Life support ends for pregnant Irish woman declared clinically dead…

Life support ends for pregnant Irish woman declared clinically dead… December 26, 2014

The case has polarized Ireland, where abortion is still illegal.

Details, from the Associated Press: 

A clinically dead pregnant Irishwoman was removed from life support Friday after a Dublin court ruled that her 18-week-old fetus also was doomed to die. The case highlighted fear and confusion among doctors over how to observe Ireland’s ban on abortion, the strictest such law in Europe, in an age of medical innovation.

The three-judge Dublin High Court ruled that all artificial support for the woman, aged in her late 20s with two young children, should end more than three weeks after she was declared clinically dead. Relatives of the woman, whose identity was concealed by the court, gathered at a hospital in the Irish Midlands to bid a final farewell.

The woman suffered irreversible brain death Dec. 3 four days after suffering a severe head injury in a fall. She already had been hospitalized after doctors found a cyst in her brain.

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…The Catholic Church, a key backer of Ireland’s abortion ban, questioned why secular authorities had not established clear guidelines for cases where the woman dies and doctors determine that the fetus can’t survive on its own.

“There is no obligation to use extraordinary means to maintain a life. That applies both to the woman and to the child,” Dublin Archbishop Diarmuid Martin said.

“A woman isn’t simply an incubator. The relation between a woman and a child is a relationship, and it is very clear that one has to examine at what stage is this fetus, what are the possibilities,” he said.

The teaching on end-of-life issues, from the Catechism via EWTN’s website: 

2278. Discontinuing medical procedures that are burdensome, dangerous, extraordinary, or disproportionate to the expected outcome can be legitimate; it is the refusal of “over-zealous” treatment. Here one does not will to cause death; one’s inability to impede it is merely accepted. The decisions should be made by the patient if he is competent and able or, if not, by those legally entitled to act for the patient, whose reasonable will and legitimate interests must always be respected.

The key principle in this statement is that one does not will to cause death. When a person has an underlying terminal disease, or their heart, or some other organ, cannot work without mechanical assistance, or a therapy being proposed is dangerous, or has little chance of success, then not using that machine or that therapy results in the person dying from the disease or organ failure they already have. The omission allows nature to takes its course. It does not directly kill the person, even though it may contribute to the person dying earlier than if aggressive treatment had been done.

Photo: from Archdiocese of Dublin


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