Abortion: Cleft palate after 24 weeks
Serious medical condition?
I thought this a very interesting article, especially since there will be a partial birth abortion ban signed and then of course immediately legally challenged here in the United States.
The law in England allows abortions after 6 months for serious handicaps. There is plenty of contention as to whether a cleft palate is a serious handicap of course. Should the law be tightened up on this issue? Is the current law just a way of showing societal disapproval while really stopping no abortions of, by that time viable children who could likely live outside the womb if delivered? Any implications for the partial birth abortion ban in the U.S.?
Opinions...
Nick
I thought this a very interesting article, especially since there will be a partial birth abortion ban signed and then of course immediately legally challenged here in the United States.
The law in England allows abortions after 6 months for serious handicaps. There is plenty of contention as to whether a cleft palate is a serious handicap of course. Should the law be tightened up on this issue? Is the current law just a way of showing societal disapproval while really stopping no abortions of, by that time viable children who could likely live outside the womb if delivered? Any implications for the partial birth abortion ban in the U.S.?
Opinions...
Nick
Comments
C*nt.
Now, if you're going to tell me the baby is going to be born with a terribly malformed jaw and may not be able to eat or breathe properly... which will require extensive surgery after birth... then you can at least make an argument (though not necessarily a good one if the parents are healthy and able to care for the kid).
But a deformed LIP? F*CK! That just infuriates me... people are so self-centered it is unbelievable sometimes. And that's really what this boils down to: selfishness.
Fellows
...I am allowed to walk up to her and stamp "Caustic Bitch" onto her forehead with a special Sharpie? Ink Stamper. Then I get to walk away, never again allowed to appoach this woman, as specified by special restraining order.
Sorry if I'm being a little hostile here, but I just can't fathom this type of thing sometimes. Everyone here has surely met somone in their life with at least a slight deformation of the lip; I wonder how many of us have befriended such a person or otherwise held respect for them as we would anyone else...
...to think that a kid's life was snuffed out at SIX MONTHS, because he / she was going to have a goofed up lip. It just sickens me. My God, give the kid up for adoption if you're that cruel and vane, but don't end its life. And I think we can all agee: at six months, it's a LIFE. Hence the reason for every hospital having a little room where babies who were born at six and seven and eight months can be placed in special care.
Uncle....
Originally posted by Moogs
That woman is a mental and spiritual (not even talking religion here) weakling. What a worthless excuse for a human being. "Ohh, you mean my baby won't have perfect facial features? Then I don't want it. Too much burden for ME!"
C*nt.
Now, if you're going to tell me the baby is going to be born with a terribly malformed jaw and may not be able to eat or breathe properly... which will require extensive surgery after birth... then you can at least make an argument (though not necessarily a good one if the parents are healthy and able to care for the kid).
But a deformed LIP? F*CK! That just infuriates me... people are so self-centered it is unbelievable sometimes. And that's really what this boils down to: selfishness.
I suggest you to calm down, and to be more cautious before judging the others : we can not know how who will react unless we will face this, something i do not wish for anybody. BTW this woman represant the majority of future parents or at least a huge %.
Sinche the aera of prenatal echographia parents want the perfect baby. The quest of perfection is there, and many parents do not accept anything wrong. And this include cleft palate.
Personally i do not practice cleft palate surgery, but one of my friend do it in a university hospital. The fact is the number of surgical procedures is decreasing. And this decrease has only one explanation : abortion.
In France (sorry to speak always of France, but at least i know what's happen here on this particular subject), when people want to do a procedure they have to encounter a specialist.
My master who is one of these specialist give consultations to parents. For simple case, he try to explain them that surgery obtain good results, but even with this message, sometimes people refuse the baby. He was very annoyed. He said that personally he will keep the child, but not in the case of a bilateral cleft palate for a girl (the results are pretty poor here).
In Paris, a pediatric professor of plastic surgery is involved with an association of cleft palate's child parents. When the diagnostic is evoqued via echographia, the parents meet this association. And people of this association show their own childs, explain the surgical procedure, and demonstrate that they are happy parents, and that the disease is not that terrible. It works most of the time.
Banning abortion for these case, will lead nowhere, people will abort illegally anyway : if they don't want the child, they won't have it. Ante-natal diagnostic has broken the fatality of parents who "adopted" their childs perfect or not. Now people want perfect child.
If the law is against that, i suggest to forbidden the antenatal diagnostic of cleft palate. As this is strictly impossible in practice, and non ethical for a doctor (hide by purpose the truth), i recommand that we do not change the law, but we educate people and try to explain them that cleft palate most of the time can be cure very well, and that all the parents who made this choice are happy with it.
I fear the time when we should be able to predict the IQ of a child in utero ...