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Originally Posted by allaboutmusic
I suppose the natural question to ask then is... what if she had required the transfusion BEFORE giving birth, and if the refusal subsequently caused the death of her twins? Assuming she survived, would she be held responsible for the death of her children?
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There are so many "ifs" here that we've pulled away from reality and into an alternate universe. I'm comfortable with that, but want to acknowledge that what I'm about to say has little basis in the actual facts of this matter.
If she had required a transfusion prior to birth and if she had refused it and if one or both of the babies had died and if she had survived (that's 4x removed from reality), then I suppose that she could have been held legally/criminally responsible. I'm not familiar enough with the British legal system to tell you one way or the other. To add another diversion, if she had been in the US, I suppose that an overzealous prosector could have put her on trial, but I cannot really envision a guilty verdict since I imagine that most conceivable juries would have at least one member that would think she'd been punished enough by the death of her child.
Just because she was a Jehovah's Witness doesn't mean that she didn't love her unborn children and want to be a part of their lives. In her mind, she put her life in God's hands. As an uninterested agnostic, I would say that she played the odds and lost, but what I think is simply Monday-morning quarterbacking.