In re Estate of Brooks

This is an appeal from the probate division of the circuit court of Cook County which entered an order appointing a conservator of the person of Mrs. Bernice Brooks, and allowed the conservator's request to be authorized to consent, on behalf of Mrs. Brooks, to transfusions of whole blood to her. The transfusions were made, and appellants, Mrs. Brooks and her husband, now seek to have all orders in the conservatorship proceedings expunged, and the petition therein filed dismissed. Questions under both Federal and State constitutions confer jurisdiction on direct appeal. U.S. Const., 1st, 5th and 14th amendments; Ill. Const., art. VI, sec. 5; Supreme Court Rule 28-1. On and sometime before May 7, 1964, Bernice Brooks was in the McNeal General Hospital, Chicago, suffering from a peptic ulcer. She was being attended by Dr. Gilbert Demange, and had informed him repeatedly during a two-year period prior thereto that her religious and medical convictions precluded her from receiving blood transfusions. Mrs. Brooks, her husband and two adult children are all members of the religious sect commonly known as Jehovah's Witnesses. Among the religious beliefs adhered to by members of this group is the principle that blood transfusions are a violation of the law of God, and that transgressors will be punished by God. This organization's publication, ""Blood, Medicine and the Law of God"", which had been filed by Mrs. Brooks with her physician, states the principle: ""The matter was not to be taken lightly. Any violation of the law on blood was a serious sin against God, and God himself would call the law violator to account. `As for any man of the house of Israel or some alien resident who is residing as an alien in your midst who eats any sort of blood, I shall certainly set my face against the soul that is eating the blood, and I shall indeed cut him off from among his people'. — Leviticus 17:10"". Also a part of the foundation for this belief is the admonition found in the book of the Acts of the Apostles, 15:28-29: ""For it seemed good to the Holy Ghost, and to us, to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things; that ye abstain from meats offered to idols, and from blood, and from things strangled, and from fornication; from which if ye keep yourselves, ye shall do well"". Various other Biblical texts are quoted as authority for the belief, including Genesis 9:3-4: ""Every moving animal that is alive may serve as food for you. As in the case of green vegetation, I do give it all to you. Only flesh with its soul — its blood — you must not eat"". Premised upon the belief that ""The blood is the soul"" (Deuteronomy 12:33) and that ""We cannot drain from our body part of that blood, which represents our life, and still love God with our whole soul, because we have taken away part of `our soul — our blood — ' and given it to someone else"" (Blood, Medicine and the Law of God, p. 8), members of Jehovah's Witnesses regard themselves commanded by God to neither give nor receive transfusions of blood.