Katherine Taylor is a lawyer and ethicist who teaches at the College of Nursing and Health Professions at Drexel University. She specializes in reproductive and clinical ethics.
The recent Marlise Munoz case should be a call to action for anyone who believes that pregnant women and their families deserve respect. More than 30 states have laws that require a pregnant woman to be kept on mechanical support no matter what her living will says, and it is time for that to change.
It is hard to imagine a more absolute denial of a woman’s personhood than depriving her of the right to decide her own future, and then literally using her body without permission as an object for a fetus to grow in. Yet this is exactly what the pregnancy exclusions envision in the 31 states that have passed them.
