ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the legal and ethical issues surrounding the maintenance of pregnancy in brain dead women. Since the late 1970s an increasing number of brain dead or comatose women have been, in the words of some members of the medical profession, ‘aggressively managed’ in order to maintain their pregnancies for as long as possible. Any attempt to justify continued interventions upon the corpse of a pregnant woman based on the separate interests of the fetus in surviving and being born opens the floodgates to restrictions upon the personal freedom of choice and bodily integrity of women. A diagnosis of death has consequences which must be considered in general terms before a consideration of the dead pregnant woman can begin. The standing of the woman is unaffected by the fact that she is carrying a fetus, and her agreement to treatment will be respected in the same way as would be that of a non-pregnant woman or a man.
