Brain dead 26-year-old forced onto life-support for 4-weeks.

Declared DEAD on December 3. But because of being 15 weeks pregnant she was needlessly kept alive on life-support for 4 weeks.

A what point does the egg and
sperm result in a human being?

Did this lady have any sentience during these last four weeks? Did she suffer needlessly? Is a fifteen week old foetus a human being? Or is it a group of cells that has the potential to become human?

I believe a 15 week old foetus is a group of chemicalized atoms that has human potential. That it has no self-awareness or sense-of-self until birth. That it’s an extension of the mother until it’s born and breathes and lives on its own. Many others believe that a foetus is human from the point of conception. It’s a bit like arguing whether it was the chicken or the egg that came first. A lot of things aren’t clear cut and never will be; philosophers will argue about them until the end of time.

Another that isn’t clear cut is whether or not the brain-dead 26-year-old woman had some sentience during her last four weeks. She may well have realised deep in her consciousness that her position was dire and that her foetus would never be born. Considering this woman was biologically programmed to protect her foetus, and give it every chance of life, this would have been extremely hard on her. Or to put another way, she’d have suffered greatly.

Unconsciousness and brain death
doesn’t necessarily mean
non-sentience.

A long time ago I was for a short time considered by hospital staff to be dead or just about to die. A nurse couldn’t find a pulse at my wrist and a doctor suggested she try further up my arm. Having no success anywhere on my arm she tried my neck and eventually found a pulse there. The medical staff didn’t expect me to make it through the next 5 hours but, needless to say, I did1.

The reason I mention this is because during that time I could hear, with a crystal clearness, every word that was mentioned in my presence: the search for a pulse, the instruction to call the hospital’s priest, the priest’s prayers, the last rites, advice to inform my family that I probably wouldn't live till morning. I heard practically everything.

I suspect the medical staff weren’t aware that I could hear them and that I could didn’t bother me in the least. It wasn’t because I was brave, fearless or stoic – if I were to be publicly hung I’d rather use the toilet first; I wouldn’t want to disgrace myself by fearfully crapping in my trousers while the rope was being put round my neck. I suspect that some part of my brain knew that night I wasn’t going to die and got busy releasing endorphins which kept me relaxed.

Death’s greatest terror is
knowing its arrival is imminent.

But the question is: did this 26-year-old woman with a foetus in her womb lie there for four-weeks and hear the switching off of her life-support being debated? Did she spend almost a month knowing that she and her foetus – which wouldn’t have had a chance of surviving outside the womb until at least 24 weeks old – could be given that final push into oblivion at any time? If she did that would have been four-weeks of hell on earth.

This 26-year-old and her foetus when it was determined she couldn’t sustain life any longer should have got a dignified and palliated transition into eternity. She didn’t get that, in fact she got quite the opposite, a needlessly prolonged death while possibly having been aware of her and her foetus’ dire and unsavable situation.

What’s lamentable about her needlessly drawn-out demise is that she could only be given peace after a wrangle through Ireland’s high court. It’s disgraceful that in 2014 there’s still a European country where the legislature adheres to a medieval Catholicism.

And all this not long after another young mother was practically manslaughtered in University Hospital in Galway city. The doctors in this hospital could have saved Savita Halappanavar’s life if they terminated her pregnancy but didn’t due to Ireland’s antediluvian and Catholic endorsed laws. (They’d ban condoms in Africa, a country ravaged with AIDs. How worldly wise and compassionate is the pensioners that rule the Vatican?)

In any country where a precedent such as Savita Halappanavar had been set and where the lives of other young women were at risk the legislature would be off their butts and sorting out the mess. But not in Ireland, here case after case arises and doctors, scared of the Vatican’s wrath, are fearful to save lives by aborting foetuses or of offering palliative care lest they be charged with murder.

What the people of Ireland need to realise is that the legislature and politicians work for them and not the Vatican. They need to remember that it’s them who vote their governments into power, that it’s the voters who are boss and paymasters. And after almost a century of independence with one imbecilic debacle following another it’s about time the people of Ireland founded a little pride in themselves and in their country.

Irish leader, Charles J. Haughey,
gave two fingers to his people, to
Europe and to any form of decency.

And what of the Irish media? Why aren’t they leading the charge in kicking this medieval backwardness out of the political classes? Or is it still as it was in the 1980s when the unbelievably corrupt Charles J. Haughey (pictured right) ruled the roost – the biggest arsehole that ever led a sovereign nation. 

This man, in the vein of many Irish politicians, had a profligacy that’s make the president of Zimbabwe puke. If that wasn’t bad enough, he also thought of himself as being regal. Haughey and his elected Irish cronies viewed themselves as pre-revolution French royalty did and their incompetence and corruption kept Ireland at least 6 decades behind the rest of the developed world.

While this and masses of child sex abuse was going on not one Irish newspaper, TV station or radio programme alluded to it. And they all knew, every one of them. They were all part of the clique, the establishment and they wouldn’t squeal on their own kind.

_________________________________________ 1How the natives and large numbers of moronic bullies in Cork will lament that.