“[We now consider viability at 22 weeks,] but this is a pretty controversial area. I guess we would say that these babies deserve a chance. [But parents need to know that] the hospital that you go to might determine what happens to your baby.”For background, read Abortion Outlawed in Florida for Viable Fetuses
-- Edward Bell, study leader and pediatrics professor at the University of Iowa
Also read about new abortion restriction laws requiring tests for viability after 20 weeks in Ohio and also in Missouri.
And read Study Shows Babies Can Hear the Abortionist Coming
What do the abortionists say? Planned Parenthood President Asks, Who Cares When Life Begins?
In addition, read about the Georgia teacher ousted last month for revealing President Obama's position on infants who survive abortion.
-- From "Study of premature babies adds to questions for parents, doctors" by Pam Belluck, The New York Times 5/6/15
A new study of thousands of premature births found that a small minority of babies born a week or two before what is now generally considered the point of viability can be treated and survive, in some cases with relatively few health problems.
The findings may also have implications for the abortion debate. The Supreme Court has said states cannot ban abortion before a fetus is viable outside the womb, and 24 weeks has generally been cited by medical experts as the time of viability.
Recently, physicians who work with very premature infants have begun to consider it reasonable to offer active treatment for babies born at 23 weeks. A 2014 summary of a workshop that involved the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the American Academy of Pediatrics said “in general, those born at 23 weeks of gestation should be considered potentially viable” as more than a quarter of them survive if treated intensively.
The study, involving nearly 5,000 babies born between 22 and 27 weeks gestation, found that 22-week-old babies did not survive without medical intervention. . . .
To read the entire article above, CLICK HERE.
From "Study on premature babies raises questions about abortion and medical care" by Sarah Kaplan, Washington Post 5/7/15
[The study] is heartening news in the world of pediatrics. But it also adds to a list of questions for parents, doctors and lawmakers by challenging the accepted age for “viability” — a standard that has defined the debates about abortion and intensive neonatal care.
According to Neil Marlow, a neonatology expert at University College London, many doctors have assumed that 22 weeks was too early for a child to be a candidate for intensive care because fatality rates were so high. But the NEJM study shows that those high rates are in part due to doctors’ reluctance to attempt a painful intervention on a newborn that’s unlikely to survive.
. . . the Supreme Court has long crafted its abortion rulings around the idea of viability. In Roe v. Wade the court ruled that states could not restrict abortions before the 28th week of pregnancy, at the time thought to be the earliest a newborn could survive on its own.
The 1992 case Planned Parenthood v. Casey, acknowledging that advances in neonatal care made survival of even more premature babies possible, detached the “viability” marker from the 28-week standard but left the sentiment of the original ruling intact: “We reaffirm … the right of the woman to choose to have an abortion before viability and to obtain it without undue interference from the State,” read the majority opinion.
To read the entire article above, CLICK HERE.
From "Hospital efforts to save very premature babies vary widely" by Marilynn Marchione, Associated Press 5/6/15
The study involved nearly 5,000 babies born before 27 weeks gestation at 24 hospitals in a research group run by the National Institutes of Health between April 2006 and March 2011.
Researchers looked at rates of comfort care versus active treatment, such as breathing machines, feeding tubes or heart resuscitation. Active treatment was given to 22 percent of babies born at 22 weeks, 72 percent of those at 23 weeks and nearly all beyond that.
Survival rates were higher for the actively treated babies — 23 percent versus 5 percent for all babies in the study born at 22 weeks, and 33 percent versus 24 percent for those born at 23 weeks.
About 12,000 babies each year in the United States are born between 22 and 25 weeks gestation. A full-term pregnancy is about 40 weeks.
To read the entire article above, CLICK HERE.
From "No Standard Treatment for Extreme Preemies - Practice differences appear to explain survival disparities" by Sarah Wickline Wallan, Staff Writer, MedPage Today 5/7/15
"This article raises important questions about what information should be given to parents during counseling about risks after an extremely preterm birth," Neil Marlow, DM, wrote in an accompanying editorial. "To give crude data on the survival rate among all such infants, regardless of whether treatment efforts were made, is misleading and helps to make poor survival a self-fulfilling prophecy."
"The NICHD NRN (National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Neonatal Research Network) collects data only on live births in specialist hospitals and is not population-based; thus these data cannot be used to explore attitudes underlying the decision to provide or withhold treatment or to evaluate antepartum fetal deaths," added Marlow, who is from the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Institute for Women's Health at University College London.
"The study should prompt physicians, hospitals, state governments, and professional societies to accelerate efforts to provide perinatal regionalization programs that will optimize access of these extremely premature babies to level 3 and 4 perinatal centers that can provide skilled, experienced active treatment in the delivery room when parents and physicians decide in favor of active treatment," F. Sessions Cole, MD, director of the division of newborn medicine at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, said in an email to MedPage Today.
To read the entire article above, CLICK HERE.
Click headlines below to read previous articles:
Gallup poll, Americans Want Abortion Laws Changed
As Pro-life Laws Sweep America, Liberals Battle Back
Abortionists, Satanists Team Up vs. Missouri Law
Abortionists Stymied by New Oklahoma & Kansas Laws
Also read Congressman Xavier Becerra (D-Calif. and chairman of House Democratic Caucus) won't answer if unborn child 20 weeks into pregnancy is human being. (video)
