This week I heard on the news of how two couples went though with abortions having mistakenly been told that their unborn babies had serious genetic conditions.
Described by the BBC as an NHS scandal, it is indeed a tragic story and one can’t help but feel for those affected by it.
But, whilst sympathetic to those who find themselves in seemingly impossible situations, can anyone explain to me why, when two healthy babies, believed to have a serious prenatal diagnosis, are aborted as a result of a clinical error, it’s considered a scandal, but when, in the UK alone, more than 500 babies, known to be healthy, are aborted every day, it’s not.
Or why, having contacted me about a pregnant patient of mine who was using drugs, the social worker who was minded to put the unborn baby on the child protection register, on hearing that the mother had chosen to have a termination felt no further action was therefore necessary.
Because to me it makes absolutely no sense at all.
Unlike the case I was involved with in my early years as a doctor when a young mother, on finding out that she had cervical cancer at the same time she discovered she was pregnant, deferred the urgent hysterectomy she required until her child was born.
A decision that saved her baby’s life, even as it cost her her own.
To read ‘Severed Thinking’, click here
To read ‘Assisted Dying – we all need to be happier to help’, click here
To read ‘Assisted dying in the light of the cross’, click here
Some musings 