A brain-dead pregnant woman was taken off life support on Friday after a Dublin court ruled that her 18-week-old foetus was certain to die.

The case had exposed fear and confusion among doctors about how to apply Ireland’s strict ban on abortion.

The High Court said artificial support for the woman should end more than three weeks after she was declared clinically dead.

The doctors said the woman’s body was becoming a lethal environment rife with infections, fungal growths, fever and high blood pressure.

Lawyers representing the rights of the woman and foetus said they accepted the ruling.

Ireland has the strictest abortion ban in Europe.

The woman suffered irreversible brain death on December 3.

Doctors refused family pleas to turn off the machines that regulated oxygen, blood flow, nutrition and waste collection, citing fears they could be sued for negligence or even face murder charges.

One doctor testified that he and colleagues couldn’t agree on how the abortion ban should be applied, given the lack of explicit law.

Another noted that the body was being pumped with drugs never authorised for use on a pregnant woman and described what they were doing as grotesque.

The woman’s life support, they said, was “being maintained at hugely destructive cost to both her remains and to the feelings and sensitivities of her family and loved ones.”

The court said it was wrong to deprive the woman “of dignity in death and subject her father, partner and young children to unimaginable distress.”