Judges rule Siamese twins can be separated

LONDON, England -- An operation to separate the Siamese twins at the centre of a live-or-die ethical and legal debate in Britain is to be allowed to go ahead, a court has ruled.

The UK Court of Appeal gave its ruling on Friday after being asked to decide whether doctors should be allowed to separate the six-week-old girls in an operation which will kill one child to allow her sister to live.

The appeal court judges had agonised over what they said was an "awful dilemma."

As he arrived at the court to deliver the verdict, Lord Justice Alan Ward, one of the three appeal court judges involved in the decision, said: "It has been excruciatingly difficult.

"One's heart bleeds for the family. Fifty percent of the population will agree with the decision, 50 percent will think we have gone potty."

The conjoined twins, identified only as Mary and Jodie, are joined at the abdomen and share just one heart and one pair of lungs.

They are joined at their lower abdomens, with their heads at the opposite ends of their merged bodies and their legs emerging at right angles from each side.

Their parents, who travelled from their home in the eastern Mediterranean to Britain for the birth, are devout Catholics and have said God, not doctors, should decide whether the twins live or die.

Doctors say both girls will die within months if they are not separated. An operation to separate them would kill the weaker twin Mary, who depends entirely on Jodie for her blood.

The parents now face the option of accepting the Court of Appeal's decision or appealing to a higher court -- either Britain's House of Lords or the European Court of Human Rights.

The couple's lawyers said if the ruling went against their beliefs they will consider a further appeal.

At the Appeal Court, Lord Justice Ward, sitting with Lord Justice Brooke and Lord Justice Robert Walker, said they were being asked to decide: "Do we save Jodie by murdering Mary?"

Central to the court's decision was whether each twin should be legally considered as an individual living human being, or whether the fact that Jodie, the stronger baby, has a heart and lungs gives her more right to life.

Lord Justice Ward said: "Say yes and you murder Mary, say no and you murder Jodie. This is the most awful dilemma to contemplate."

In a statement read in court during the two-week hearing, the parents said: "We came to England to give our babies the very best chance for life in the very best place.

"Now things have gone very badly wrong and we find ourselves in this very difficult situation.

"We believe that nature should take its course. If it's God's will that both our children should not survive then so be it."

The twins were born at St Mary's Hospital, in Manchester, north England, on August 8.

Following the birth, the UK's High Court ruled that the twins should be separated against their parents' wishes, but an appeal was launched to fight that decision.

The Vatican said it was wrong to separate the twins against their parents' wishes and offered a "safe haven" for the family at one of two specialist medical centres in Italy.

Cardinal Ersilio Tonini, Archbishop Emeritis of Ravenna, in north east Italy, and the Vatican's principal commentator on medical ethics, said the offer was an "ethical alternative."

Dr. Richard Nicholson, editor of the Bulletin of Medical Ethics, has said that if the separation of the twins goes ahead, the quality of Jodie's life could be severely affected. "Her prospect of any high quality of life will be very small," he said.

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