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It’s setting off my BS meter as well. I can believe some doctor (who’s not God but plays Him on TV) presented the option to basically starve their baby to death. However, that the couple received pressure to do so strikes me as untrue. Or else, the doctor had some serious emotional issues and would have many documented complaints against him. I don’t believe starving a baby with a cleft palate is best medical practice. I’d have reported some doctor to the hospital and the medical board who tried to tell me it was.

I will tell you that when my niece and her husband found out not only were they pregnant again, only a few months after their first daughter was born via cesarean after a difficult labor and pre-eclamsia, but this time with triplets, my niece’s then OBY (not the one who delivered their first child BTW) told her it was very risky, too risky in his opinion and that she should either abort or have a “selective” reduction, i.e. abort, i.e. kill/ murder two out of the three babies and that if she didn’t she was likely to die…he didn’t “pressure” them per se but advised them to do this and then admitted that neither his experience nor that of his hospital’s facilities were equipped to deal with this type of high risk delivery.

Of course this was very upsetting to my niece and her husband, but rather than panicking based on what he told them, they instead searched out and found an OBY specializing in high risk pregnancies at Penn State Hershey Medical Center (something their first doctor should have advised them to do IMO and was negligent for not doing so). This new OBY not only said that while there were very real risks, he was confident that if she was closely monitored and cared for, she had a very good chance of delivering all three and healthy and that their first doctor, who was at a small regional hospital without a NICU BTW, was probably too scared and possibly too incompetent to want to take on a case like hers. (This new doc BTW, was already semi-famous for delivering the sextuplets of another PA family who went on to have a TV show, and for him, triplets were a cake walk and nothing from what I understand compared to dealing with that diva mother who’s name rhymes with “Skate” - LOL). And my triplet great nieces are nearly 5 years old and their “big” sister nearly 6 and although they are wearing out their parents, mentally, physically and financially, all are healthy and thriving :) and my niece and her husband wouldn’t nor I would want it any differently.

It should also be important to note that my niece had to be hospitalized in the high risk maternity ward a full month before the scheduled c-section at 32 weeks and my great nieces spent nearly a month in the NICU before coming home but more importantly, they all received excellent care. And the delivery was a carefully planned and coordinated event with a team of NICU nurses assigned for each of the three babies and more than one doctor attending. The triplets were rather good sized for being multiples and at 32 weeks but spent their first weeks in incubators and on nasal feeding tubes and the littlest one had a lot of breathing problems and a heart valve closure problem that thankfully was treated with medication. But the care they all received was beyond excellent and I fear that sensational stories like this make some distrust not only the very few bad eggs in the medical profession but also discourage people from getting good medical care out of often unfounded fears that all doctors and all hospitals want to kill them which more often than not is simply not the case.

So with all that being said and knowing there are some “bad” doctors out there, I’m also having more than a bit of a hard time believing the story as written.

The day after he was born, Aidan was taken into the NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit) because he was unable to breastfeed, and was becoming dehydrated and weak. The hospital did not have the type of bottles babies with a cleft use to feed. The hospital pediatrician called my husband into the nursery and advised us to sign Aidan over to the hospital.

First of all it is or at least should be SOP to take a baby with a problem as severe as bilateral cleft lip and palate to the NICU right away, not a day later. Secondly I find it rather hard to believe that a hospital large enough to have a NICU wouldn’t have on hand or be able to quickly obtain the specialized feeding bottles or were completely unprepared to deal with bilateral cleft lip and palate since it effects 1/700 children. And lastly I find it very difficult to believe that any parents could, even if they wanted to or a doctor wanted them to, simply “sign over” their child to the hospital for any reason. For one thing, surrendering parental rights is not something that can typically be done by a single stroke of a pen; there are many legalities involved. For another thing, I’ve never heard of a hospital taking “full parental custody” of any baby, even of abandoned children. In those cases of abandonment or in cases of severe abuse or neglect, CPS and the courts get involved, the abandoned child is appointed by the court an advocate and temporary foster parents. Hospitals simply do not have parents sign their children over to the hospital voluntarily or involuntarily.

and that these kids (kids with cleft lip and palate) tend to have neurological problems, he would require many surgeries that could bankrupt us, and that if we were foolish enough to ignore medical advice and take our baby home he would end right back at the hospital as a “failure to thrive.”

That’s another thing that doesn’t ring quite true. First of all, kids with cleft lip and palate do not “tend to have neurological problems” and even if that was a real possibility, some very simple tests could be performed to either confirm or rule that out shortly after birth.

Next it doesn’t make sense that a pediatrician would on one hand recommend “starvation” but on the other hand express concerns that if they took their baby home that he would be brought back as a “failure to thrive.” It seems perhaps more likely that the doctor advised the parents not to take their baby home right away and against medical advice to keep him in the NICU until he gained weight.

Next it would be very highly unusual for any doctor to express concerns about financial considerations or “possible” future bankruptcy over patient care. And interestingly the article says nothing about this couple’s insurance or financial situation at the time their son was born. Going back to my niece and her husband, they both had excellent insurance with their employers and it paid for a good deal of their triplets’ delivery but it still left them with a considerable amount of uncovered hospital expenses and debt. Some were written off (their OBY, a good doc and a good person for instance simply wrote off his bill) but 4 years later, they did file for bankruptcy but not only because of uncovered hospital bills - two student loans also contributed to that decision but the possibility of them not being able to pay all their doctor’s and hospital bills simply never factored in to the care my niece or my great nieces received at Penn State Hershey Medical Center. In fact the hospital through their patient advocacy and social work department and the NICU support staff, put my niece in touch with several NFP orgs that are involved in helping families with multiple births and premie births - she received a lot of help and support from these orgs and from other multiple moms with whom she was put in touch with both in moral support but also financial help, and that included many discounts and coupons from many retailers who give unadvertised discounts to multiple birth moms including Macy’s, Target and Babies R Us and diaper and formula companies. And she also has nothing but good things to say about the Ronald McDonald house where she stayed for a time while the triples were still in the NICU.

And finally and perhaps the most important inconstancy in the Life Site story as published is that a single doctor would not only not have the authority to have the hospital he worked for take custody of a baby by having the parents sign a piece of paper surrendering their custody to the hospital, but that even in cases of withholding extreme measures and only providing palliative care in cases where there is no absolutely no hope for the infant’s survival; and here I’m talking about very extreme cases like Anencephaly, that decision is never (at least in any hospital I know of) left to the sole discretion of one single doctor.

This story, while compelling and on the surface makes for a compelling pro-life story, simply doesn’t pass my BS meter either. Life Site News while on the “right” side on the pro-life cause, often publishes sensational stories absent any fact checking or vetting and even worse, all too often publishes outright false or incomplete information, it often inadvertently only serves ultimately to hurt and damage the pro-life cause.