timeimmortal

I remember still the article that moved irregular correspondent Nicholas to first comment on the site here — it centered on a young girl from Ireland who was seeking the right to obtain an abortion in England. Apparently, her unborn baby had been diagnosed with a rare genetic condition that would not allow it to survive more than a few days once born.

Such things make for heated discussions, and there is no way to deny that such issues are, to say the least, charged. At the same time, though, one issue that doesn’t always make its way into the discussion (thus rendering such discussions “less than accurate”) is the issue of how often doctors, and other medical professionals, make mistakes — how often, basically, is a diagnosis made incorrectly?

Grace and I recently declined an elective diagnostic procedure concerning her pregnancy. The name of the procedure eludes me at the moment, but basically it’s a passive test for indicators that might point to our baby having certain genetic conditions, e.g. . The problem with the test, though, is that its false positive rate is absurdly high — 50% or so, if I remember the literature correctly. Hardly a…reliable indicator, and yet I would guess that more than a few babies have ended up being aborted in Edmonton on the sole basis of that single positive outcome.

Now, obviously, the condition that the young Irish girl’s baby was diagnosed with is more severe than Down’s. But does the reader remember what I said above? Yes, the diagnosis was grave…but one wonders if the question was ever asked concerning whether the diagnosis was accurate.

When Leeann Phelan was told her unborn baby had an incurable brain abnormality, she faced an agonising decision.

Doctors said he would be stillborn or severely disabled and advised her to have an abortion.

But Miss Phelan and her partner Stephen Crane stoutly refused and carried on with the pregnancy.

Now at six months old, tests have proven that little Jayden was wrongly diagnosed and is a fit and healthy little boy.

Due to pregnancy complications he had to be induced 13 weeks early, and bravely fought for life.

At 23 weeks, he was one week short of the current abortion limit of 24 weeks, which was set with the received medical wisdom that babies born that premature do not survive.

If there’s one thing that holds true in regard to children, and then especially infants, it is that they often seem — through no direct intent of their own other than the normal will of all human beings to live, thrive, and be loved — intent on spitting in the face of received wisdom and the knowledge of their elders. Little Jayden Phelan not only emerged from the womb in defiance of a diagnosis that mandated a grim fate for him, but he did so at a point in his development that most doctors say affords the infant no real chance of survival…and he lived.

The kid has spirit, to say the least. And his story makes one wonder: it is obvious that many babies have been aborted because doctors told the mother that their child had any of a host of abnormalities or defects. How many of those diagnosis were incorrect? How many babies died needlessly?

Phelan and Crane deserve more than a little bit of praise, methinks, for bravely sticking it out in the face of received medical wisdom, and for choosing the life of their child over their personal convenience. It is hard to bring a disabled child into the world, harder still to face the prospect that one’s child might be dead at the moment of its birth…and it takes real courage to face such things.

Such courage is often in short supply these days, and it is good that Phelan and Crane not only had it, but had it to spare, and passed it on to their son.

~ by Kenneth on May 26, 2008.