Tragedy: A chareidi woman hospitalized at Tel Hashomer Hospital due to a medical problem related to her pregnancy refused to connect to the monitor on Shabbos for fear of Chilul Shabbos – and after Shabbos it became clear that the fetus had died, Yediot Achronot reports on Wednesday, 5 Cheshvan.
The woman, in her 30s, was hospitalized in the past few days due to a medical problem. When she was required by the medical staff to connect to the monitor, as part of the treatment, she refused to do so.
On motzei Shabbos, the woman was connected to the monitor to check the fetal pulse, but then, unfortunately, the tragedy was realized as the baby was pulseless.
At Tel Hashomer Hospital, they explained that they had responded to the woman’s demand not to connect to the monitor because there were no signs of fetal distress, so the law did not allow her to undergo treatment against her will.
It was also reported that despite her objections, the medical team again recommended that she undergo the examination, but the woman persisted in her refusal.
According to the report in Yediot Achronot, there is no suspicion of negligence on the part of the hospital.
(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
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20 Responses
Sick and getting sicker!
I guess pikuach nefesh is now only an optional law…appearing to be frum is more important…another rung in the ladder of the misguided who believe that chazal were not frum enough
ya thats a pure dioraisa of v’chai bahem.
maybe she was misguided though or in the rush of the moment her decision making was skewed.
nebach feel bad for her.
to clarify-she might not be a radical ”chareidi” bc she most likely is very sad about the death and realized her mistake.
if she still stands by her decision now then yeah thats wrong i think
Effie, there was no sign of fetal distress, so why was it “pikuach nefesh” ?
As much as I feel for the parents, I wonder… when will they (& others) be frum enough? Burqas aren’t enough? What is?
Self inflicted tragedy…
@Takes2 and @Effie,
It obviously wasn’t pikuach nefesh or the hospital would have insisted. It would have been best practice, so they recommended it, but not actually pikuach nefesh. As the article states “there were no signs of fetal distress”.
Perhaps you are both poskim and hold its still pikuach nefesh. Or perhaps where you’re coming from is frum-bashing
Memories are extremely short, and she already forgot Kerias haTotrah from Yom-Kippur Mincho:- וחי בהם
An interesting juxtaposition of stories which just illustrates how clever the יצר הרע can be …
חסיד שוטה. Now a רוצח
you misguided jews… you probably give so much nachas to Hkb”H with your hatred for anything that smells charedi!!!
just daven that these things do not happen to YOU
just btw, had she connected to the monitor, the baby would still be alive???? no! b/c this is what Hashem wanted to happen. it’s just sad that it happened the way it did!
Takes2 & Effie-
Tragic, but why so hard on her?
When i first saw the headline i thought and felt the same as you.
But then I actually read the article which says “there were no signs of fetal distress”. Its not so clear that she was as negligent as you think.
There is a saying, quoted in the name of various tzaddikim.
פרום is roshei taivos for פיל רשעות וויניג מצות.
The idea of frum has morphed into something that the Torah cannot identify. If we fail to return to what HKB”H wants, and are subservient to an obsession to be more “frum”, we will find results that are horrific.
Effie- I saw the headline and came here to say the same things you said. Then I read the article “because there were no signs of fetal distress”. I can no longer comment. From the text of the article, this doesn’t seem to be a case of being too frum, rather an unfortunate situation that happened over Shabbos.
Safek pekuch nefesh is דוחה. Stop hocking. besides, She was not doing any outright chillul shabos by having someone else put her on a monitor. Shes is a chasid shoyta of the first class.
Wonder if her family is affiliated with peleg d-ass taaayroh
It’s not necessarily pikuach nefesh but she should have had a monitor. Why did she go to the hospital on Shabbos if there wasn’t an issue? I was in Maayanei Hayeshua over a Shabbos and you can bet I was placed on a monitor at intervals even though there was a slim chance of me actually going into labor. Yes, it was done with shinui, grama, etc but it was still done meaning it was necessary. If it’s necessary, then it’s NOT chilul Shabbos
Do we know the child was not already dead??
It says she was hospitalized due to a medical condition. It does not say that the medical condition related specifically to the fetus but does say there was no signs of fetal distress. I might not have done the same, but just because she is more frum than I am doesn’t make her a chasid shotah or rodeph or anything else implied in these comments. It also doesn’t discuss whether she asked a Rov. Nice that you are making assumptions and judging her ONLY because she is chareidi….
Most normal mothers would have taken every possible precautionary step to protect the fetus, without regard to any other concern. That is a normal and healthy maternal instinct. Something is very wrong here.. What possible harm could result from “monitoring” even if there was only a 1 in 100 risk of fetal distress. She should be comforted for her loss and hopefully have another opportunity to have a child if that is her and her husband’s wish.
Yes, it seems that this poor woman made a mistake and that her mistake may have stemmed, as many commentators here have claimed, from a misguided sense of frumkeit but – ribono shel olam! – she just lost her child in a terrible tragedy: can we not stop and have rachmanut on her and commiserate with her on her loss? The LAST thing that she needs is to hear that people are beating her up on the internet. She will likely be doing that to herself for the rest of her life, nebech.