Medical advances saving premature babies pose thorny issues for abortion rights advocates

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Last edited Fri Dec 17, 2021, 12:02 PM - Edit history (2)

Health

Medical advances saving premature babies pose thorny issues for abortion rights advocates

Babies are surviving earlier in pregnancy than ever before, complicating the debate over fetal viability at issue in the Mississippi abortion case before the high court

By Ariana Eunjung Cha
Today at 8:09 a.m. EST

The clock struck midnight as Kourtney Vier was wheeled into the delivery room at the University of Iowa Hospital. She had just crossed the line between her 22nd and 23rd week of pregnancy, and the baby was coming. ... “I’m scared,” she cried out to her husband. ... Doctors and nurses kept telling her “you’re doing great” and before long, the room erupted into cheers. Zeke Vier — at 1 pound 5 ounces and 11 inches long — had been born.

Vier saw her son for just a few seconds before he was swaddled away to neonatal intensive care. He wasn’t crying or moving, she remembered. But as she looked at his little fingers and toes, she thought about how he would not be alive if she had stayed at the first hospital she had tried near her hometown. “They told me there was nothing they could do,” she recalled, since their policy before 24 weeks of pregnancy was to offer only compassionate care.

Today, at 7 months old, after several surgeries and a bout with infection, Zeke is a chubby 12-pound baby, who left the hospital in mid-November just in time to meet his older brother for the first time for the holidays.

Babies like Zeke are surviving earlier than once thought possible, intensifying debate about how early in a baby’s development to use aggressive lifesaving treatments and remaking the debate over abortion. Abortion opponents cite cases like Zeke’s to challenge the concept of fetal viability — a central issue in a case argued earlier this month before the U.S. Supreme Court court about Mississippi’s abortion restrictions that has the potential to overturn nearly 50 years of abortion precedents.

{snip}

After 182 days in the hospital, on Nov. 12, Zeke was ready to go home. He’s still on supplemental oxygen, but on track developmentally for his due-date age of 3 months.

Gift Article
https://wapo.st/326oCRr

By Ariana Eunjung Cha
Ariana Eunjung Cha is a national reporter. She has previously served as The Post's bureau chief in Shanghai and San Francisco, and as a correspondent in Baghdad. Twitter https://twitter.com/arianaeunjung

[atreides1]

1. Okay

So adjust Roe v Wade from 28 weeks to 22 weeks!

It would be better to adjust the time then to just take away the right!

[sinkingfeeling]

2. I don't mean to be insensitive or offensive, but what do you think 182 days of neonatal

hospitalization and several surgeries cost? If one is poor and without insurance, would the same care be available?

People often discuss the rationalization of keeping the elderly or the 'brain dead' alive at any cost and I think these cases fall in the same realm.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

3. Many commenters to this article raised this issue.

I think I still have the ability to make an article available to people. I'll go do that right now.

Gift Article
https://wapo.st/326oCRr

[jmowreader]

4. Here's another issue to consider

The article said this hospital stay was billed out at around $600,000. One stay.

The child is currently on supplemental oxygen. And there's a good chance he will need more hospital time and more surgeries. By the time he makes it to elementary school, assuming he does, the insurer will probably be looking at over $1 million.

How many $1 million infants can an insurer handle before they go bankrupt?

And if the insurance companies say "no more, we can't do this, we hate to be heartless but we're about to become homeless," then what? Do the taxpayers pick up the tab? And how many of these cases can the government absorb before it goes bankrupt?