Should a Brain-dead Mother Still Deliver a Baby?

What a sad story.

A woman in Texas was 14 weeks pregnant when her husband found her unconscious on their kitchen floor. She was rushed to the hospital but declared brain-dead two days later.

Then a legal battle started over the baby she was carrying.

Her family wanted to take her off the ventilators that were keeping her body going, but the hospital said a state law required them to keep giving care to a pregnant woman. The law was intended to protect the unborn. The machines supported the baby’s life for two months, and the battle went to court.

Just about a week ago, the judge ordered to remove the machines and let the baby die.

The family argued that the fetus wasn’t viable, and the hospital was keeping the woman’s body on machines for no reason. Yet look at this almost-identical case in Hungary:

A baby was born to a brain-dead mother in Hungary after she was kept in a vegetative state for three months – one of few such cases on record, doctors said.

The healthy baby was born this summer via caesarean section after the mother suffered a brain hemorrhage during her 15th week of pregnancy, Bela Fulesdi, president of the Debrecen University’s medical science center, announced Wednesday. The woman was kept alive in order to bring the baby to term.

The baby was born prematurely in the 27th week of pregnancy and weighed just over 3 pounds, but is healthy, Fulesdi said. The infant is now at home with its family.

And there’s a dad in Canada right now in a similar situation – his wife had a brain aneurysm and is on life support, while he’s waiting for his tiny son to grow big enough to be delivered safely.

I’m not trying to judge the Munoz family who didn’t want the machines. I can’t imagine the feelings they must be going through. We should pray for them in their grief. I just think it’s so sad when someone doesn’t see the possibility of life in an unborn child, and gives up hope.

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