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>> during delivery, abbie lost nearly two liters of blood, underwent an emergency hysterectomy and her most vital organ, her brain, was starved for oxygen for almost 20 minutes. abbie survived, of course. though her brain was severely damaged. the triplets were fine. today, they're 4 years old. we're not showing you their faces because they are minors. abbie has not seen them since they were 1. her parents say she wants to, that she tells them that with her blinking. robert mccarthy is a therapist working with abbie. there have been some articles and some papers from her former husband's attor...

Life. >> there were no signs during her pregnancy that things would go terribly wrong. abbie's father. >> we didn't know anything about this until three hours after it happened. >> during delivery, abbie lost nearly two liters of blood, underwent an emergency hysterectomy and her most vital organ, her brain, was starved for oxygen almost 20 minutes. abbie survived, of course. though her brain was severely damaged. the triplets were fine. today, they're 4 years old. we're not showing you their faces because they are minors. abbie has not seen them since they were 1. her parents say she wants to...

He wants to accompany them to south carolina, where they can see their mother for essentially the first time. >> joe johns, cnn, washington. let's dig deeper into legal and medical issues surrounding this case, cnn senior legal analyst jeffrey toobin and chief medical correspondent dr. sanjay gupta. abbie's parents are saying she responds by blinking in response to questions. does that give any indication of the state her brain is actually in? >> if in fact she was able to respond, hear some sort of command and make some sort of movement, in this case, blinking of the eye, to give some sort ...

Those parts of the brain don't exist, they've simply died away as a result of that lack of oxygen. >> jeff, legally, what are the big issues here? >> i think there is a factual issue in many more respects more important or determines the legal issue. that's what you're talking about with sanjay, whether she has any cognitive function at all. any judge will want that question answered first. it won't be enough simply to have her parents say we know we can communicate with her. they will need an independent evaluation whether she is like terri schiavo, completely in a persistent vegetative state...

Does that give any indication of the state her brain is actually in? >> if in fact she was able to respond, hear some sort of command and make some sort of movement, in this case, blinking of the eye, to give some sort of communication, it would. a lot of times, it's hard to parse out someone is in fact responding to a particular thing or whether or not they're just blinking their eyes. people who are in persistent vegetative state can have sleep wake cycles, eye movements, all sorts of things. >> i want to bring in jeff in a moment. sanjay, there have now been studies, i did a thing on "60 mi...