High Court grants hospital permission to give blood to Jehovah's Witness child

The High Court has granted a Dublin maternity hospital orders allowing it to perform, if required, an emergency blood transfusion to the unborn child of a Jehovah's Witnesses couple who is at risk of being delivered prematurely.

Today the court heard the child's mother, who is approximately 26 weeks pregnant, presented to the Coombe Maternity Hospital in recent days with a spontaneous premature ruptured membrane.