Abortion and the Incitement to Violence

Abstract

The New York Court of Appeals recently gave a prod to the state legislature, which has yet to establish legal criteria for brain death. Two homicide defendants had argued that the deaths of their victims did not result from wounds but from the actions of those disconnecting their life-support systems. In upholding the convictions, the court favorably mentioned the Harvard Medical School criteria for brain death and determined that a comatose patient unable to breathe spontaneously, and thus with brainstem dysfunction, should be considered dead. (KIE abstract)