Mother Who Refused Breast Cancer Treatment to Save Her Unborn Son’s Life Will Give Birth

National   |   Micaiah Bilger   |   Dec 9, 2015   |   12:49PM   |   London, England

Last month, LifeNews reported about a British mother’s sacrificial decision to forgo cancer treatment to give her unborn child a chance to live.

But a new report says that the outlook is grim for Heidi Loughlin if the expecting mom does not receive treatment soon.

Doctors persuaded Loughlin to give birth to her unborn baby this Friday, approximately 12 weeks early, according to the BBC News. They said this option will give Loughlin and her baby “the best chance of surviving.”

Loughlin, who also has two other children, was being treated with a milder form of chemotherapy that wouldn’t hurt her baby, but doctors said the treatment was not working. The report continues:

The birth had been scheduled for New Year’s Eve but after the chemotherapy failed doctors said the risk to her was so big it was better to bring the birth forward.

“I’ve been told I really need to start Herceptin (cancer drug) now.

“Nobody wants to ever be in this position and all the options are awful but I need to be here for all my children so the birth will be this Friday,” she said.

Simon Cawthorn, a breast care consultant at North Bristol NHS Trust, said the type of cancer Ms Loughlin had was “very responsive” to the drugs, which she would be given once the baby was born.

“There’s reason to be optimistic – Herceptin has been a major breakthrough for this type of inflammatory cancer,” he said.

Doctors discovered Loughlin’s cancer when she was 13-weeks pregnant, The Daily Express reported previously.

The mother, who also is a police officer, discovered symptoms of breast cancer in February when she was breastfeeding her son Tait. But doctors thought Loughlin had mastitis. They gave her antibiotics and sent her home, according to the report.

In September, Loughlin returned to the doctor’s office where they diagnosed her with inflammatory breast cancer, a rare and aggressive disease – and asked if she wanted to have an abortion.

“It wasn’t hard for me to make the decision. I wanted to keep the baby…” Loughlin said.

The young mother insisted on forgoing aggressive cancer treatments and preserving her unborn child’s life – though she had no guarantee that she would get better. Loughlin chose to undergo a milder form of chemotherapy until she gives birth.

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A recent study published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that some cancer treatments do not harm unborn children, and abortion is not necessary in maternal cancer cases, LifeNews.com previously reported.

The researchers wrote, “Prenatal exposure to maternal cancer with or without treatment did not impair the cognitive, cardiac, or general development of children in early childhood. Prematurity was correlated with a worse cognitive outcome, but this effect was independent of cancer treatment.”

Thankfully, according to a CNN News story, these days it is rare for a doctor to counsel a cancer patient to have an abortion because now more than ever, women can fight cancer and have healthy children.

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