Texas Husband Named Brain-Dead Wife's Fetus

Before a Texas hospital took his pregnant wife off life support Sunday, Erick Munoz asked doctors to do one last sonogram. "They think it was a female," Munoz tells the AP of the 23-week-old fetus, his second child with Marlise Munoz. He named the fetus Nicole, Marlise's middle name. Munoz, who sued to have his brain-dead wife removed from life support, had earlier said his training as a paramedic convinced him the fetus would not have had a good quality of life had it been born, having gone without oxygen for hours after Marlise's collapse in November.

Though he's heard negative comments about his decision to remove his wife from life support—the fetus was not delivered first—Munoz tells WFAA-TV, "I'm just glad they are not in my shoes. I hope every day that no one ever has to go through what I went through." Marlise will be cremated, and Munoz says he hopes to someday make her biggest dream come true—she wanted to ride in an F-16 fighter jet. For now, he's trying to forget the way he last saw his wife; he visited her every day for 62 days while she was in the hospital. "I have to fight those images. The way I fight them is I go to the videos and I go to the pictures," he says. "I go to the memories." (More brain dead stories.)