The High Court authorised an emergency blood transfusion for a three-month-old baby after finding that the treatment was clinically necessary to address an imminent threat to the child’s life and welfare.
Mr Justice Hogan delivered the judgment on 12 January 2011, explaining an order he had made after an emergency hearing in the early hours of 27 December 2010. The hearing took place at his private residence because of the urgency, the late hour and heavy snow in Dublin. The judge said it could not practicably be held in open court.
The child, identified as Baby AB, had acute bronchiolitis and was transferred to Children’s University Hospital, Temple Street, in the early hours of 26 December. The judgment said the baby’s condition deteriorated, including an episode in which he stopped breathing and had to be resuscitated. His haemoglobin was falling, impairing the delivery of oxygen to vital organs. The treating consultant, Dr Kevin Carson, gave evidence that the baby’s life was in danger, that no medical alternative to transfusion was available and that action was needed within hours.
The parents, identified as CD and EF, opposed a transfusion on religious grounds as Jehovah’s Witnesses. They had consented earlier that day to certain blood products, but the hospital said those were insufficient. The parents attended the hearing in person and said the time constraints had prevented them from obtaining legal representation. The judge described their beliefs as sincere and noted their concern for their child.
Hogan J held that the State could intervene in exceptional circumstances where a child’s life and vital interests were at stake. He granted a declaration that it was lawful for the hospital to administer a transfusion and associated blood products in the particular clinical circumstances before him.
The declaration was expressly limited to those clinical events. The judge said it did not give clinicians an open-ended entitlement to administer treatment to Baby AB in future regardless of the parents’ wishes and beliefs. He also made an order under section 27 of the Civil Law (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2008 prohibiting publication or broadcast of material likely to identify the baby. The judgment used random letters for the child and parents to preserve their anonymity.