The parents are Jehovah's Witnesses. They believe in getting medical treatment but believe that blood transfusions and any other use of blood violates Biblical teaching.

"It's a scriptural command to abstain from blood," Fred Haston, who chairs the Jehovah's Witnesses Hospital Liaison committee, told The Nashville Tennessean. "The reason is that the life of a person is in that blood. We believe that blood is life."

The girl, identified only as Baby Girl Doe, was born at Vanderbilt University Medical Center with a congenital heart condition. Doctors said that unless she received a cardiac catheterization within 48 hours of birth she was likely to die.