Mother Gives Birth to Girl After Nine-Month Ectopic Pregnancy, No Abortion

International   |   Steven Ertelt   |   Jun 2, 2008   |   9:00AM   |   WASHINGTON, DC

Mother Gives Birth to Girl After Nine-Month Ectopic Pregnancy, No Abortion

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by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
June 2
, 2008

Canberra, Australia (LifeNews.com) — Ask most pro-life advocates whether abortion should be allowed in cases to protect the mother’s life and they’ll cite instances such as an ectopic pregnancy to justify their position. In an amazing development, one Australian mother delivered a healthy baby girl after going through a nine-month ectopic pregnancy.

An ectopic pregnancy involves situations where the developing unborn child implants into some other tissue other than the uterine wall, where a baby normally develops during pregnancy.

Most ectopic pregnancies occur in the Fallopian tube and are otherwise known as tubal pregnancies, but implantation can also occur in the cervix, ovaries, and abdomen.

When an ectopic pregnancy occurs, the developing baby can sometimes implant in an area that adversely affects a woman’s blood vessels and causes bleeding that could become life-threatening.

An ectopic pregnancy that presents life and health issues may result in the need for surgical intervention such as a laparotomy. In other extremely rare cases, like that of Meera Thangarajah, that’s not necessary.

For nine months, Thangarajah carried her baby Durga in her ovary instead of her uterus. Following a Caesarean birth, both mother and baby are fine.

Doctors are calling Durga a miracle baby and say the chances of both mother and baby surviving are a million to one.

"This form of pregnancy is rare enough, but to have it go full term is unheard of," obstetrician Andrew Miller told the London Daily Mail. "I have never come across it in any hospital. It truly is a miracle she got a living baby out of it – she’s extraordinarily lucky."

He told the newspaper that Thangarajah is lucky the ovary did not stretch and break and result in fatal internal bleeding.

Professor James Walker, spokesman for the British Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, told the Daily Mail that both are "very lucky."

"Not a lot of them will get to term – no more than one in a million and maybe even less than that," he said.

Neither doctors nor the couple expected anything other than a normal pregnancy and it wasn’t until the planned Caesarian began that they discovered something amiss.