Rebecca Price and Patrick Kiely, parents of Christopher outside the High Court. We need action to stop parents being pushed to abort children like Baby Christopher, writes Vicky Wall
In 2018, I was one of a group of parents who knew, from personal experience, that safeguards were needed to prevent abortion being pushed after a diagnosis of a life-limiting condition for baby.
When I was pregnant with my baby girl, Líadán, she was diagnosed with Trisomy 18, the same condition that doctors mistakenly believed was the prognosis for Baby Christopher Kiely whose parents won a High Court action last week against the National Maternity Hospital.
I was told Líadán was “incompatible with life”, in the same way that Christopher’s parents were told he had a “fatal foetal abnormality”. Neither of those descriptions are medical terms.
In my distress, I asked the doctor what we could do, meaning what could we do to help her. To my horror, he told me that I could ‘pop’ over to England – obviously to have an abortion.
It is not true to say that all preborn babies with Trisomy 18 have ‘no chance’ of survival”
Why was abortion the very first option offered to me – a distraught and terrified mum whose world had just been shattered? I wasn’t offered any information about the condition, such as a factual booklet or a website which might have helped me connect with other parents who had been in this situation. Instead I was told I could ‘pop’ off and end my daughter’s life.
That moment came flooding back to me this week when I read what Rebecca Price and Patrick Kiely were told about their unborn son, Christopher, as they were being advised to have an abortion. When the couple said that they weren’t afraid to take care of a sick baby, they were told their baby “wasn’t viable”.
In a statement, they said that they only considered the advice of their doctor to abort their child because they were told Christopher had no chance of survival. It turned out the diagnosis was wrong, but at that stage, the baby’s life had been ended.
Trisomy
It is not true to say that all preborn babies with Trisomy 18 have ‘no chance’ of survival. Research published in Pediatrics showed that children who live until birth with Trisomy 18 have an average lifespan of 14 days, and that 10% live for more than a year.
Recently, an important editorial in the Journal of the American Medical Association concluded that “survival [for babies with Trisomy] is not as rare as once thought”, and acknowledged the role that parents networking on social media had played in bringing doctors to a better understanding of the value of the lives of our Trisomy babies, and the support needed by parents.
This is the information that should be shared with parents, instead of attaching a meaningless label to a child and pushing parents towards abortion. One study, published in the American Journal of Medical Genetics showed that a shocking 61% of parents reported feeling pressure to abort their baby after a diagnosis of a chromosomal disorder.
During the abortion referendum, we families who had been through negative experiences after receiving a poor diagnosis, sought to raise our fears that families would be pressured or pushed into abortion if safeguards were not put in place. We were ignored.
The deeply disturbing case of Baby Christopher, aborted after a misdiagnosis, lays bare shocking truths about families pushed towards abortion in Irish maternity hospitals”
Now, our worst fears have been realised. Baby Christopher’s family say they never raised the issue of abortion, and that they were advised to have an abortion. We don’t know how many other families have been affected in the same way.
Both Simon Harris and then Stephen Donnelly seem to be dragging their heels on an inquiry into the abortion of Baby Christopher. The media seem largely uninterested in examining whether the culture and mindset in maternity hospitals was a contributing factor.
Incorrect information
In the light of what the High Court action has now revealed, this culture must end immediately. Families must be informed and supported, not pushed towards abortion and given incorrect information, distorted by personal opinion. Abortion must not be presented as the first and best option, and parents must be told that support groups and networks exist for families in their situation.
The deeply disturbing case of Baby Christopher, aborted after a misdiagnosis, lays bare shocking truths about families pushed towards abortion in Irish maternity hospitals. We were told it would never happen, but it did, within three months of the new abortion regime. Now we need to make sure it never happens again.
Vicky Wall works with Every Life Counts which offers support and information to families where baby has been diagnosed with a life-limiting condition.