A mum pregnant with conjoined and disfigured twins fears she'll have to give birth to lifeless babies as authorities in Brazil won't grant her an abortion.
Lunch cook Lorisete dos Santos, 37, and her family also fear her own life could be at risk after the traumatic and painful pregnancy.
Doctors have told her it's likely she'll be forced to give birth to "lifeless" infants in the ninth month - but that if they are alive, the medics don't know how they can treat them.
She said: "The doctors were scared when they told me the seriousness of the situation and told me that if they are born alive, they don't know how to act due to the existence of three lungs.
"I don't know if I believe anymore that I can get a legal abortion in time, I'm going to have my daughters for nine months to hold them lifeless in my arms."
On Thursday, Lorisete travelled to Porto Alegre, just under 300 miles from her home city of São Luiz Gonzaga, to be told the foetuses have developed a third lung.
Lorisete, who lives with her husband and two kids, 15 and four, is now being forced to wait through the agonising fifth and final court procedure to legally terminate her pregnancy, OGlobo reports.
Medics say the twins have a shared trunk with two heads, while sharing a pair of lungs in their joined chest.
They each have a heart, but it's joined by the same aorta artery, with a single liver and two stomachs. They also share the same bladder and two kidneys.
A medical report concluding their unfortunate position reads: "Therefore, due to the fact that there is a single trunk and the sharing of a number of noble organs, the separation of the twins after birth becomes unfeasible and the case was considered incompatible with life by the specialists in fetal medicine at our hospital.
"In which the pregnancy continues, complications such as polyhydramnios (increase in amniotic fluid) are frequent. , maintenance of the pregnancy increases the patient's risk of developing serious complications such as hypertensive disease (pregnancy-specific hypertension) and gestational diabetes.
"Therefore, the continuation of the pregnancy, in itself, determines a potential risk to maternal health."
Lorisete says she is experiencing excruciating pain in her abdomen, which doctors say is due to fluid accumulating in the placenta.
She and her husband, Marciano da Silva Mendes, 37, have trusted the doctors' diagnosis and decided not to prepare a room or a crib because they don't think the babies will survive.
In Brazil, which has some of the world's strictest abortion laws, abortion is non-punishable in some cases if evidence is proven.
Through court, she has asked for a termination due to risk of the patient's life, which was denied by judges who highlighted other cases of successful deliveries of conjoined twins.
The magistrate added that the case does not fall under the law of legal abortion because "there is no effective proof of imminent and concrete risk to the life of the pregnant woman".
They have tried to argue other legal precedents, which have also been rejected and are now on their fifth and final attempt.
