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Live babies being born after abortions
By Rebecca Smith, Evening Standard Health Reporter Last updated at 00:00am on 22.06.04Leading doctors today called for a major overhaul to avoid babies being born alive after abortions.
Pregnancy expert Professor Stuart Campbell has demanded rules should be tightened after it was revealed that at least nine babies are known to have survived terminations in recent years.
He said injections that were supposed to end their lives in the womb failed to do so - and he called for stricter regulations to be enforced on the methods of abortion.
Professor Campbell said that all abortions carried out after 18 weeks of pregnancy should include an injection, followed by drugs, to induce labour and a stillborn child.
Some consultants only give the injection in abortions after 22 weeks. Others, he claims, do not use it at all.
Professor Campbell, who worked as an obstetrician at St George's Hospital-Tooting, and pioneered 4D scanning of babies in the womb at the Create Health Centre for Reproduction and Advanced Technology in London, said: "It is really unfair on the nurses and the parents to see the baby making some sort of movement after birth.
"If after 18 weeks you just induce labour (without an injection first) a large number would be born with a heartbeat and most of them will survive with a heartbeat and will make movements.
"Certainly from 18 weeks they should inject the heart to stop it from beating, but not everyone does this. Guidance should be given by the Royal College.
"There are cases where the injection does not work but this is very rare."
One baby with Down's Syndrome was to be aborted at a hospital in the home counties but lived. It was transferred to St George's Hospital, where it received neonatal intensive care and survived. It is believed to have been adopted.
Next week a motion is being tabled at the British Medical Association conference that babies should be entitled to all the intensive care that babies born prematurely receive. Consultant obstetrician-Jim Thornton said in the past babies were born alive after abortion more regularly but "people didn't make a fuss and pretended not to realise the baby was born alive".
He said that if a baby were to be born alive and viable then it must be given medical help but there was a "grey area" where babies born in this manner at 22 or 23 weeks were on the cusp of being able to survive. Only 17 per cent of babies born normally at 23 weeks survive.
Professor Thornton, of City Hospital, Nottingham, said: "Once it is born, you can't kill the baby but the law doesn't say anything about to what degree you resuscitate it.
"The way it is dealt with is by sensible doctors and sensible nurses keeping it under their hat and allowing the baby to pass away peacefully."
Professor Campbell does not believe that a baby born in this way should be kept alive at all costs.
"What paediatricians do is spend resources keeping a baby that is going to die, alive. It is absolute nonsense. It does show that is up to us (obstetricians) to make sure the baby is not moving."
Guidance issued by the Royal College of Obstetrics and Gynaecologists states that a legal abortion must not be allowed to result in a live birth.
But Professor Campbell says it does not make clear at what stage it is necessary to stop the heartbeat before abortion.
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