A Body’s Dignity of a Maternal Brain Dead Mother

When a pregnant woman is declared brain dead and she is keeping alive to have the child, it seems like the right thing to do. The other way to think about it, is the dignity of the mother's diseased body. When a person is declared dead, in our culture, the body is treated with respect and dignity. When you look at these cases, the mother is kept alive to sustain life for a child that might not even make it, the body loses all respect for the life it once had, and it challenges the notion of the idea of brain death.
There is a low susses rate for a child of a maternal brain dead mother for the baby to live. When a woman is declared brain dead they are sent for burial or other final respects. In this case, however, the woman is pregnant and there is a fetus to think about. The problem lies with the susses rate of the child be born or being born without any complications. There are only 5 reported successful cases of brain death births (Lsaacson et al. 1996). The body at this point is just used for an incubator for the unborn child. The rate for the child to come out with no complications or in the body of the mother to produce complications is less than 10% (Lsaacson et al. 1996). Knowing all of this, why would one want to put their body through all of this for such a low success rate with current medical technologies.
“In most human society's death is an extremely important cultural and social phenomenon, sometimes more important than birth” (Ohnuki-Tierney, Angrosino, & Daar et al. 1994). In the United States of America, when a body dies it is cherished, mourned over, and given respect by the ones that knew the person. It is sent to the morgue and from there the family decides how the body should be buried or cremated based on...

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...edical technology advancing the way it is and the ability to keep someone’s body alive after death has been declared than the definition of death needs to be changed accordingly. While there are upside o keeping the body alive, in the case of giving the fetus a chance to live, there are still too many downsides.

Works Cited

Daniel Sperling, “MATERNAL BRAIN DEATH”, American Journal of Law and Medicine 30 (2004): 453-500.
Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, Michael V. Angrosino, Carl Becker, A. S. Daar, Takeo Funabiki and Marc I. Lorber,” Brain Death and Organ Transplantation: Cultural Bases of Medical Technology”, Current Anthropology 35 (1994).
Esser A. Respekt vor dem toten Körper, “Deutsche Zeitschrift für” Philosophie 56 (2008): 119-134.
Nicole Isaacson, “The "Fetus-Infant": Changing Classifications of "In Utero" Development in Medical Texts”, Sociological Forum 11 (1996).