A Scottish girl who survived a late-term abortion, ostensibly to save her mother’s life, has just celebrated her tenth birthday, to the joy of her mother and family.
Norelle Smith, now 34, was urged by doctors to abort her daughter Natasha at 26 weeks of pregnancy after she was diagnosed with toxic-preeclampsia, a dangerous and potentially fatal condition that occurs in 5 to 8 percent of all pregnancies.
Preeclampsia usually begins in the second half of the pregnancy. It starts with abnormally high blood pressure, and left untreated, can lead to organ failure and death. The only cure is delivery of the baby.
According to Chad Klauser, M.D, perinatologist and clinical assistant professor at the Mt. Sinai School of Medicine in New York City, most women who develop preeclampsia do just fine as long as they receive prompt medical care. “The typical treatment is admission to the hospital, with modified bed rest, low stimulation, fetal monitoring, and blood and urine tests,” Klauser told Parents magazine. In severe cases like Smith’s, however, doctors usually give the patient steroid treatments to help the baby’s lungs develop, then induce labor or perform a c-section to deliver the baby early.
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Although at 26 weeks, baby Natasha was comfortably past the age of viability, doctors at the Queen Mother’s Hospital in Glasgow treated the induction as an abortion. They told her mother that Natasha would be born dead, or at least very severely brain damaged. But to their surprise, Natasha emerged alive and healthy. At 1 lb., 4 oz., she was tiny, but she was a fighter.
Today, Natasha is ten years old, healthy, and smart – she’s even in the advanced reading group at her elementary school. Her father, Sandy Cameron, told Metro News that she “carries with her the fighting spirit” that helped her survive the abortion.
Her mother Noreen told Metro, “We were very fortunate she came through 100 percent healthy – that’s almost as remarkable as her surviving.”
Abortion itself has been linked to preeclampsia. A University of Aberdeen study found that women who underwent abortions were at an increased risk of developing preeclampsia during subsequent pregnancies, as well as other complications such as life-threatening placental abruption, premature deliveries, and babies with low birth weight.