Cancer does not necessarily mean death for a pregnant mother or her unborn baby.
Thanks to modern medical advances, many women who are diagnosed during their pregnancies are being treated and giving birth to healthy babies. Christian News Network recently reported about a mother in Italy who refused to abort her unborn daughter after she was diagnosed with breast cancer.
In March, Consiglia Varriale said she discovered a lump in her breast while she was pregnant with her second daughter, and her doctors immediately recommended an abortion.
“They all told me that I had to give up the baby if I wanted to continue living,” she told the news outlet Riformista.
Varriale, however, sought another opinion at the Pascale Institute in Naples, according to the report. There, Dr. Michelino de Laurentiis told her that they could treat her cancer and save her baby’s life – a huge relief to the expecting mother.
“I was too happy at the thought of that pregnancy. I would never, ever have decided to interrupt it,” she said.
In April, her doctors performed surgery to remove the lump, and Varriale began chemotherapy a month later, the report states. She gave birth to her daughter in September, and both mother and child are reportedly doing well, it continues.
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De Laurentiis told Riformista that cancer treatments have advanced greatly in recent years, and the Pascale Institute has welcomed “many” children born to mothers diagnosed with breast cancer.
“Until recently, it was impossible. Today, it is possible, as long as you customize the treatments to be used in an extremely specialized way and have recourse to close collaboration with gynecologists,” the doctor said.
LifeNews has reported numerous stories about mothers who chose life for their unborn babies after being diagnosed with cancer. Most of the mothers survived, while a few sacrificed their lives for their babies. Earlier this fall, the British news outlet Chad reported about another brave young mother who delayed chemotherapy during her pregnancy to save her baby’s life. She now is cancer-free.
Research provides growing hope for mothers in these difficult situations. In 2012, a collection of stories from The Lancet demonstrated that pregnant women do not need to have an abortion to get treatment for cancer. Similarly, a 2015 study in the New England Journal of Medicine found chemotherapy may not impair unborn babies’ general development.
