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

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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.

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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.

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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