Mother calls for lowering upper age at which babies can be aborted
By Dave Andrusko
I’m as guilty as the next guy on this. We write about preemies who are born well ahead of schedule (often times after parents have resisted doctors’ advice to “terminate”) and then don’t do proper follow up.
Well thumbs up to the British publication The Mirror which this week brought readers up to date on 3-year-old Anais Knowles.
In Great Britain, the cut-off point for abortions is 24 weeks. It makes for real contradiction when a baby is born at 23 weeks-as was Anais-just a week before a baby of her age could still be aborted.
Mrs. Knowles had already lost two babies, according to The Mirror before Anais was born August 18, 2011: Jude Blue, born at 27 weeks in 2003, who died two-and-a-half days later, and a baby who was stillborn in 2008.
She told The Mirror’s John Shammas and Anna Roberts that two weeks after she had her 20-week scan, her water broke. And because of the two children Mrs. Knowles had lost previously, Anais was considered a high risk pregnancy, so Mrs. Knowles was rushed to the hospital.
Although not dilated, she was bleeding “a bit” and then got an inflection which caused labor.
My contractions started and stopped but by that point I was in labour.
Six hours later Anais had arrived - she was small but gorgeous.
This “tiny sparrow “ weighed only one pound, 5 ounces.
Of course Anais was not out of the woods. She needed to be intubated and Mrs. Knowles and her husband, Gene, were worried that they would lose Anais. But she was a fighter.
“She was in hospital for six months and came home on oxygen,” Mrs. Knowles said. “Now she is going to school. It’s amazing.”
She is “now calling for lower abortion limits to be enforced,” Shammas and Roberts reported. Anais “is proof a baby can survive before 24 weeks,” Mrs. Knowles said.