Posted on 10/21/2007 9:26:13 AM PDT by cool2007
More than 100 babies with minor disabilities, such as a cleft palate or club foot, were aborted in one area of England in a three-year period, statistics reveal.
The data records that 54 babies with club feet, 37 with cleft palates or lips, and 26 with extra or webbed fingers or toes were aborted in south-west England between 2002 and 2005.
The figures, provided by the South West Congenital Anomaly Register, have heightened concerns over the number of babies aborted due to minor defects which could be corrected with simple surgery. advertisement
Club feet, one of the most common birth defects in Britain, affects around 700 children every year.
It results in the feet pointing downwards and inwards, but it can be corrected without surgery using splints, plaster casts and boots
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Our country is headed in this direction if we don’t begin to value each baby more. Growing up I had a friend who had lost two fingers in a wood chopping accident. That guy today would be considered imperfect. Nobody cared about this in the 60’s. Pray for our country.
UK abortion law requires the agreeement of two physicians that there is a substantial risk of a handicapped child for an abortion to be done after 24 weeks. The abuse here is stretching the definition of handicapped.
The definition of handicapped doesn’t need to be abused here because US law requires nothing more than the mother’s whim at any point.
Heading in that direction would be a step forward if you ask me.
Margaret Sanger would be proud.
There is this woman, a “reverend” on Boston radio, who week after week tears down the American foreign policy, cries and weeps for the Palestinians, but never a word about the evils of abortion. She makes me sick every Sunday morning, but the Red Sox game was on the channel she is on the night before and I wake up to her. How the libs can day after day, hold up the Islamists but nary a word about women marching to destroy God’s createst gift, I will never get it?
Maybe it was clubfoot, maybe it was just a speck on the ultrasound. When in doubt abort, the UK logic goes.
I’d like to see the statistics on the numbers for this type of abortion here in the USA. Do abortions happen here for such minor disabilities? I know it’s possible. I just didn’t think it was common.
My first child was revealed to have a cleft lip during an ultrasound. The technician wrote it in his notes and didn’t say a word, but I noticed. And lost a ton of sleep reading up on the treatments, etc.
Then he was born perfect in every way - no sign of the condition noted by the technician as “definite.”
Makes me wonder how many of the 100 were misdiagnoses.
Such a waste.
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My daughter was born with a club foot. It was corrected in 10 months, with casts and therapy. she was sponsored by the March of Dimes. At 19, she made it through basic at Fort Dix, with flying colors.
Dr. Homer Paschal, and the Hillis Medical Center in Gainesville, and the March of Dimes, will always be on my prayer list.
Troy Aikman was born with clubbed feet, he has three superbowl rings.
Krisit Yamaguchi was born with clubbed feet and she has an Olympic Gold medal.
Then again, I don't see my son's diabetes as a handicap. It's a pain in the butt and I'm glad that there are treatments. It's just another thing life throws at you. For me, examples of *handicap* would be severe brain damage or a massive spinal cord injury. Loosing *both* legs or arms. Something that screws up your basic life functions. A cleft palate in an otherwise healthy child? Please. That's like a kid who needs braces. Diabetes? A step more serious than glasses. Still manageable.
We just loved her, crooked leg or not, still do. I would have killed the best part of my life had she been aborted.
Over the three year sample period in southwest England that this article references, there were just under 160,000 live births. As of 2004, about one quarter of English pregnancies are aborted. Assuming that that holds true for SW England as well, that would put total pregnancies for the three year sample period at approximately 210,000.
I don’t know the corresponding stats for the US, and like you I don’t think they’re common - but I wouldn’t call a 1 in 2,100 rate in SW England common either.
I have trouble believing the involved doctors or mothers in England would consider these real handicaps either. It reads to me like the mothers decided 6 months in that they didn’t want a child after all, and found NARAL type doctors who would game the law for them.
wow. My feet bowed out a bit when I was a kid, and I had to wear funny shoes for years, but I don’t even remember much about it. I started wearing tennis shoes like everybody else when I was maybe 8 or 9, I forget. Wow, glad my parents didn’t read this article back then— whoops
Abortions here occur for ANY reason. Inconvenience is the main one. I had four inconvenient pregancies—wouldn’t give up a one of them.
I had two with club feet. This whole conversation is ridiculous.
Sad. And for such minor reasons.
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