The 2009 swine flu pandemic was an exacting time for intensive care medicine. The epidemiology, and the individual cases, presented ethical, legal, and clinical problems which were undertaken against a background of global public scrutiny. When now viewed, two years later, with the experience of a further pandemic many of the cases are still heart rending and many of the clinical questions remain unanswered. We have the opportunity to debate the management of the consequences of a global pandemic affecting so many young and previously healthy people and certain cases may serve to aid this debate. A young pregnant mother, diagnosed with the 2009/H1N1 virus, presented in respiratory failure requiring rapid escalation to intubation and multiple organ support. She was in the second trimester of pregnancy with an anencephalic fetus and elective termination was proposed to aid resolution of her critical illness. During the initial conversations with the obstetric team, prior to intubation, she suggested that she wanted more time to think about termination and elected to continue with the pregnancy until her acute illness had resolved. Comprehensive debate ensued, both among the intensive care clinicians and with the obstetricians about the benefits and risks of termination. At the time there was limited experience in this patient group and there was an absence of clinical precedent with which to guide treatment. This case explores the clinical medicine and the ethical and legal circumstances around termination in the absence of consent in an obtunded critically ill patient.