Catholic Medical Quarterly Volume 74(3) Aug 2024
Correspondence
From:Antony Porter,
London,W9 3DA.
Regarding questions about whether or not brain stem death can be equated with death, there is a simple answer. There is ample evidence within healthcare literature that brain-damaged mothers-to-be can still carry and give birth to healthy babies.
Many pregnant women have ended up in a state of brain stem death because of road crashes or drug addiction, sometimes both. Given adequate medical and nursing care they nevertheless have been able to sustain life within their wombs and in due course to give birth.
Clearly, brain stem dead does not mean dead, even though the language of euthanasia utilises other such terms as “terminally ill”, “clinically dead” and even “already dead”. Sometimes the mother is kept alive so that her organs can be removed and reused.
Hospital staff struggle to keep brain-injured mothers alive knowing that once their infants are delivered the mums will be “allowed to die” or to “die with dignity”. It is sometimes reported that they have then undergone “a second death”.
I think that these euphemisms somewhat give the game away, namely that such patients are incurably damaged and are not worth keeping alive unless they can bear children or their organs can be harvested.