News

Mother gives up her own life to save her unborn child

14 Comments

Totally awesome story from the Daily Signal.

Excerpt:

In a selfless act, a mother from Aurora, Colo., made a decision during childbirth that put the life of her unborn baby son before her own. That decision ultimately ended her life while saving her seven-pound, four-ounce “miracle.”

“How do I explain to him that his mom is gone giving birth to him?” the woman’s husband, Wes Bugal, asked in an interview with NBC 9 News in Aurora. “I think about that all the time. How do I explain when he asks where’s Mommy?”

Karisa Bugal died Nov. 4, hours after giving birth the day before to the couple’s second child, a son named Declan. She had developed a rare complication called amniotic fluid embolism, which causes protective fluids around a baby to escape into the mother’s body, resulting in a breakdown of her organs.

After medical staff informed Bugal of the danger the embolism posed, she had two options: undergo surgery that could save her life but endanger Declan, whose heart rate had begun to dip, or get a Caesarean section to save her unborn baby’s life but put her own at risk.

Bugal chose the second option, a decision that a few hours later resulted in her death.

Friends set up a fundraiser page to help Wes Bugal raise the couple’s two children. In just one day, the site surpassed its goal of $20,000.

What a loss for the husband, though. Devastating.

14 thoughts on “Mother gives up her own life to save her unborn child”

  1. I wonder what the other surgery was. I thought emergency cesarean delivery was one of the main treatments for amniotic fluid embolism. How sad for the children to lose their mother and the husband to lose his wife.

    Like

    Reply

  2. Reblogged this on Patriactionary and commented:
    WK has filed this under ‘Heroic’ and ‘Choose Life’.

    I certainly think the mother was selfless, and was following her maternal instincts, and she certainly made a difficult decision, and gave all for her child. I cannot fault her on any of those grounds, and I don’t wish to be uncharitable towards someone who sacrificed herself.

    But I also wouldn’t fault any pregnant woman who chose differently, either. As a Christian, I’m opposed to abortion, for the sake of ‘convenience’, as a substitute form of birth control after the fact; I’m not opposed to abortion for what I consider a legitimate medical reason: to save the life of a mother. If one has a situation like this, where there is a clear-cut choice to save only one of two lives, and the other one would be lost, I see little moral difference from, say, shooting a would-be murderer in self-defense or defense of others. Most of us do not find it morally objectionable for one to opt to save oneself in that scenario, or save others’ lives, as a policeman may have to do to stop an armed killer. And while this is a different scenario, with an innocent unborn child not intending to kill his / her mother, it ends up practically at the same place: to save the life of one individual, the other must die.

    And what is the result in this tragic situation?

    A man is without the love of his life, his dear wife, and now has to raise a child without a mother, by himself, unless and until such time as he might remarry.

    Devastating, indeed.

    Had she lived, they might have had another child or children together later, as many couples who’ve experienced miscarriages have indeed done. The unintended loss of an unborn child is tragic, but it’s not the end of the world. I think if I were married, and my wife expecting, I’d rather lose my unborn child than my wife, frankly.

    And I don’t think I’m wrong to feel that way. Nor would I think it selfish for a woman to choose to live, for the sake of her husband, and a future together, in such a situation.

    Dare I advance the thesis that in opposing abortion and the ‘culture of death’, that perhaps we may sometimes go too far in the other direction, wanting so much to celebrate a woman choosing to not abort, that we end up effectively endorsing such a decision in situations like this as THE RIGHT CHOICE, as if the opposite choice were wrong, unthinkable, beyond the pale, and of a piece with those who abort for the sake of convenience?

    I do so dare.

    Not that I’m saying that a mother ALWAYS ought to opt, in such a situation, to save her own life rather than give it to save her unborn child, either.

    In this kind of situation, I’m completely pro-choice, in the truest sense of that phrase.

    Like

    Reply

    1. *And yes, I’m fully aware that abortion, as a surgical procedure, was not mentioned, but the effect would have been the same: the surgery that could have saved her life could have killed the unborn child. Functionally, therefore, there is little difference.

      Like

      Reply

      1. Certainly. But that’s slightly different, because an ectopic pregnancy would not only endanger her life but also that of the unborn child – so it’s a much easier decision to make; save one life, rather than losing two.

        Here, we have the trickier scenario, wherein the only way for the mother to save her life would have been to undergo surgery that potentially would have killed her unborn child.

        Again, I don’t condemn her for her choice.

        But I also wouldn’t condemn someone who chose differently, either.

        Like

        Reply

        1. Oh I agree with you in this case. I really do think that this is the standard pro-life position. No one expects a woman to have a baby if there is a risk that the pregnancy will cost her her life.

          Like

          Reply

  3. It’s easy to sit back and armchair this. The truth is that the way it looked , one way or another, someone was going to die. All we can do is grieve with and pray for the family.

    Like

    Reply

  4. I wonder if we will hear half as much about this wonderful, brave mother as we did the one who chose to kill herself at the beginning of the month. *sigh* What a world.

    Like

    Reply

    1. I’ve read a lot about this story… and usually on every social media post of it, there are many commenters thinking/saying that she was actually very selfish in putting the baby before herself. They reason that she was selfish because she left her other child and her husband alone… along with a newborn.

      I just don’t see it that way at all, I think she was self-sacrificing and wonderful – doing what a good mother would always do for her children. It’s amazing to me that many other people don’t see it this way, and actually judge her as being in the wrong to do what she did. …..

      Like

      Reply

    1. … in much the same way Shrillary still thinks the main losers in war are the women and children.

      Sorry for the late reply, WK. FN’s lightning round led me here late.

      Like

      Reply

Leave a comment