Catholic Online Forum

In a rare procedure, a 26-year-old woman who had been declared brain dead gave birth to twins at Spectrum Health Butterworth Hospital in Grand Rapids, Mich.
...
Bolden's family asked doctors "to drop everything we could to save these babies. It wasn't that difficult a call," hospital spokesman Bruce Rossman said. "It required a lot of evaluations and discussions among our staff. They had to at least get to 24 weeks before we could consider delivery."
...
Dr. Cosmas Vandeven, who specializes in high-risk pregnancies at University of Michigan hospital, said Bolden's case is a "very exceptional scenario." He said an important ethical issue in cases like these is whether a brain-dead woman would suffer by being kept on a respirator and undergoing a C-section.

"Almost every parent would give their life for their child," Vandeven said. "But you need to get truly independent opinions: Are we sure we're not causing harm to the mom?"
...

Wonder how much a brain dead victim suffers when they cut out his organs for transplants?

Wonder how much a brain dead victim suffers when they cut out his organs for transplants?

Byrne affirmed that giving pain medication to organ donors is routine. Doctors taking organs from brain-dead donors “have to paralyze them so they don’t move so when they cut into them to take organs, and when they paralyze them without anesthetics, their heart rate goes up and their blood pressure goes up,” he observed. “This is not something that happens to someone who’s truly dead.”

This article was enough to make me turn to my husband and say, I'm no longer willing to be an organ donor."