by Does this change your opinion of abortion?
A GOVERNMENT agency is launching an inquiry into doctors’ reports that up to 50 babies a year are born alive after botched National Health Service abortions.
The investigation, by the Confidential Enquiry into Maternal and Child Health (CEMACH), comes amid growing unease among clinicians over a legal ambiguity that could see them being charged with infanticide.
[The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists] guidelines say that babies aborted after more than 21 weeks and six days of gestation should have their hearts stopped by an injection of potassium chloride before being delivered. In practice, few doctors are willing or able to perform the delicate procedure.
For the abortion of younger foetuses, labour is induced by drugs in the expectation that the infant will not survive the birth process. Guidelines say that doctors should ensure that the drugs they use prevent such babies being alive at birth.
In practice, according to Stuart Campbell, former professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at St George’s hospital, London, a number do survive.
“They can be born breathing and crying at 19 weeks’ gestation,” he said. “I am not anti-abortion, but as far as I am concerned this is sub-standard medicine.”
This is a concern for these surgeons because:
“If a baby is born alive following a failed abortion and then dies (because of lack of care), you could potentially be charged with murder,” said Shantala Vadeyar, a consultant obstetrician at South Manchester University Hospitals NHS Trust, who led the study.
Not that it’s an ethical problem, they’re just worried if they’ll get sued. Who has the right to determine when life begins or what lives are worth living?
The issue will be highlighted by Gianna Jessen, 28, who survived an attempt to abort her. She is to speak at a parliamentary meeting on December 6 organised by the Alive and Kicking campaign, which is lobbying for a reduction of the abortion limit to 18 weeks.
Jessen, a musician from Nashville, Tennessee, was left with cerebral palsy but is to run in the London marathon next April to raise funds for fellow sufferers.
“If abortion is about women’s rights, then what were my rights?” she asked.
“If people are going to talk about abortion, then it’s important for them to know that these are babies that can be born alive and survive.”
My standpoint is that there is life at conception period, abortion is murder plain and simple, regardless of how far along a woman is.
This is just too sad, those poor little babies.
Me too. I guess to me it would be obvious that when the doctors have to listen to the baby cry after it’s aborted, that the baby is still a baby, just a sickly one. I can’t imagine what the lady at the top whose mother tried to abort her feels like. How do you reconcile that?
Hey! Come by and visit! I’m writing a story and posting it as I go!! Have a great week!!
Kate
You know, (i am pro life all the way…) however, if a baby could be born and live at 21 weeks, WHY abort?? why not deliver and set up for adoption? I just do not understand that. I mean the baby could get emergency care at a NICU, and the govern,ent would likely pay for it, and there are tons of people out there who want to adopt a newborn, why woudl you need to kill it, as in partial birth abortion etc? I just cant understand this.
Mrs. Meg Logan
I agree with Meg, I can’t understand it. It must be that they think an abortion will hurt (themselves) less than adoption. It’s a good example of the hurt we put ourselves and others through when we try to fix our lives with manmade, not God-made, solutions. We fall and have consequences, then try to use a worldly “fix” for that consequence. Leaving God out of the equation time and time again is only going to result in more and more pain for everyone involved. Trusting Him to bring us through the choices we’ve made is the only way to fully heal.
Certainly you both are right– and yet there are babies born left for dead and it’s just wrong!