Jehova’s Witness mother rejects blood transfusion and lets baby die

A newborn baby died at a Russian hospital after his mother, a Jehova’s Witnesses adherent, rejected blood transfusion that he needed.

The child was born at the St. Petersburg Maternity Home 1, where the mother came knowing that she and the baby had rhesus incompatibility, and that the hospital specialized on such cases, Komsomolskaya Pravda daily reports Thursday.

It turned out that the baby’s need for prenatal blood transfusion had been revealed weeks ago, but the woman refused it, explaining that Jehovah’s Witnesses were not allowed to consume blood in any form.

When she arrived at the hospital for labor, the baby could only be saved by urgent blood transfusion immediately after birth, but the mother again insisted it was unacceptable.

“There was a chance of saving this baby by blood transfusion, he had hemolytic disease,” Deputy Head Doctor Oleg Dublennikov told the paper.

“We wanted to try and save him, but his mother would not let us. She seemed perfectly sensible all the time, but when we mentioned blood transfusion it was like a wall appeared between us.”

Jehovah's Witnesses refuse blood transfusions, including autologous transfusions, in which a person has their own blood stored to be used later in a medical procedure, believing that God has forbidden this in the Bible.