Abstract
I would deny that a woman who is pregnant with an anencephalic fetus has an obligation to continue the pregnancy in order to provide organs for transplant. Furthermore, if a woman in this situation were to ask me for advice about doing so, I would counsel against it. However, if I were consulted by an obstetrician with a patient who had already made up her mind and was determined to continue such a pregnancy for such a purpose, I would urge the physician to cooperate with her in this attempt (with certain qualifications to be explained below). To put my position in another way, I am convinced that there is no duty on the part of the mother to provide organs in this way; I am not even convinced that it is a wise thing for her to do; but I see no reason for saying that it would be wrong, if the woman strongly wanted to do so and understood what she was getting into.
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Notes and References
D. Alan Shewmon (1988) Anencephaly: Selected Medical Aspects. Hastings Center Report 18: 5, 11–19.
lbid., p. 15.
bid.
Ibid., p. 16.
Shewmon, pp. 14–15; cf D. Alan Shewmon (1988) Caution in the Definition and Diagnosis of Infant Brain Death, in Medical Ethics: A Guide for Health Professionals,(John F. Monagle and David C. Thomasma, eds.), Aspen Publishers, Rockville, MD, pp. 38–67, especially p. 49.
Cf In re Quinlan,70 NJ, 10, 355 A2d 647; In re Conroy,98 NJ, 321, 486 A2nd 1209 (1985).
Susan Tefft Nicholson (1978) Abortion and the Roman Catholic Church,Religious Ethics, Knoxville, TN, pp. 53–54, 57,58.
Cf Richard B. Brandt (1979) A Theory of the Good and the Right, Clarendon Press, Oxford, especially p. 113ff.
1n re Conroy, at 1229.
James K. Walters and Stephen Ashwal (1988) Organ Prolongation in Anencephalic Infants: Ethical and Medical Issues, Hastings Center Report 18:5, pp. 22,23. “Ibid., p. 23.
For example, see President’s Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical and Behavioral Research (1981) Defining Death,US Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, pp. 38–40.
This may be so for at least three reasons: a) as Shewmon indicates in the articles cited above, some definitions of anencephaly allow for the diagnosis when some upper-brain tissue is present; b) even if the diagnostic category of anencephaly is narrowed to rule out any upper brain tissue, there may be misdiagnoses in some cases; and c) as Shewmon also argues, it is possible that some upper brain function will be manifest within brain stem tissue in anencephalic newborns.
Alexander M. Capron (1987) Anencephalic Donors: Separate the Dead from the Dying, Hastings Center Report,17:1, p. 7.
Norman Fost (1988) Organs from Anencephalic Infants: An Idea Whose Time Has Not Yet Come, Hastings Center Report, 18: 5, p. 6.
Ellen Goodman (1988) Giving Birth to an Organ Donor, Star/Tribune,December 12, 1987, A17; quoted in J. C. Willke, and Dave Andrusko, Personhood Redux
Hastings Center Report 18:5, p. 33.
J. C. Willke and Dave Andrusko (1988) Personhood Redux, Hastings Center Report 18: 5, p. 33.
The truth of the latter prediction might also be questioned, as it is by the Ethics and Social Impact Committee of the Transplant Policy Center: “It is now plain that members of the public who attend to such matters very generally endorse the use of anencephalics as donors, and applaud and honor the parents of such newborns when they seek to recapture, by donation, some great good through their pain.” (Ethics and Social Policy Committee, (1988) Anencephalic Infants as Sources of Transplantable Organs, Hastings Center Report Transplant Policy Center, Ann Arbor, Michigan, Hastings Center Report 18:5, p. 30.
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Graber, G.C. (1990). Should Abnormal Fetuses Be Brought to Term for the Sole Purpose of Providing Infant Transplant Organs?. In: Humber, J.M., Almeder, R.F. (eds) Biomedical Ethics Reviews · 1989. Biomedical Ethics Reviews. Humana Press, Totowa, NJ. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-59259-444-3_1
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