Court overrules parents on surgery

NASHVILLE, Dec. 28 (UPI) -- A court in Tennessee ruled that doctors can perform heart surgery on a newborn even though using blood products violates her parents' beliefs.

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.