Dead mother to be kept alive

Press, 28 July 1986, Page 8

Dead mother to be kept alive

NZPA-AP , Augusta, Georgia A Georgia hospital caught in a dispute between the husband of a brain-dead woman and the father of her 21-week-old unborn child has won a court order to keep the woman alive so it has a chance of survival.

Superior Court Judge William Fleming granted University Hospital’s request for an order to continue life-support for Donna Piazzi, aged 25, who has been in hospital since an apparent drug overdose on June 27.

Her husband and hospital officials had asked to turn off her life-support systems but David Hadden, who says he is the baby’s father, asked them to keep her alive. Doctors have determined that Mrs Piazzi’s brain has stopped functioning, leaving her clinically dead.

She is being kept alive by respirator and intravenous feeding, according to Court papers in the case.

The state of Georgia, represented by its Assistant Attorney-General, Mr David Will, asked Judge Fleming to dismiss the case. The courts had no jurisdiction until the child was sufficiently developed to survive outside the womb, he said.

Doctors testified that Mrs Piazzi’s child had not reached that point. She is 17 weeks short of fullterm pregnancy and four weeks short of the earliest point at which doctors consider a fetus to be viable.

Mr Piazzi, who concedes that he is not the father, left the courthouse after the 45-minute hearing without commenting. Mr Hadden declined comment except to say, “just right to life — that’s what I say.”