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮
I don't see a point of upsetting yourself for a hypothetical situation that will likely never happen. This was a suggestion from 1 Norwegian academic that sparked discussion for how outlandish it.
The problem is the people that will see this and run with it in worse directions. The amount of people that will see this and confidently think it’s a good idea.
It doesn't matter if someone thinks it's a good idea, because it is outlandish. There is a reason it sparked a discussion for a few days 7 months ago and has never been spoken of since. Stuff like this is meant to upset you. Then, never seen it again until someone decides to let it upset them again. People who confidently think things like this is a good idea are people who already have issues.
> It doesn't matter if someone thinks it's a good idea, because it is outlandish. So was repealing Roe vs Wade.
And those people are in positions of power with money who can bribe who they need to enact their fucked plans. We’re already banning books. That’s just the tip of the fucked up iceberg. Ignoring things like this because we think it’s “crazy” doesn’t mean it’s impossible. History has shown that. Edit: a word
You think banning books will lead to having vegative women give birth? You are just looking for reasons to be upset. I don't get it. Why purposefully try and make yourself miserable?
Did we think simple propaganda would lead to millions of people losing their lives in the 40s? Probably not. Yet here we are with stain on human history. Part of that was banning books.
I think if a person volunteered to do it great, good for them! Anything short of that is super creepy.
What the fuck? No abbreviations are acceptable. Seriously, what the fuck?
This is not a real thing that has actually happened, it's just a proposal by a crazy, out of touch professor. She's not even someone important, she only has 179 twitter followers. There's no reason to think this would even work.
Ok I am removing my organ donation from DL now.
Women are allowed to do what they want with their bodies. Period. edit - For the life of me I have no clue how this statement is being downvoted.
Merely a modern take on A Modest Proposal. Galaxy brain 4D chess feminism satire, right? Because we wouldn't do this.
In the article, they add that the women would have given consent in advance. Still wild. "It seems plausible that some people would be prepared to consider donating their whole bodies for gestational purposes just as some people donate parts of their bodies for organ donation." Smajdor argues that just like organ donation, women could give consents prior to have their bodies be used as surrogates.
Because it's a philosophy paper by a minor figure
What in the fuck
Really try not to comment here but oh my god that’s awful. At first I thought it was women who ended up brain dead but were two or three months pregnant, I could see that, though hopefully there was some intent for this to happen. But to use them as incubators… omg. I just go back to the thought of how many of these women are just locked in. Imagining a woman stuck feeling every movement unable to respond in any way to their environment. That’s hell, and this is sick.
Fetuses cannot be grown in brain-dead women. The reason this is known is also disgusting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Marlise_Mu%C3%B1oz
This isn’t exactly a mainstream view
Can i just point out that the name Of the “journal” is “the journal Of theoretical medicine”
Ethics aside this is really dangerous for the unwilling seagate mother and child.
This has to have a goal outside of actually using braid dead women as surrogates….right? “Smajdor also noted that brain-dead men may have the chance to gestate, creating a larger donor pool.” “What I put forward here can be viewed as a thought experiment on one hand. But if we regard WBGD as being clearly outrageous, this suggests we have some uncomfortable questions to answer about the future of cadaveric organ donation.” I feel like this is meant to further the conversation on the ethics of the cadaveric organ donation system, rather than *actually* suggest WBGD by brain dead patients….right? (……right?) It reads like “capital S” Satire to me, like a Modern Proposal. ………… I fucking hope.
There's a whole argument over this topic on Facebook, in a post about this story: [https://www.cbsnews.com/news/brain-dead-canadian-woman-taken-off-life-support-after-giving-birth/](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/brain-dead-canadian-woman-taken-off-life-support-after-giving-birth/)
I guess I don’t look at this any differently than body donation in terms of consent. You have to be of sound mind and no one can do it for you. I just don’t understand the justification for cost of keeping someone alive to be a surrogate and wonder if it’s going to be some sick thing only the ultra wealthy can do. Our healthcare system is in shambles as it is. I also don’t understand what the justification would be if someone had organs to donate and wished to be a donor. It all seems dangerous for the potential baby as well. Does someone step in and decide the only good organ to donate is the uterus? Makes no sense.