A baby boy, who was left to die by doctors after a failed abortion was found alive almost a day later.
The 22-week baby died one day later in the intensive care unit of the hospital in Rossano in Italy. The first-time mum had decided to have an abortion after her scans suggested that her baby was disabled.
The baby survived the abortion however and was simply left to die. 20 hours after the operation the hospital chaplain discovered he was alive when he went to pray beside the baby's body! The swaddled baby with his umbilical cord still attached, was clearly breathing and moving.
The priest alerted the doctors who immediately arranged for the baby boy to be taken to a specialist neo-natal unit where he died the next day.
Italian police are investigating the case for "homicide" because infanticide is illegal in Italy. Basically the law means that doctors were obliged to try to keep the child alive once he had survived the abortion.
A government spokeswoman said: “....this would be a case of deliberate abandonment of a seriously premature neonate, possibly also with some form of disability, an act contrary to any sense of human compassion but also of any accepted professional medical practice.... We must remember that a baby, once born, is an Italian citizen equal to all the others, and is entitled to all fundamental rights, including the right to health and therefore to be given full support.”
The case has raised questions in Britain over the legal upper limits for abortion and the viability of the foetus – or its ability to survive outside of the womb.
A spokesman for the ProLife Alliance said: "There cannot be anybody in the world who is not horrified by a story like this nor anybody in the UK who would not support a massive reduction in the upper limit for abortion."
The case is the second in Italy involving a foetus of 22 weeks surviving an abortion in just three years. A baby in Florence who weighed just 17oz when he was aborted at 22 weeks lived for three days.
In The UK too more babies are being born alive at a stage when they could legally be aborted. The rising number of babies surviving below 24 weeks has led to more and more calls for the legal upper limit to be reduced further. In Manchester in 2005 a baby was born alive at 24 weeks after surviving three attempts to abort him. He is now a 5 year-old schoolboy.
April 29 2010
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