"On the Side of Life"

Mrs. James L. Jones, 25-year-old mother of a small child, was in a Washington, D.C., hospital dying of a bleeding ulcer. Doctors were convinced that a blood transfusion was necessary to save her life. But the hospital needed her consent or her husband's, and both refused to say yes; as Jehovah's Witnesses, they believed that transfusions were contrary to the will of God.

The hospital called in Washington Lawyer Edward Bennett Williams, who brought the problem to Judge J. Skelly Wright of the U.S. Court of Appeals. After a hearing in the hospital. Judge Wright authorized a transfusion, and the patient recovered. It would almost seem that everyone had won. Mrs. Jones was alive and, since the transfusion was involuntary, no damage had been done to her conscience.

But Mrs. Jones is a woman of strong principles. In an effort to have Judge Wright's order overturned, she appealed for a hearing by the full, nine-member bench of the Court of Appeals. In varying language the judges agreed that "there is nothing to rehear." Mrs. Jones had left the hospital, Judge Wright's order had expired, the case had become what lawyers call "moot," meaning that a decision would not have any practical consequences. But not one of his colleagues voiced agreement with Judge Wright's original action.

One felt that Wright had exceeded his authority and urged that his order "be expunged so that there would be nothing in our records which could be cited as a precedent." Three others held that the "right to be let alone," enunciated by the late Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, covers "a great many foolish, unreasonable and even absurd ideas which do not conform, such as refusing medical treatment, even at great risk."

Offered the opportunity of hindsight,

Judge Wright announced that if he had it to do all over again--he would do it again. In an 18-page opinion, he eloquently defended his transfusion order. If it is unlawful for a parent to abandon a child, he argued, can a judge permit the ultimate abandonment of a child by the mother's voluntary death? If suicide is illegal, can a judge permit a hospital patient to choose death by refusing medical treatment? "I determined to act on the side of life." Mrs. Jones remains unconvinced. At week's end she was talking of taking her case to the Supreme Court.

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