Irish court rules brain-dead pregnant woman may die

The High Court in Dublin, Ireland's second highest, ruled on Friday that doctors may remove the brain-dead woman from life support, as her 18-week-old fetus would stand no chance of surviving birth. Lawyers appointed to represent the rights of both the woman and her unborn child said they would not appeal the decision. Under Ireland's constitution, the woman and the fetus have an equal right to life.

The three judges who handed down the decision accepted medical evidence that the condition of the woman, whose identity was concealed by the court to protect her privacy, was "deteriorating rapidly" and that the fetus had "no realistic prospect of emerging alive."

"To maintain and continue the present somatic support for the mother would deprive her of dignity in death and subject her father, her partner and her young children to unimaginable distress," the ruling said.

'Legal consequences feared'

It also described the medical care that she has received since she was declared clinically dead, amounted to "a futile exercise which commenced only because of fears held by medical specialists of potential legal consequences."

Doctors declared the woman clinically dead on December 3, four days after she suffered a fall in which she sustained a severe head in jury. However, doctors had rejected the pleas of the woman's family to remove her from life support.

The Irish health service welcomed Friday's decision and in a statement it expressed its "deepest sympathy to the family ... in the tragic and extremely difficult situation they have found themselves in."

Broad wording blamed

Observers have blamed the broad wording of the Irish constitution's eighth amendment, which bans abortion for the confusion in this case and have also warned that it could lead to similar situations in future.

"As long as the eighth amendment remains in the constitution in its present form, the possibility of such a deeply tragic and private case being decided in the very public and distressing surroundings of the courts will be present," Conor O'Mahony, a senior lecturer in constitutional law at University College Cork argued in an analysis of Friday's ruling.

pfd/sb (AP, AFP)