Professor Cameron Stewart1
1Sydney Health Law, Australia
Advances in intensive care have made it possible for brain dead pregnant women to be provided with somatic support to enable their fetuses to gestate to the point where they can survive being born. There is a small but growing body of medical evidence surrounding the practice from around the globe. The legal aspects of “posthumous” or “postmortem gestation” remain largely unexplored.
In this presentation, I outline the current state of evidence concerning the practice of postmortem gestation. I then examine a recent Australian case that involved a dispute concerning somatic support being provided to a brain dead woman in the Australian Capital Territory. In the third part of the presentation, I map out the regulatory landscape of postmortem gestation to try and find answers to the question of how the law might approve of such a practice.
Biography:
Professor Cameron Stewart is a member of Sydney Health Law and an associate of Sydney Health Ethics.