Posted on 05/28/2006 6:15:32 PM PDT by wagglebee
MORE than 20 babies have been aborted in advanced pregnancy because scans showed that they had club feet, a deformity readily corrected by surgery or physiotherapy.
According to figures from the Office for National Statistics covering the years from 1996 to 2004, a further four babies were aborted because they had webbed fingers or extra digits, which are also corrected by simple surgery. All the terminations took place late in pregnancy, after 20 weeks.
Last year, according to campaigners, a healthy baby was aborted in the sixth month at a hospital in southeast England after ultrasound images indicated part of its foot was missing.
News of the terminations has reignited the debate over how scanning and gene technology may enable the creation of “designer babies”. In 2002 it emerged that a baby had been aborted late — at 28 weeks — after scans found that it had a cleft palate, another readily corrected condition.
Some parents, doctors and charities are increasingly worried by what they see as a tendency to widen the definition of “serious handicap”. The handicap provision, which does not exist in most other countries, permits abortions to be carried out until birth. It was intended to save women from the trauma of giving birth to babies likely to die in infancy.
Club foot is one of the most common birth defects in Britain. About one in 1,000 babies is affected, meaning that 600 to 700 infants are born with the condition every year. It results in the feet pointing downwards and inwards, and in severe cases can cause foot deformity and a limp.
However, it is relatively easy to correct and in recent years techniques of splints, plaster casts and boots to set the foot into the correct position have replaced the need for surgery.Club foot is occasionally connected with serious but rare chromosomal defects, although specialists point out that these can also be screened out before birth with additional tests.
Despite the ease with which it can be treated, the perception that club foot is a serious birth defect has remained among some parents and doctors.
“It was strongly suggested that we consider abortion after they found our baby had a club foot,” said David Wildgrove, 41, a computer programmer from Sheffield, whose son Alexander was born in 1996. “I was appalled. We resisted, the problem was treated and he now runs around and plays football with everyone else.”
Pippa Spriggs from Cambridge, whose son Isaac will celebrate his second birthday in July, was also dismayed when a scan halfway through the pregnancy revealed that her baby had the defect.
“Abortion certainly was not openly advised, but it was made clear to me it was available,” she said. “In fact he has been treated and the condition has not slowed him down at all.”
Others take a different view and decide not to accept the risk of an imperfect baby. Sue Banton, who founded the group Steps for parents of children with foot disorders, was troubled that a home counties couple last year decided to terminate their baby, despite counselling to reassure them it would have a worthwhile life even with a section of foot missing.
“We gave them other families to talk to, but they just didn’t want to know. The baby was aborted just before the 25th week,” she said.
“It is terrible. I know lots of perfectly nice people with this condition, and you just can’t imagine them not being here.”
One doctor in the north of England who did not want to be named, said a recent case in his hospital had involved the discovery of a hand missing from a foetus scanned at 20 weeks. “The father did not want the pregnancy to proceed because of his perception that the child would not be able to do all the usual things like sport,” said the doctor.
My father was born with a club foot. I guess it's a great thing that he wasn't born today.
God must be keeping busy "sorting out " all the folks involved in killing these babies. Judgement Day will arrive for each one of them.
I'm not sure what you are thinking about. I hope your post was intended to be sarcasm and not racism.
Margaret Sanger was a racist. She would not have been pleased with Black or Jewish babies.
My dad had club feet. A simple operation fixed it.
Hogwashbalderdash. If that's what they wanted that's what they would have said. Club foot is not going to prove fatal in infancy. Maybe the worry about club foot is that it will take until the child is 5 before the socialized medicine gets around to fixing it.
Yep! And also Anne Boleyn - she had a sixth finger.
English history would look quite different.
Liberal Nazism.....No other name for it.
Well, this is simply the "mother's *right* to choose carried out to its logical extension. Appalling? yes. Surprising? not hardly.
I find it interesting that the same people who claim it is a parent's right to kill their child, say that it is not another parent's right to homeschool....it's not good for the child. And a host of other things "non-liberal" parents should not be allowed to do with their children.
My wife's younger brother was born with a club foot 35 years ago. I've known him since he was 14 and I wouldn't know about the club foot if his family didn't mention it. He's led a perfectly normal, healthy life after some surgery as a baby.
Truly, this is sickening.
Hmm, I wonder just what exactly constituted a "strong suggestion"? Anyone care to bet that these caring medical professionals made some subtle hints [threats] of state intervention?
We look at the classical world and consider the Greeks the ethos of advanced civilization. And yet they thought nothing of slavery.
How will future generations look back upon ours, with our technological and medical advances, that we still killed our young before they were born? And for what reasons?
I could hardly read the whole article. Most human bodies have a little something "wrong" - poor eyesight, stuttering, asymmetry here or there. Maybe an extra or missing finger or toe, one leg slightly shorter than the other.
A perfect body does not make a human being perfect. We're more than the body. The inner person - the soul - is the real source of beauty. The cruel so-called parents who kill a child because of some physical imperfection are the ugliest of all.
This is really horrifying. They are true disciples of Peter Singer.
My heart breaks for the children that have been aborted. Their only experience with life is complete and utter selfishness.
I have a couple of "funny" toes and a slightly "funny" eye. I probably wouldn't pass the test of human perfection.
the logical product of the confluence of amoral socialism and dysgenics
Princeton ethicist and devout atheist Peter Singer advocates giving parents a "test drive" of up to 30 days after to birth to decide whether to kill their child or keep it. I don't recall him conditioning the decision on a "severe handicap." An annoying cry or mere inconvenience would apparently be sufficient cause.
Lord Byron was born with a club-foot. I am glad they didn't abort him.
By the Rivers of Babylon We Sat Down and Wept (1815)
We sat down and wept by the waters
Of Babel, and thought of the day
When our foe, in the hue of his slaughters,
Made Salem's high places his prey;
And ye, oh her desolate daughters!
Were scattered all weeping away.
2
While sadly we gazed on the river
Which rolled on in freedom below,
They demanded the song; but, oh never
That triumph the stranger shall know!
May this right hand be withered for ever,
Ere it string our high harp for the foe!
3
On the willow that harp is suspended,
Oh Salem! its sound should be free;
And the hour when thy glories were
ended
But left me that token of thee:
And ne'er shall its soft tones be blended
With the voice of the spoiler by me!
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