The pregnant brain dead and the fetus: must we always try to wrest life from death?

This article deals with the ever more timely and often vexing topic of maintaining a brain-dead mother as an incubator for her developing offspring. It explores the issue by: (1) reviewing the history of the problem and the "state of the art" today, (2) examining the moral problem of using brain-dead persons as incubators for potential or actual others, (3) searching for moral differences between maternal death early or late in pregnancy, and (4) presenting a possible resolution in such tragic cases. It concludes that (1) a moral necessity to deliver viable infants from brain-dead mothers exists; (2) the farther from viability brain death occurs, the more maintaining the mother as an incubator resembles experimental therapy with its imperative for careful, informed consent; (3) experimental therapy not being morally necessary, its proceeding under these tragic circumstances should invoke community support for the next of kin in dealing with the immediate and long-term costs; (4) all ethical problems proceed in a context to which the moral actors must be sensitive and one that alters the conclusions made.