Jehovah’s Witnesses defended yesterday the decision of a young mother who died after refusing a potentially life-saving blood transfusion, having just given birth to twins.

To agree to a transfusion would have been a transgression comparable to adultery or sexual immorality, a spokesman from the central office of the British community of Jehovah’s Witnesses told The Times yesterday.

His stout defence of the religion’s position on transfusions came as family, friends and work colleagues of Emma Gough, 22, gathered at her funeral in Telford, Shropshire.

Mrs Gough, who died on October 25 at the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital, had signed a form stating that she did not wish to receive a blood transfusion. When complications followed the birth of her son and daughter, and she suffered severe blood loss, her family refused to allow doctors to override her wishes.

An inquest was opened on October 30 and a spokesman for the coroner’s office gave the cause of death as complications of profound anaemia, haemorrhage and complications of a twin delivery.

The twins, whom she held before she died, are in the care of her husband, Anthony, 24, a central heating engineer from Telford. “We’re coping as best we can,” he told the Shropshire Star. “With everything that’s happened, it’s very difficult for everyone.”

Terry Lovejoy, a member of the Jehovah’s Witness community in Telford, said: “We are trying to help them through an intense period of grief and mourning.”

At the central office for Jehovah’s Witnesses in London, Paul Gillies, its spokesman, said: “If someone did [have a blood transfusion] they would be saying they don’t really believe in one of the central tenets of the faith.

“The biblical instruction is coupled with adultery and sexual immorality,” he said, referring to verses in Acts xv. “It says to abstain from adultery, to abstain from blood, to abstain from immorality,” he said. “Jehovah’s Witnesses might be forgiven for accepting one if they were genuine in their repentance, in the same way as if someone says, ‘I have committed adultery, I’m very sorry’.” Though such injunctions date from an age before blood transfusions, and refer to the consumption of blood, Mr Gillies said: “If someone said, ‘Don’t drink alcohol’ and I injected it into my arms instead, that would just be a way round the law’.”

He added that, although he did not know the details of Mrs Gough’s case, “it is not an exact science that if you take blood you are going to live”.

Christine Harris, a friend of the family, said: “The family have told me that a blood transfusion wouldn’t have saved Emma.”

Jehovah’s Witnesses “hospital liaison committees” work with British hospitals. Mr Lovejoy serves as a liaison officer with the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital, helping to ensure that doctors are aware of alternative treatments. In 2000 this network disseminated a report, Care Plan for Women in Labour Refusing a Blood Transfusion.

A spokeswoman for the British Medical Association said that the death of Mrs Gough was a “cut and dried case”.

“I am sure the doctors will have done all they can to try to persuade this woman to have a blood transfusion but they could never force her to,” she said. “To do so would be against the Human Rights Act.”