Commentary > Leaving Baby Jayden to Die Was Wrong, But Not Rationed Care
< Making Things Up is Not Journalism | Commentary | Diagnosing Depression from a Snapshot >

Leaving Baby Jayden to Die Was Wrong, But Not Rationed Care

By Robyn Broyles, October 05, 2009 08:15



Sarah Capewell of the United Kingdom went into labor when she was 21 weeks and 5 days pregnant.  Unfortunately for her and her son, in the U.K., the National Health Service (NHS) has declared that any baby under 23 weeks gestation is non-viable.  This rule applies to all babies, including those who, like baby Jayden, have not read the guidelines and have the temerity to be born alive.

Sarah was 2 days shy of the 22-week cutoff  for doctors to administer medication to try to stop her early labor. (The reason for the 22-week rule may be because labor, once started, can rarely be delayed for over a week.) Nor would they administer the emergency medication that could have helped Jayden's tiny lungs mature faster. 

Nevertheless, Jayden was born alive.  And no doctor would lift a finger to help him.

In the United States, thanks to the Born Alive Infants Protection Act, babies of any gestational age who are born alive—even if in the process of an abortion—must be given care.  Not so in the U.K.

In Florida, Amillia Sonja Taylor was born in October 2006 just one gestational day older than Jayden.  She weighed 26 pounds and was "developmentally progressing very well," according to her mother, reported a Florida news channel on Amillia Taylor's second birthday in 2008.  (That's the most recent article I could dig up.)  She is recognized as the most premature surviving baby in the world.  Perhaps Jayden could have beat her by a day, had NHS doctors given him the chance.

There is no reason to believe, however, that Jayden's shameful neglect resulted from rationed care.  The timing of the story, as the U.S. is embroiled in a debate over health care reforms, could not have been worse for the government-run health care cause.  Commentator Mark Rienzi, for example, made a tenuous association between Jayden's death under the NHS and the fate of future American preemies under President Obama's health care proposals, administrated by "cost-conscious government bureaucrats." Rienzi presents Jayden's case as the result of "rationed care at the beginning of life."  It was not.  It was simply bad medicine.

From all accounts, Jayden was not denied treatment because his poor prognosis failed some cost-benefit analysis.  It was because the doctors could not see past their insular view that life begins at 23 weeks gestation, darn it, even if empirical evidence in the form of a living infant contradicts that view. Said a hospital spokesman, "Like other acute hospitals, we follow national guidance from the British Association of Perinatal Medicine regarding premature births." 

It is an abhorrent case of circular reasoning:  Babies born under 23 weeks in the U.K. can't survive, because they are not given care.  Therefore, the NHS reasons, babies born under 23 weeks should not be given care because they can't survive.

Rationed care didn't kill baby Jayden, but he was the victim of politics nevertheless.  The U.K.'s guidelines on preemie treatment are tied to the nation's abortion debate.  According to parenting blogger Rachel Campos-Duffy, "there is genuine concern [in the U.K.] that lowering the viability age of a fetus would trigger another national debate over abortion limits."  The maximum gestational age for abortions in the U.K. was changed from 28 weeks to 24 weeks in 1990 in the face of increasing scientific evidence that 24-week fetuses are viable outside the womb.

The 20 Weeks Campaign, a movement to lower Britain's elective abortion limit to babies 20 weeks and younger, says the U.K. has the most liberal abortion laws in Europe, citing an article in the Daily Mail.  While the statement is exaggerated (Belgium, for example, does not restrict abortion at any age), it does carry some truth:  Germany and Italy restrict abortion-on-demand to the first trimester (about 13 weeks), while Spain and Poland do not allow it at all.

Abortion is always a tragedy, victimizing both an innocent baby and his or her mother.  It's doubly tragic that Sarah and Jayden Capewell were abortion victims, too, because Sarah did not seek any kind of abortion at all.

 

Permalink

Tags: abortion, politics, health care, news stories

If you liked this article, you may also like:

Comments on “Leaving Baby Jayden to Die Was Wrong, But Not Rationed Care”

You must be registered and logged in to post comments. Log in here.
Not registered? Register now!