Many years ago my father had a stroke. His heart stopped beating and the emergency room doctors got it going again with the electro-shock paddles. For the next 10 days he lay in the intensive care section of St. Elizabeth’s with only an IV tube providing nourishment. He was breathing on his own, but had no other responses. He was in a vegetative state. I went into a stoic mode to be a stable source for my mother who was completely distraught. I found myself praying for his final death to relieve my mother’s suffering, because I knew that my father was not inside any more. I don’t know if there was the term ‘brain dead’ ever mentioned. Stopping the IV fluid was not discussed or brought up.
For Jahni’s case, the decision is for her parents, not the hospital.
I respectfully disagree. The question of whether Jahni is dead or not dead, is, like the question of whether an embyro is or is not a living human being, a matter of scientific fact. People may want to debate it, but ultimately it comes down to observable scientific criteria.
Jahni is dead because she has no blood circulation to any part of her brain and no electrical activity in the whole brain, causing total and irreversible cessation of brain function.
Her mortal remains cannot do anything a living body can do. It cannot do anything but decompose.
This is dreadfully painful for her parents, but they must keep in mind that it is no act of respect to ventilate a corpse until it rots off the table. And it is a Corporal Work of Mercy --- and a moral obligation --- to bury the dead.
That’s sort of like the argument for sexual identity. Just allow people to make up their own reality? It’s BS. Doctors pronounce people dead not family. I do feel sorry for the family but dead is dead. At some point this family has to accept it.