Written March 2021 edited 2022 and 2023 and 2024
This blog shares about babies who are born prematurely or at risk of being born early, not related to abortion at all. The blog also talks about the viability standards for babies in the womb, and what ACOG thinks standard of care should be for the preemies and my thoughts on it. I will be diving into an aspect of the “Previable Birth” and “Antenatal Corticosteroid Therapy for Fetal Maturation” article by ACOG and doing a bit of a deep dive. I started writing this over a year ago. 2-8-2020 (3-12-21 reflections As I’ve looked over this blog again a little, I’ve seen some new insights.) I found this quote to be interesting because I do not take anything of ACOG’s at face value. I see that they have a strong pro-abortion anti-life leaning so I always take this into account as I read what they write as ACOG does not have the child’s best interest at heart. ACOG states in the article, entitled, Periviable Birth, ‘When delivery is anticipated near the limit of viability, families and health care teams are faced with complex and ethically challenging decisions. Decision making often needs to adapt to changing clinical circumstances before and after delivery. This document describes newborn outcomes after periviable birth, provides current evidence and recommendations regarding interventions in this setting, and provides an outline for family counseling with the goal of incorporating informed patient preferences. Its intent is to provide support and guidance regarding decisions, including both declining and accepting interventions and therapies, based on individual circumstances and patient values.’ (https://www.acog.org/clinical/clinical-guidance/obstetric-care-consensus/articles/2017/10/periviable-birth)
This is huge as we see that individual counseling for families for patient care in other fields is foundationally beneficial if the patient has a doctor who is pro-life having a pro-life ethic. With this situation it all depends on if the counseling the family receives is from a 100% pro life doctor view such as Dr. Bill Lile, Dr. Monique Ruberu, Dr. John Bruchalski and others who are 100% pro-life life obgyns who see the preborn children in the womb and outside the womb as the valued people we each are and seeing preborn and born children as their patients. The counseling for the “treatment plans” for your preborn children will not necessarily be from a pro life/true treatment perspective as to have your children’s best interest at heart. I wonder if this could mean if you are seeing a pro abortion physician he would think to mention abortion, which is NOT a medical treatment, for the child because they are scared of the liability of a child who is born early and I also wonder if it could mean a pro-abortion doctor says “nothing can be done” to fight for your children who are born early as they do not want to fight because they think the baby won’t live long. The following story is regarding babies who were at risk of being born early and were born early and were not fought for.
Live Action shared their story, “In a heartbreaking video released by Created Equal, Amanda, the mother of premature twin boys Emery and Elliot, can be heard pleading for her sons’ lives. In June of 2017, Amanda was experiencing bleeding when she went to Riverside Methodist Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, at 22 weeks and two days gestation. She said medical staff informed her that if her babies were born before 22 weeks and five days gestation, they would not resuscitate them. Three days later, at exactly 22 weeks and five days gestation as is confirmed by the attending physician’s notes, Amanda gave birth to Emery and Elliot, and though the boys moved, breathed, and even cried, she said the doctors still refused to help them.
READ: Miracle: Born at 21 weeks, ‘most premature’ baby is thriving
‘I pleaded with nurses and other hospital staff to help try to save my babies,’ Amanda said in a statement. “I was told they would not survive. I asked if they would at minimum assess the babies after they were born to determine possibility of survival. I was informed NICU would not assess the twins and that the babies would probably be stillborn or at best breathe for a moment.’….. ‘Emery was born first. No doctors were present for his birth and although a neonatal doctor did arrive shortly after, he only wrapped Emery in a blanket and placed him under the heating lamp.
‘You guys are gonna save him, right?’ says Amanda in the heartbreaking video. ‘Promise me they’re gonna save him.’
For 45 minutes Emery moved, breathed and lived outside the womb before he died.
A couple of hours later, Elliot was born. He was larger than Emery and lived for over two hours outside the womb – breathing, moving, and crying. Yet medical staff still did nothing to help him.
Amanda can be heard in the video crying as she held him, ‘Mommy tried. Mommy tried.’
A study in the New England Journal of Medicine states that premature babies born at 22 weeks are much more likely to survive with medical intervention than previously believed. In fact, babies like Emery and Elliot are continually surviving and thriving outside the womb. Babies born even earlier than the twins have survived when doctors cared enough to step in and help them. Baby Benson was born at 22 weeks and five days. Amillia Taylor was born and survived at just 21 weeks, six days gestation. Frieda Mangold survived after being born at 21 weeks, five days – a full week earlier than Emery and Elliot. And Courtney Stensrud’s baby girl survived after being born at 21 weeks and four days gestation. She is now a healthy three-year-old who is alive because Stensrud’s doctor heard her pleas and decided to try and help the little girl.’(https://www.liveaction.org/news/hospital-staff-premature-twin-fight/)
Based upon the Emery and Elliot story of how the pediatrician would not resuscitate the children I have wondered how often this happens. In the ACOG article entitled Periviable Birth they state, “Because of the wide range of outcomes associated with periviable birth, counseling should attempt to include accurate information that is as individualized as possible regarding anticipated short-term and long-term outcomes. Nevertheless, it is important to realize that outcomes that have been reported in the medical literature may have some biases because of a variety of factors, including study inclusion criteria (eg, whether studies include all births or are limited to liveborn infants, non-anomalous newborns, liveborn resuscitated newborns, or neonatal intensive care unit [NICU] admissions only), variation in management between centers, and changes in NICU practices over time (eg, administration of antepartum steroids, resuscitative efforts, NICU admission criteria; see Table Table 1 5 9 10 11 15 16 17 18 19 20. In addition, a precise understanding of outcomes in survivors is further confounded by differing definitions of “major” and “minor” disabilities used in studies.” (https://www.acog.org/clinical/clinical-guidance/obstetric-care-consensus/articles/2017/10/periviable-birth) This is a valuable quote. There are so many key points to comment on regarding this quote. First, I believe doctors need to inform parents on the statistics, but I also believe that the doctors should never look at the child as a “statistic” as an excuse to not fight but they should simply fight for the child because they see them as their patient. Regarding this, I thought of the story of Lyla who is a little girl whose story is featured on Live Action, as she was born as a preemie at 21 weeks due to PPROM. The shocking part of her story is how this doctor, Dr. Ahmad, actually fought for Lyla as it is a rarity for children born this early to ever be fought for. Live Action shares Lyla’s story in the following article (which was written 5 years ago). Live Action states, “Courtney Stensrud and her husband were thrilled to be expecting a little girl, but her membranes ruptured early at just 21 weeks of pregnancy. So Stensrud began searching for stories of other babies who had survived that young, that might give her hope. ‘There were stories of 22-weekers, 23-weekers, but nothing about 21-weekers. So I knew that there was little to no survival or viability at 21 weeks,’ she said…Originally, Dr. Ahmad thought there was nothing that could be done for Stensrud’s baby. ‘Although I was listening to him, I just felt something inside of me say, ‘Just have hope and have faith,’ said Stensrud. “It didn’t matter to me that she was 21 weeks and 4 days. I didn’t care. As he was talking to me, I just said, ‘Will you try?’ And he said he would, and [four] years later, we have our little miracle baby.’
Dr. Ahmad agreed. ‘We put that super tiny tube down and it fit,’ he said. ‘If it had not fit, we wouldn’t have been able to resuscitate her. But she was just big enough.’ He then moved forward with ‘vigorous resuscitation’. ‘[W]e placed her under an overhead warmer, we listened, and we heard her heart rate, which we were not necessarily expecting,’ he said. “We immediately placed a breathing tube in her airway. We started giving her oxygen, and really pretty quickly, her heart rate began to rise. She very slowly changed colors from blue to pink, and she actually began to move and began to start breathing within a few minutes.’
Stensrud previously had not shared pictures of micro-preemie Lyla, who is now four years old, or shared her name — until now.” (https://www.liveaction.org/news/21-weeks-premature-baby-survive/)
This doctor heard a mother’s plea to see her daughter. He did not see Lyla as a statistic, of a child who would die, but listened to this mother’s plea and fought for her life.
I love how he did not listen to the status quo and he did not give up on Lyla. How many Lyla’s could have been? How many children were not fought for just because it was not standard care to? As Live Action adds the quote from the doctor who fought for Lyla’s life they states, ‘“Dr. Ahmad, as quoted by NBC News, noted, ‘At this time, resuscitating infants who are born in the 21st week of gestation is not standard practice anywhere in the world. Even for those infants born in the 22nd week of gestation, there continues to be significant disagreement regarding the best course of action due to the high mortality and substantial risks for long-term disability.”’ (https://www.liveaction.org/news/21-weeks-premature-baby-survive/)
In my own thoughts, I think there are high mortality rates due to the fact that when a doctor could resuscitate a child they do not. I am not saying all children can be but I think that if doctors tried to in some situations where it seems hopeless the high mortality rate would fall. Also, why would a doctor believe they should not fight for a child and NOT resuscitate them just because they may live with a disability. So, a doctor would rather allow a baby to die by not being resuscitated rather than fighting for the child as they are a doctor’s patient. A disability is not a crime and the society we live in views a disability as being worse than one’s life not being fought for and dying due to the neglect of care. A quote God gave me regarding the ending of abortion topic is how, “We fight not that they may live but because they are already alive.” (RMG)
In conclusion, this doctor fought for Lyla seeing her personhood and disregarded how it was not typical to fight for babies this young. Doctors and parents need to fight for children no matter the statistics. In order to have more children survive a doctor has to break the mold and not listen to the protocol and fight for each child. Again, “We fight not that they may live but because they are already alive.” I feel that maybe ACOG’s “counseling” to parents is biased as they do not always want the parents’ to fight for their children in the womb. We see the following quote from the ACOG article, “Antenatal Corticosteroid Therapy for Fetal Maturation” which says, “Administration of corticosteroids for pregnant women during the periviable period who are at risk of preterm delivery within 7 days is linked to a family’s decision regarding resuscitation and should be considered in that context.” https://www.acog.org/clinical/clinical-guidance/committee-opinion/articles/2017/08/antenatal-corticosteroid-therapy-for-fetal-maturation Parents should not have the choice of resuscitation as doctors should naturally resuscitate their newly born patients.
His Love & Care 