I agree with Fry on this one. If a patient values their religious beliefs over their own life, I don't think somebody should force them to live against their will.

Personally, I think refusing a blood transfusion for religious reasons is outrageously retarded, but I don't care if someone else consciously chooses to do that.

What I dont get is how these religious folk can be anti-abortion one minute and then turn around and leave somebody hanging out to dry the next.

A senseless death. The Jehovah Witness doctrine is pretty stringent, and no where near mainstream Christianity, in terms of what they believe.

Unfortunately, it looks like the lady saw blood transfusion as such a mortal sin, that she chose death over life. I'm not sure how she would have felt, had the blood transfusion been forced upon her.

But if I remember correctly, here in Texas, anyone who is alert and in their right state of mind can refuse health care, even if it's a life threatening situation. So this really is not limited to just folks who have strict religious beliefs.

I've seen a friend, who was having serious heart problems, deny herself treatment from the paramedics after she was revived back to life at a party. She cursed them out and told them to leave her, and they had no choice but to let her be. And my wife, who is an RN, tells me that people have come into ER, refusing treatment and they later die, knowing full well what the consequences were of their own decision.

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Muerte a la Revolución!

When did we legalize suicide? Oh, sorry, suicide by lack of desire to live.

I suppose suicide should be legal because if they don't want to live, they'll just be a drain on society. And this woman (the original woman, not panteth4h2o's friend) was probably more than a little... special. If you force someone to live, even if they start doing something for society, they'll do it really half-assed, everyone'd hate them.

I say, let them be selfish. If they don't want to help society because of themselves, let them.

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"Currency is god."

"Life is eternal, but never meaningless."

"If there is anything America needs, it's more lawyers."
Lionel Hutz, from the The Simpsons

Very funny!
As you want... for you!

But this woman's life was not in danger in the long term. She was otherwise healthy.

Your first point is the relevant one for me. It should be a point of law that no religion advocate a belief which is against preservation of life.

Do we have a Jehovah's witness who can explain why they hold this belief?

Have you read what you've just written? It's a joke, right? Please tell me it is, if it's not I'll have to post an answer regarding why it's worse to leave two babies without a mother than not to pay for the splatter clean-up.

But they can't do that at the moment. Even if they're terminally ill. So why are they allowed to do this, leaving a young family to fend for itself?

You already know this is basically what I think also and as a single person that would be fine.
However...when you take the decision to mother a child things change IMO. Most parents will tell you your life is no longer your own. Having brought that child into the world, your wishes take the silver medal. You are no longer the only person you have to consider when making choices, your children's rights come before yours every time, that is your obligation.

The children are not wards of the state, the mother was happily married. I'll try to upload a pic.

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If you try to force people to stay alive, there will be mass group suicides of people in protest, (not saying that perfectly healthy people will all commit suicide, but people with cancer, depresion, those that feel that life is meaningless and can achieve meaning in their death).

You are taking death too seriously and only looking at it from your view point. She believes (most likely) that by dieing that way, without medicene helping her, that she is going to heaven, and that God will watch over her children.

You have said some strange things to me in our time here OE, but that one is right up there. How can you take death too seriously?
I am not looking at it from my point of view, I am looking at it from the children's point of view. Whatever she believes, that she may or may not find a better place, she has DEFINITELY left two children behind her.
IMO she has done this, taken this selfish decision, for something which is not even real.
We would all like to believe this or that and we would all like to behave entirely as we wish, but when you have a child you can't. When you are a parent, you are all that child has. You have the power of a God in the child's life. You are all that stands between the child and the danger surrounding it. And it is YOUR responsibility to step up to the mark.