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Judges to reveal Siamese twins ruling

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LONDON, England -- A British court is to rule on Friday whether doctors should be allowed to separate six-week-old Siamese twins in an operation which will kill one child to allow her sister to live.

A member of the panel of three judges at the Court of Appeal has described the decision facing them as "the most awful dilemma to contemplate."

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

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 their daughters 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.

ALSO Profile: The judges facing 'awful dilemma' Factfile: Conjoined twins

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

An artist's impression of the twins at the centre of the legal and ethical debate

The parents' lawyers have said that if Friday's ruling goes against their beliefs, they will consider further appeals to a higher court -- either Britain's House of Lords or the European Court of Human Rights.

After the birth, at a hospital in Manchester, northern England, on August 8, 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.

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 is 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.

Holding up a photograph of the twins before the court, Lord Justice Brooke, asked: "The difficulty is, what is this creature in the eyes of the law?"

The Christian Institute has said the appeal court judges should not play God. "It can never be right for doctors to kill one person to benefit another," said the Institute's director Colin Hart.

"The twins both share the same heart, lungs and liver, but they are two persons in the sight of God."

The Vatican has said to operate against the parents' wishes would be wrong and has offered the couple and their children a "safe haven" in one of two specialist centres in Italy.

Dr. Richard Nicholson, editor of the Bulletin of Medical Ethics, has said that even 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.

The first attempted separation of conjoined twins took place in 1689 in Switzerland. In Britain, the first known operation in which both twins survived did not take place until 1912.

Reuters contributed to this report.

Catholic church offers 'moral teaching' to twins hearing
September 14, 2000
UK court debates conjoined twins' future
September 6, 2000
Life for one, or death for both?
September 7, 2000
Vatican 'haven' for Siamese twins
August 28, 2000

Court of Appeal
British Medical Association
The Vatican
Conjoined Twins

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