A healthy baby despite abortion recommendations

UPDATE:Bob Ellis has a great post on this at Dakota Voice.

This is a great story from the UK’s Telegraph about a couple who twice didn’t give in to the “expert” advice of their doctors to abort their baby because he might have some abnormalities if he was born.

Gaynor Purdy was warned her first child could have a fatal chromosome defect and a life threatening heart condition.

But she rejected two suggestions to terminate the pregnancy and she and her husband Lee are celebrating life with their “perfect” ten-month-old son.

Mrs Purdy, 28, a quality control inspector, said: “We refused to give up on him, and decided throughout the pregnancy that as long as he was fighting, we would continue fighting with him.”

Four months into the pregnancy doctors told them that part of their unborn child’s heart was narrow and underdeveloped and would mean open heart surgery if the baby was born.

They were warned the condition could worsen and around Christmas last year, an immediate termination should be considered.

Further tests conducted a few days later on New Year’s Eve suggested the baby could also have Edwards Syndrome – the presence of an 18th chromosome – with a life expectancy of only up to four months if birth is survived.

Consultants again recommended the couple consider aborting the baby, fearing he would little to no quality of life once he was born.

One side of his heart was slightly bigger than the other which may need an operation to correct in the future, but regular tests have been showing the condition is constantly improving.

Mrs Purdy added: “Doctors told us he was a little miracle baby. They said his heart must have been mending itself.

“Last year we were still on a knife edge thinking things would go wrong. But now he’s out of the woods we are delighted that 2009 will be Kai’s year.”

So when doctors detect something like they did in this case, why don’t they err on the side of life and say, “Hey, the odds might not be the greatest, but there’s a chance he will be okay”? By recommending to end the baby’s life, the doctors are not even giving him a chance. I hate to sound cynical here, but could it be that the hospital’s policy is to err on the side of saving money? To simply abort the baby, the hospital would be avoiding potentially many costly procedures.

If you read the entire article, you get the impression that the doctors in this case really pointed out the “incoveniences” of trying to keep the baby. At the end of the article, the hospital says they try to “offer prospective families the full facts and options”, but if they’re making a recommendation to kill the baby, how much impartiality are they really showing?

Abortions for Under-14 in Britain Increase

In a sad report from across the Pond, China View is reporting that the abortion rate for girls in England and Wales under the age of 14 rose by more than 20 percent in 2007.

A total of 198,500 pregnancies were terminated in England and Wales last year, an increase of 2.5 percent on 2006.

There was also a 10 percent rise among the under-16s to 4,376 abortions, and most striking was the rise in terminations among teenagers as a higher proportion of pregnancies were aborted.

“The increase in abortions in this age group fits the pattern in women aged under 18 generally, that is, a higher proportion of pregnancies are terminated,” Said Kaye Wellings, professor of sexual and reproductive health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.