The fetus developing inside the dead body of Marlise Munoz is severely deformed, according to lawyers for Munoz’s family. Munoz, a former paramedic, died of a pulmonary embolism in November, but her body has been artificially ventilated against her wishes and the wishes of her family because of a Texas law that requires a hospital to continue all life-saving treatment on a pregnant woman. Lawyers for the family argue that since Munoz is already legally dead, the law is irrelevant in this case.

By publicizing the dire prognosis of the fetus, which is said to be so severely malformed as to make it impossible to determine its sex, the family’s lawyers may be laying the groundwork for Munoz’s husband to authorize an abortion past Texas’s new 20-week ban. The ban makes exceptions for severe fetal anomaly. If the hospital wants to treat Munoz’s body as if it were a living patient, then it should fall to her husband, as her next of kin, to make medical decisions on her behalf, including the decision of whether to continue the pregnancy to term. If Munoz were no longer pregnant, her body could be withdrawn from the ventilator.