In an awful case in Boston, a severely abused girl has been in a “vegetative state,” on a ventilator and nutrition. Earlier this week, the Massachusetts high court okayed taking her off the ventilator, her state guardians having made the case that she was hopeless.

But apparently that was a premature judgment:

A day after the state’s highest court ruled that the Department of Social Services could withdraw life support from a brain-damaged girl, the agency said yesterday that Haleigh Poutre might be emerging from her vegetative state.
DSS also said it has no immediate plans to remove her feeding tube.
’There has been a change in her condition,” said a DSS spokeswoman, Denise Monteiro. ”The vegetative state may not be a total vegetative state.”
Monteiro said Haleigh is breathing on her own, without the ventilator she has depended on for four months. Monteiro also said that doctors at Baystate Medical Center in Springfield elicited responses from Haleigh during tests performed yesterday.
They will begin more medical tests today to determine her neurological activity. Further tests, Monteiro said, could show whether Haleigh is going to be ”a miracle child.”
Monteiro said that doctors did not tell DSS, which has custody of Haleigh, that her condition had changed until yesterday afternoon. She also said the agency’s decision to seek court approval to remove life support was based on the ”best diagnosis that we thought we had at the time.”