Family: Jahi McMath 'Healthy and Beautiful as Ever'

She's 'proving naysayers wrong,' they say
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Mar 21, 2016 4:24 AM CDT
Family: Jahi McMath 'Healthy and Beautiful as Ever'
Sandra Chatman, grandmother of Jahi McMath, wears a pin and T-shirt for Jahi at a news conference in San Francisco last year.   (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

More than two years after she was declared brain dead, Jahi McMath is as "healthy and beautiful as ever" and is "proving naysayers wrong," according to family members. In a March 15 Facebook post on the "Keep Jahi McMath on life support" page, family members shared a recent photo of the girl, who is now 15, NJ.com reports. The post continued, per NJ.com, "A fighter, A warrior, A blessed child, Gods got your back little girl, keep fighting. Your testimony will be a great one." The post is no longer publicly accessible (the Facebook link returns the line: "The link you followed may have expired, or the page may only be visible to an audience you're not in"), and a fresh post to the page made late Sunday night asks anyone "here to spew your negative thoughts" to "remove yourself."

The former Oakland, Calif., resident, who went into cardiac arrest after routine tonsil surgery in late 2013, has been on life support at a facility in New Jersey since early 2014. McMath's family—who moved to New Jersey because the state accommodates people who object to brain death declarations on religious grounds—has been seeking to have her death certificate revoked. Declaring her alive would allow them to move back to California, where she is considered legally dead, and would require insurance companies to cover the cost of her care. Fox 29 reports that in an earlier Facebook update, Jahi's mother, Nailah Winkfield, thanked those who shared their opinions about the case, even negative ones. "Hopefully my daughter can change some of the ways brain death is viewed in today's society," she wrote. "Honestly, I think she already has." (More Jahi McMath stories.)

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