Baby lives 45 minutes after legal abortion in UK

blatantrereg

There's a shocking exception to the laws about late term abortions in the UK apparently. If there is a strong risk of the child having a serious handicap, abortion is legal right up until birth.

The child in this article was aborted at 27 weeks. The normal cutoff was been reduced from 28 weeks to 24 weeks in 1990.

I'm strongly in favour of the legalisation of abortion. Certainly women have a right to choose. But there's a point where she's not choosing what happens in her own body, and is just having a baby killed. Late term abortions are simply not ok.

The baby was not handicapped at all, as it turned out.

[edit: this smiley is the link. It works]

A woman who agreed to an abortion after being told the foetus was severely handicapped had a normal, healthy baby who lived for 45 minutes after the termination.
Jacqueline James consented to the abortion at 27 weeks of pregnancy after doctors told her that routine ultrasound scans had revealed her baby had severe physical abnormalities.
Although born alive the baby died because of the stress brought about by drugs previously used in an attempt to induce termination, an inquest was told. Ms James, 26, said at the time: "I thought everything was going really well. I would never have had the abortion if I had known the baby was going to be all right."
The baby, named Natasha by her parents, was certified dead in the operating theatre at Wordsley hospital, Stourbridge, West Midlands 45 minutes after the Caesarean section in May 1994. A routine ultrasound scan earlier that month at the hospital had alerted doctors to a potential problem. Ms James was referred to the Birmingham Maternity hospital for a second scan by an expert who confirmed the original diagnosis.
Victor Round, the Dudley coroner, was told that Ms James had been given "very clear advice" by doctors that the foetus she was carrying was abnormal, and she and her partner decided on a late termination.
Under the 1990 Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act, which replaced the 1967 Abortion Act, the time limit on a termination was reduced from 28 weeks to 24. However, there is a provision within the act which allows termination up until birth if there is thought to be risk of a severe physical or mental handicap. When the inquest into Natasha's death was opened in June 1994, Ms James, who has daughter aged 9 and a five-year- old son, said she would never have agreed to an abortion if she had known her unborn child was normal.
Mr Round read from a report by Dr Ian Rushton, a senior lecturer in pathology at Birmingham University which said the foetus was normal and corresponded in weight to the time of pregnancy. He said death was due to stress brought about by drugs previously used in an attempt to induce termination.
A second report by Dr Imogen Morgan, a consultant at Birmingham Maternity Hospital, said that the initial attempts to induce the abortion had failed but had caused stress to the foetus. "The infant was born live and was cared for but not actively resuscitated and died [shortly after]," she said.
Richard Blunt, medical director of the Dudley Group of Hospitals NHS Trust, said that no attempt to resuscitate the baby was made, despite it appearing healthy, because Ms James was undergoing a termination. "If you do a termination late in pregnancy then [the foetus] comes out in one piece ... and that therefore it may be alive and kicking. This is the dreadful thing. [The foetus] did not have any major physical abnormalities, but it would require a post-mortem to establish any internal problems. Everyone was so upset it turned out to be healthy."
Mr Blunt said the hospital relied on the opinion of an expert that the baby was abnormal. "The tragic thing for this girl was that the ultrasound was misleading," he said.
The coroner at the resumed inquest concluded that none of the usual verdicts was appropriate in the circumstances and recorded a verdict of death due to legal termination.

Just noticed the date on that article is 1994. Old news or not, I think it is pretty relevant. It's a pretty strong testment against late term abortion. I recall seeing some pretty miliatnt attitudes in favour of it on this forum tbh.

Unique User Name

Breaking news.. Hitler is invading Poland!

blatantrereg

Unique User Name wrote: »

Breaking news.. Hitler is invading Poland!

Discussing Hitler's invasion of Poland would be an interesting topic for a thread.

dmc17

Unique User Name wrote: »

Breaking news.. Hitler is invading Poland!

Not again

slippy wicket

I would imagine that there has been a quantum leap in imaging technologies in the years since 94 to prevent such errors from happening.
In my opinion it is extremely selfish and illthought out to go ahead with a pregnancy which is going to result in a malformation .
The best thing for both parties is an immediate termination.

blatantrereg

slippy wicket wrote: »

I would imagine that there has been a quantum leap in imaging technologies in the years since 94 to prevent such errors from happening.
In my opinion it is extremely selfish and illthought out to go ahead with a pregnancy which is going to result in a malformation .
The best thing for both parties is an immediate termination.

You might well be right, sadly.
There are people who think that late term abortions should be legal across the board though. That is more what I was thinking of when I posted this.

44leto

Infanticide is as old as man, only relatively recently has the practice been stopped (well in the west anyway).

Its history is so widespread and cross cultural that you have to assume the practice was natural. Imagine a mother suppling one baby while herself struggling to exist and with the absence of any birth control another bundle arrives. The choices are stark, keep the baby, then the other baby and the mothers health is put at risk. Or kill the baby and you give a better chance to the surviving infant and off course the mother who will feed it.

In Sparta and all of ancient Greece they would routinely discard unwanted infants, in India midwifes would have a full bucket of water beside the mother and if the baby was sickly or deformed just dip it in. In France there was accounts of screaming infants floating in the latrines. Also the amount of historical figure who were discarded but survived, Moses, Romulus and remus and many more tells us how wide the practice was.

Perhaps abortion is about a similar choice, do I have or want to invest resources into this child. Its none of my business, its a womans choice, I am very much pro choice.

As for this case, it sounds like a stupid teenager.

mikom

Unique User Name wrote: »

Breaking news.. Hitler is invading Poland!

I think Hitler did some experiments like the one in the article.

KittyeeTrix

44leto wrote: »

As for this case, it sounds like a stupid teenager.

The article states the woman in question was 26 and was acting on evidence that the child was severly handicapped otherwise she'd never have had an abortion

Defiler Of The Coffin

Damn, that child could have been another Mozart...

blatantrereg

44leto wrote: »

Infanticide is as old as man, only relatively recently has the practice been stopped (well in the west anyway).

Its history is so widespread and cross cultural that you have to assume the practice was natural. Imagine a mother suppling one baby while herself struggling to exist and with the absence of any birth control another bundle arrives. The choices are stark, keep the baby, then the other baby and the mothers health is put at risk. Or kill the baby and you give a better chance to the surviving infant and off course the mother who will feed it.

In Sparta and all of ancient Greece they would routinely discard unwanted infants, in India midwifes would have a full bucket of water beside the mother and if the baby was sickly or deformed just dip it in. In France there was accounts of screaming infants floating in the latrines. Also the amount of historical figure who were discarded but survived, Moses, Romulus and remus and many more tells us how wide the practice was.

Perhaps abortion is about a similar choice, do I have or want to invest resources into this child. Its none of my business, its a womans choice, I am very much pro choice.

As for this case, it sounds like a stupid teenager.

I'm pro-choice too. I even tend to believe the research that suggests a direct correlation between legalised abortion and reduced crime rates.

In Sparta they went beyond discarding unwanted children. I believe they left all babies exposed outside for a night, in order to make sure they were tough enough to qualify as Spartans. I understand that in some south asian countries the practice of infanticide persists today, and it comes down to the limited resources as you say.

But these are all irrelevant to society in contemporary Western Europe tbh. I particularly disagree with the notion that a woman can do what she pleases with her child. That suggests the child is a part of her, a possession, has no rights as an entity in itself. That is not the case.

44leto

KittyeeTrix wrote: »

The article states the woman in question was 26 and was acting on evidence that the child was severly handicapped otherwise she'd never have had an abortion

Ohh I just read the article now, I thought it was the usual, when the so called" pro lifers" were putting a case forward for illegalizing abortion, but no, what a cock up.

slippy wicket

blatantrereg wrote: »

You might well be right, sadly.
There are people who think that late term abortions should be legal across the board though. That is more what I was thinking of when I posted this.

As to that, it should not be legal across the board, just in the case of disability.
Its tough, but until there are in utero ways of repairing such defectives, its the only ethical way to proceed in societal interest.

44leto

Defiler Of The Coffin wrote: »

Damn, that child could have been another Mozart...

Or Hitler.

Dudess

I hate the idea of late-term abortion, but it's unlikely to be carried out unless the circumstances are dire.

Defiler Of The Coffin

44leto wrote: »

Or Hitler.

Or Godwin!

44leto

blatantrereg wrote: »

I'm pro-choice too. I even tend to believe the research that suggests a direct correlation between legalised abortion and reduced crime rates.

In Sparta they went beyond discarding unwanted children. I believe they left all babies exposed outside for a night, in order to make sure they were tough enough to qualify as Spartans. I understand that in some south asian countries the practice of infanticide persists today, and it comes down to the limited resources as you say.

But these are all irrelevant to society in contemporary Western Europe tbh. I particularly disagree with the notion that a woman can do what she pleases with her child. That suggests the child is a part of her, a possession, has no rights as an entity in itself. That is not the case.

It is not really, it lacks a consciousness till about 24 to 28 weeks so its a potential child, and with that word a potential child, that can go back as well. Everytime you have sex using birth control you are stopping the life of another potential child.

This thread will develop into the usual row (without me) and I bet more men are anti abortion and more women are pro choice. Men don't carry the package. I fkuced around during parts of my life while here and abroad, it is not beyond the realms of possibility that I am a father, all I know is I am not in that (perhaps) child or its mothers life.

blatantrereg

44leto wrote: »

It is not really, it lacks a consciousness till about 24 to 28 weeks so its a potential child, and with that word a potential child, that can go back as well. Everytime you have sex using birth control you are stopping the life of another potential child.

This thread will develop into the usual row (without me) and I bet more men are anti abortion and more women are pro choice. Men don't carry the package. I fkuced around during parts of my life while here and abroad, it is not beyond the realms of possibility that I am a father, all I know is I am not in that (perhaps) child or its mothers life.

You aren't reading my posts. I stated repeatedly that I am strongly pro choice. I only object to late term abortions: Abortions which are carried out after the earliest time a baby could be born and survive. I think that is about 24 weeks.

You also are switching contexts to suit yourself. The bold part of my post you responded to was in reply to you defending the notion of infanticide. That's a million miles away from non-late-term abortions - which is the context you switched to in response.

Not sure if you're trolling or drunk or what.

fedor.2.

44leto wrote: »

Infanticide is as old as man, only relatively recently has the practice been stopped (well in the west anyway).

Its history is so widespread and cross cultural that you have to assume the practice was natural. Imagine a mother suppling one baby while herself struggling to exist and with the absence of any birth control another bundle arrives. The choices are stark, keep the baby, then the other baby and the mothers health is put at risk. Or kill the baby and you give a better chance to the surviving infant and off course the mother who will feed it.

In Sparta and all of ancient Greece they would routinely discard unwanted infants, in India midwifes would have a full bucket of water beside the mother and if the baby was sickly or deformed just dip it in. In France there was accounts of screaming infants floating in the latrines. Also the amount of historical figure who were discarded but survived, Moses, Romulus and remus and many more tells us how wide the practice was.

Perhaps abortion is about a similar choice, do I have or want to invest resources into this child. Its none of my business, its a womans choice, I am very much pro choice.

As for this case, it sounds like a stupid teenager.

I presume you mean mythical figures there, ya?

44leto

blatantrereg wrote: »

You aren't reading my posts. I stated repeatedly that I am strongly pro choice. I only object to late term abortions: Abortions which are carried out after the earliest time a baby could be born and survive. I think that is about 24 weeks.

You also are switching contexts to suit yourself. The bold part of my post you responded to was in reply to you defending the notion of infanticide. That's a million miles away from non-late-term abortions - which is the context you switched to in response.

Not sure if you're trolling or drunk or what.

I assumed in the context of this thread you were referring to the fetos being an individual child within the mother. Which it is potentially. And with your aggressive response I now presume you are drunk, but not a troll.

Finneen

blatantrereg wrote: »

Just noticed the date on that article is 1994.

Just heard a great new band called Oasis, should be huge!

RichieC

WE LANDED ON THE MOON!!!

44leto

fedor.2. wrote: »

I presume you mean mythical figures there, ya?

I did I could add more Ishmeal, Oedipus, Sargon, Cyrus the great and Hou Chi (founder of the chou dynasty), it just gives an example of how abandoned infants were in popular culture. Because it was common practice.

mikom

44leto wrote: »

I assumed in the context of this thread you were referring to the fetos.

Are we talking about cheese or a baby?

charlemont

Unique User Name wrote: »

Breaking news.. Hitler is invading Poland!

Vienna, Austro-Hungarian....Late 1888...Mrs Hitler misses appointment for abortion..

Namlub

1994? My one year-old self is appalled by this story.

KamiKazeKitten

Ah, another abortion thread, oh the joys.

steddyeddy

Im pro abortion under certain circumstances but at a certain point in the development of the foetus the woman is making a choice for two and not just herself.

DannyKing

slippy wicket wrote: »

I would imagine that there has been a quantum leap in imaging technologies in the years since 94 to prevent such errors from happening.
In my opinion it is extremely selfish and illthought out to go ahead with a pregnancy which is going to result in a malformation .
The best thing for both parties is an immediate termination.

: P

philologos

There is no difference between a child while it is unborn, and while it is born in terms of it being a human life, as a result the right to life should be defended. Life is from conception to death, articles like these IMO demonstrate that point more and more clearly.

sara025

44leto wrote: »

Infanticide is as old as man, only relatively recently has the practice been stopped (well in the west anyway).

Its history is so widespread and cross cultural that you have to assume the practice was natural. Imagine a mother suppling one baby while herself struggling to exist and with the absence of any birth control another bundle arrives. The choices are stark, keep the baby, then the other baby and the mothers health is put at risk. Or kill the baby and you give a better chance to the surviving infant and off course the mother who will feed it.

In Sparta and all of ancient Greece they would routinely discard unwanted infants, in India midwifes would have a full bucket of water beside the mother and if the baby was sickly or deformed just dip it in. In France there was accounts of screaming infants floating in the latrines. Also the amount of historical figure who were discarded but survived, Moses, Romulus and remus and many more tells us how wide the practice was.

Perhaps abortion is about a similar choice, do I have or want to invest resources into this child. Its none of my business, its a womans choice, I am very much pro choice.

As for this case, it sounds like a stupid teenager.

Such a pity your mom wasn't of the same opinion as you