Operation Smile and Smile Train advertise that they can do surgeries in the Third World to fix this defect for a few hundred dollars per child, and there are pictures of toddlers and elementary aged children alive with the condition. How then is it somehow impossible for parents in the First world to fix or live with for a few months or years until the child is old enough to fix?
The answer is, it is CHEAPER for the government to pay for an abortion than the surgeries to repair the defect. Remember, the story takes place in the UK.
That said, I know that many babies with cleft lipt are aborted in the US, but our abortion laws are so screwed up that THE so-called "moms" don't really need an excuse to abort their babies!