does it matter whether the fetus is alive or not in your opinion? no it doesn t. obviously this is a law that was designed by proxy to deal with the abortion issue in texas. that s what it is. so all they re trying to do here in texas in this hospital is they re misreading the law number one. they re trying to get the fetus to a period of time where or a point at which there s going to be an issue. these lawyers obviously, i think, are the lawyers for the family how are they misreading the law? you re saying the law is written for you re saying they re misreading the law the law is for people in a persistent vegetative state or comma not brain-dead. right. in every state-of-the-union this woman is considered dead. she s brain did. that s condition of death. the only reason they are interpreting this law to say they ve got to keep her there is that she is alive. she s not alive. under any definition in any state in the united states, because of the abortion controversy that
played out. the sooner the lawyers get into court the better. because they don t want to get into a situation where this is going to become an abortion issue even more so than it is. it s sort of interesting that you re tossing out abortion and the term abortion. that s really a red herring here, anderson. this is a wanted pregnancy. she was 14 weeks pregnant. there was never any discussion of abortion. so to sort of inject that in here really intellectually dishonest. you don t believe this law was written in response to an attempt to kind of put limits on abortion in the state of texas? no, i don t. and i think when you look at the law, and i have, they re talking about situations that oftentimes happen where you have a woman who is pregnant, there s a wanted pregnancy, and something unfortunately happens. it s happened before. persistent vegetative state or coma which is different than brain-dead which is dead. why have there been 30 cases of brain-dead women that have giv
so make it plain, what is the law? how does it read? if somebody is in a persistent vegetative state, in a coma, not when somebody is clinically dead. you can t say we re talking about life support, when every state in the union defines her as dead. do you think this will be reversed in a court? i don t know. i think particularly in texas, where there is this intense opposition to abortion and anything that would limit the life of a fetus, i wouldn t want to predict how this would come out. how can a dead person bring a live baby to birth? there are two categories of death. brain death, which she is, and then there is circulatory, whether you have the vascular we re talking about semantics. the bottom line is, you have a child because i disagree with you, jeff. a 20-week-old. they don t know, because they
i don t think i should or you should, i think the father of the husband should. the law, if you read the law, i think it s clear that the hospital is misinterpreting this. the guy that wrote the law, or one of the guys involved in writing the law said that they re misapplying the law. if you just read the text of the law, this is the hospital is dead wrong. so make it plain, what is the law? how does it read? if somebody is in a persistent vegetative state, in a coma, not when somebody is clinically dead. you can t say we re talking about life support, when every state in the union defines her as dead. do you think this will be reversed in a court? i don t know. i think particularly in texas,
take place in terms of affecting her prognosis. it s a tough thing to hear, a tough thing to say, frankly, but that s the truth when it comes to brain death. we are talking about death. this is just another term for it. i mean, is brain death different than a persistent vegetative state or being in a coma? techniciit is, and i know yoe reporting on this as well, anderson, people who have seemingly recovered from deep comas. right. this is different, and terms matter here. people can be in a coma and still have brain activity. they can be in a persistent vegetative state and still have brain activity. with brain death, there is no brain activity. the higher brain functions as well as the lower brain functions, which control your reflexes in terms of breathing, controlling your heart rate, all these sort of basic functions of the body, that part s not working anymore. the only way that you have any of those functions at all is artificially through these machines. her family, th