Do pro-lifers care about fetal pain once the baby is born?
by digby
The whole notion of fetal pain has become a rallying cry for the anti-abortion crowd and is being used throughout the country as a cudgel to either change the law to ban abortions or to make women feel guilty so they will not decide to end their pregnancies.
It’s an individual decision, but no more so than the one discussed in this article in today’s New York Times by a neonatologist about the incredible ethical, moral and emotional decision making that goes into saving premature babies:
Most extremely premature babies will experience at least one complication — bleeding in the brain, infections, intestinal perforation, severe lung damage — before discharge. Many will need treatment long after birth, sometimes for life, at great financial and emotional cost to them and those around them.
A few months ago I cared for just such a child. Let’s call her Miracle. She was born at 23 weeks’ gestation and weighed a little over a pound. Despite the bleak prognosis, her parents asked that we resuscitate her in the delivery room.
So we did. But over the next eight weeks, to keep her alive, we had to prick Miracle’s heel so many times she developed scarring. We suctioned her trachea hundreds of times. We put tubes through her mouth and into her stomach, we stabbed her again and again to insert IVs, and we took blood from her and then transfused blood back. We gave her antibiotics for two severe infections.
Each of these events created suffering, for Miracle and her parents. Her mother visited daily and developed an anxiety disorder. Her father came in only once a week, the pain and sadness was so great.
After eight weeks, Miracle came off the ventilator we had put her on. But three days later we had to turn it back on, and it was possible she would die or remain on the ventilator permanently if we didn’t give her steroids, which can have side effects as serious as cerebral palsy. Her mother opted for the steroids. But Miracle’s father was angry. He muttered to me: “Why do you do this? Why do you keep these babies alive?”
I’ve been thinking about that question for decades and haven’t found a simple answer. Some parents believe that withholding or withdrawing life-sustaining treatment will prevent their infant from suffering and living a life not worth living; others consider it murder. Some families soar in caring for their disabled kids; others disintegrate.
Ultimately, parents have the right to decide, but we physicians must help them make informed decisions. I asked Miracle’s father whether anyone had talked to him about resuscitating Miracle before she was born. He vaguely remembered a conversation, but hadn’t understood what treating such a tiny premature baby meant.
For some reason, I doubt that the anti-abortion zealots are concerned about the pain that was inflicted on this tiny little baby over the course of many months. And perhaps that’s ok. After all, in the end she will live, albeit with lung disease, so all that suffering could be considered worth it.
Still, I wonder where the anti-abortion people are on this question? This neotalogist makes an argument for the medical profession to be more honest about the pain and suffering, the possible disabilities, the cost and the emotional toll of putting these premies through all this:
Ultimately, parents have the right to decide, but we physicians must help them make informed decisions. I asked Miracle’s father whether anyone had talked to him about resuscitating Miracle before she was born. He vaguely remembered a conversation, but hadn’t understood what treating such a tiny premature baby meant.
And nobody talked to him after Miracle was born about continuing life-sustaining treatment. In fact, he had gotten to her two-month birthday without realizing that her suffering might end in death. We had updated his wife, but she didn’t like to hear bad news, and didn’t tell him.
Do “pro-life” zealots agree that parents have a right to make these decisions? If so, why? And once they succeed in banning abortion can we expect anti-abortion zealots to be picketing and harassing hospitals that deliver premature infants not to allow parents to make these decision? If their morals are consistent, I can’t imagine why they aren’t doing it already.
I don’t mean to sound as if there’s anything wrong with parents opting for all life saving measures for their premature babies if they choose. Of course they should have that option. But I also agree with this doctor that a parent has a right to decide that the prolonged suffering and life-long disabilities are too much for their child and their family to endure. It’s so personal, so private so fraught with deep medical, ethical and moral complications that you just can’t make a blanket decision about it and must rely on the individuals involved to do what they think best. Just like abortion.
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