‘Living proof’ stirs debate


BY OLGA CRAIGThe Sunday Telegraph

As a young obstetrician in the Sixties, British professor Stuart Campbell dealt daily with the horrific aftermath of botched back-street abortions. Then, with abortion illegal, he was all too aware that women who could not or would not keep their babies were turning to the shadowy “Vera Drakes” who, usually for money, would carry out crude terminations in squalid and unhygienic conditions.


“Which was why I welcomed the 1967 Act that sanctioned abortions within the first 28 weeks of pregnancy,” he says.


When, in 1990, the time limit on abortions was reduced to 24 weeks, again Prof. Campbell welcomed the decision. Such had been the advances in neonatal care that not only were babies born at 25 and 26 weeks routinely surviving, but most were free from any threat of longterm health problems.


Today Prof. Campbell, a consultant at the Create Health Clinic in London, an obstetrician for 40 years and former head of obstetrics and gynecology at King’s College School of Medicine, no longer carries out abortions on women in the later stages of pregnancy.


“I most certainly would not do it now,” he said resolutely. “If you are asking, do I live with a sense of anguish over past abortions I have carried out, then, no, I am not racked by guilt. But I now know that to terminate those late fetuses was wrong. If the decision were mine, I would immediately reduce the termination limit to 20 weeks. To me, it seems utterly illogical and unethical that, in adjacent wards, one doctor is struggling to save the life of a baby delivered at 23 weeks while another is aborting a healthy baby of the same age.”

What changed Prof. Campbell’s mind was a stunning set of ultrasound images that he and his medical team pioneered. The grainy images show fetuses, some as young as 12 weeks, sucking their thumbs, yawning, even “walking” in the womb.


The living proof, he believes, that we should not be aborting after 20 weeks came last week when the first pictures of Baby Amillia were released. She weighed less than 10 ounces, measured just 23 centimetres from head to toe and is believed to be world’s most premature surviving newborn. Her survival is a moving and powerfully persuasive argument for changing Britain’s laws and regulations, which increasing numbers of doctors believe are woefully outdated.


There is no legal limit to abortion in Canada. Approximately 7.5% of all babies born in Canada are born prematurely (before 37 weeks) and 1% to 2% are born before 34 weeks.


In the United Kingdom, at present, about 50,000 babies are born prematurely (before 37 weeks) each year and that figure is growing annually. Babies born before 22 weeks’ gestation are not considered “viable,” according to the Nuffield Council on Bioethics. Its guidelines for the medical profession, published at the end of last year, suggest that babies born below 22 weeks should not be resuscitated. Only after 24 weeks’ gestation are doctors obliged to try to save a premature baby.


What is causing increasing alarm is that it is now almost three years since an American study by the Children’s Hospital of Minnesota, one of the most reputable medical authorities in the arena of neonatal medicine, revealed that at 23 weeks more than 60% of babies can survive.


Fear that doctors might deem Amellia too premature to save drove Sonia Taylor, 37, her mother, to lie about how far along her pregnancy was. She pretended she was 23, not 21 weeks, pregnant in a desperate attempt to ensure the delivery team would do everything possible to save her child. It was a decision all too familiar to Caroline Newman, who lives in London with husband Stephen and their seven-year-old daughter, Emily.


“That’s exactly what I did,” said Ms. Newman, 40. “I went into labour with Emily at just over 22 weeks.... I said I was further along, roughly 24 weeks. I just thought that they would fight that little bit harder if they thought she was beyond the age that is deemed viable.”


When Emily was born, she weighed just 1 lb 4oz and “her skin was almost transparent, she looked so frail. One of her hands was the size of my thumbnail,” Ms. Newman said.


Emily, at seven, is a robust little girl with no health problems. For the Newmans, the notion that she was born when other babies her age were routinely being aborted is horrifying. “We feel incredibly lucky we had the forward-thinking doctors we did,” Ms. Newman said.


The statistics, however, are not encouraging. Babies born under 23 weeks have very little in the way of lungs or brains. In fact, according to John Wyatt, a professor of neonatal paediatrics at University College London Hospital, all the organs are extremely immature.


“The skin is often very thin and the kidneys undeveloped,” he explained. “The brain is extremely immature and very prone to injury, especially bleeding. The critical issue, however, is the lungs. Even with machines, it is impossible to get oxygen in, because they are almost solid. Trying to keep the baby alive may involve inflicting a very high degree of damage.”


Of the 700,000 babies born in Britain each year, about 800 arrive under 25 weeks, of which only half survive. At 24 weeks, 39% pull through, and at 23 weeks, that figure drops to just 17%.


Recent medical advances, however, are making a vast difference. The use of steroids to help accelerate lung development means the chances of survival are increasing all the time.


Yet the final proof that the abortion limit should be lowered is, Prof. Campbell believes, borne out by his astonishing fetal photographs.


“Even at 12 weeks, these fetuses indicate very complex behaviour,” he said. “They yawn, they hold their toes. At 20 weeks, one can see facial expressions, and at 22 to 23 weeks, their eyelids begin to open. You can actually see the fetus developing into a human being.


“They are, themselves, their own best advocates. Once, only the supporters of a woman’s right to choose really had a voice. Now the fetus itself can speak through these pictures. They are saying: ‘I am here. See, this is what I can do.’ Which of us should ignore that?”

I thought Canada had a cut off point for abortions?

How can doctors play God, and decide who lives and who dies?

Because we have given them that power. Two people get into a serious car crash and go to the hospital with life threatening injuries.

Only one doctor is available to perform surgery.





Both of them have an equal chance of survival.





Who does he choose?

















This is a situation that unfortunately does happen in life, and the doctor has to choose who lives and who dies. He/she HAS to play God and we've given them the power to do so...


Another example of playing God is where you choose which lobster will be your dinner at Red Lobster...

There's nothing in the hypocratic oath about "a womans' right to choose."

Some country in Europe also does - Holland, maybe?

Some country in Europe also does - Holland, maybe?

Why are conservatives so interested in saving the life of these supposed humans when they paradoxically are the first to willingly send the innocent to war to kill more innocents, the first to exploit the innocent for profit, and the first to support and call for the death penalty?

Why are conservatives so interested in saving the life of these supposed humans when they paradoxically are the first to willingly send the innocent to war to kill more innocents, the first to exploit the innocent for profit, and the first to support and call for the death penalty?

Why are conservatives so interested in saving the life of these supposed humans when they paradoxically are the first to willingly send the innocent to war to kill more innocents, the first to exploit the innocent for profit, and the first to support and call for the death penalty?

Some country in Europe also does - Holland, maybe?