Baby Theresa was a medical tragedy, born without a developed brain.

Nevertheless,
Theresa's parents saw their anencephalic baby as a gift of life for other babies in
need of a healthy heart, a liver, a kidney, a lung, eyes.

That bundle of hope held on to life for nine days. Except for the gauze cap on her
head, Baby Theresa looked perfect and peaceful. She was so beautiful. She moved
her tiny fingers and kicked her little feet just like a newborn. When those who loved
her touched her hand, Baby Theresa held their fingers.

Baby Theresa's doctors say her movements were simply reflex actions from a
bundle of tissues, bones and nerves that had only the brain stem to keep the heart
beating and the lungs breathing. They say that, without the rest of the brain, Baby
Theresa most likely could not feel pain or joy.

Two Florida courts ruled that the lack of feeling wasn't enough to allow harvesting
Baby Theresa's organs. For a person to be declared dead in Florida, as in most other
states, all brain activity has to cease.

Nevermind that anencephalic infants rarely live longer than a few days (in half the
cases, no more than a few minutes after birth). Forget what the anguished parents
wanted - to have Baby Theresa give life to others. The law is the law.

But laws aren't always fair or just. Nor is science above the law.

Baby Theresa posed a much greater dilemma for society.

Making an exception for anencephalic babies to be cut open, alive, while their
organs are extracted not only sounds medieval, it makes us wonder what other
exceptions will come next.

"Immediately, one hits the slippery slope and starts looking for other kids who are
almost as bad," George Annas, professor of health law at Boston University Schools
of Medicine and Public Health, told The Associated Press. "It just seems too
horrifying to use other people as means to other people's ends."

Yes, it's horrifying to think about who could be next. Comatose patients? The
severely retarded?

These fears aren't irrational. When Loma Linda University Medical Center began
using babies with anencephaly as potential transplant donors, the hospital had
parents offering babies with less severe deformities for the transplant donation
program. The program was discontinued a year later.

And, yet, many of us see the hope in all the horror that could be. We can't help but
feel that no law can ever dictate what's right in such a case where death, as certain
as it is, carries the possibility of the gift of life, as infintesimal a chance as that
might be.

For Baby Theresa's parents, the horror was staring into their little bundle of hope
and watching it die without a piece of her living on. No law can change that now.
Making an exception for anencephalic babies to be cut open, alive, while their
organs are extracted not only sounds medieval, it makes us wonder what other
exceptions will come next.

"Immediately, one hits the slippery slope and starts looking for other kids who are
almost as bad," George Annas, professor of health law at Boston University Schools
of Medicine and Public Health, told The Associated Press. "It just seems too
horrifying to use other people as means to other people's ends."

Yes, it's horrifying to think about who could be next. Comatose patients? The
severely retarded?

These fears aren't irrational. When Loma Linda University Medical Center began
using babies with anencephaly as potential transplant donors, the hospital had
parents offering babies with less severe deformities for the transplant donation
program. The program was discontinued a year later.

And, yet, many of us see the hope in all the horror that could be. We can't help but
feel that no law can ever dictate what's right in such a case where death, as certain
as it is, carries the possibility of the gift of life, as infintesimal a chance as that
might be.

For Baby Theresa's parents, the horror was staring into their little bundle of hope
and watching it die without a piece of her living on. No law can change that now.