British Woman Upset Hospital Advised her to Have Abortion of Healthy Baby
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
March 24, 2009
London, England (LifeNews.com) — A British woman is upset that a hospital advised her to have an abortion of a healthy baby who medical officials thought would be born with a rare disease. Dawn Lewis said a scan conducted at 12 weeks into pregnancy claimed her baby had a 99 percent chance of having Edward’s Syndrome.
The condition, also known as Trisomy 18 and seen in just one of every 3,000 children, causes disability and severely limits a child’s life expectancy. It involves chronic heart and kidney problems.
Lewis had the scan at Rochdale Infirmary in her hometown, but decided to have a second opinion and went to St Mary’s Hospital in Manchester.
There, a second scan showed no sign of problems for the unborn baby and Lewis decided to go ahead with the pregnancy. Six months ago she gave birth to Deacon, a healthy son.
Lewis is now filing an official complaint with Rochdale about the information she was wrongly conveyed, that could have prompted her or another mother to have an abortion.
"We asked him (the medic) to briefly explain what that means for us. He just said ‘Baby will have no quality of life, the best advice I can give is to have a termination,’" she told the BBC about what happened.
"We could not enjoy our pregnancy. It should have been a time when we were really excited. We could not enjoy it at all," she added. "Even when we got the all clear from St Mary’s it was still there until he was born, I still was not going to be happy. Questions should be asked how they got it so wrong."
A representative of Pennine Acute Hospitals, which runs Rochdale Infirmary, told the BBC that it plans to probe the incident.
"We will be conducting a full investigation into this complaint. We will make a formal response to Miss Lewis when our investigation is completed," the spokesperson said.
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