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ST. JOHN’S, NL, May 2, 2014 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Parents of a baby boy born prematurely on April 22nd say they are angry that the hospital where he was born refused to provide him with any care because he was born two days before the earliest point at which their guidelines mandate medical intervention. 

Under the guidelines of the Canadian Pediatric Association, doctors are not obliged to resuscitate a newborn unless its gestational age is at least 23 weeks. At 22 weeks and 5 days, Glenda and Cory Chaulk’s son was born two days too early. The parents believe that their baby, who was then in the custody of the hospital staff, died more than three hours after he was born.

“I’m not saying my child would have lived. I am saying my child never had a chance,” said Mr. Chaulk in an interview with NTV.

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A day earlier, Glenda Chaulk noticed abnormal bleeding and went to her hospital in Clarenville. She was then taken to Janeway Children’s Hospital in St. John’s. It was there that the doctor said that the medical staff were not going to intervene if the child was born alive.

Cory Chaulk said that the doctor told him that, “At best, if your child survives… right now it’s got 1% chance. I said, ok that’s still 1%. He said at best your child will grow up with major neurological problems. So he said there’s no point in saving his life. I looked at the doctor and I said, 'That’s not your call. There are many disabled children in the world today. They are in the world because their parents didn’t give up on them.'”

Baby Aiden was born at 5:23 am and weighed just over a pound. He breathed on his own for part of the morning.

“What do you do when you are holding your kid in your arms, knowing that the doctors ain’t going to do nothing?” the tearful father said. “Even though his eyes stayed shut, he opened his mouth and took a breath on his own.”

On a Facebook page they set up to publicize their case, Mr. Chaulk added, “Knowing it was very hard on us the nurse took our son and left the room a little time later. At 8:30 a nurse entered the room and said our son ‘still had a heart beat’. I held my wife as she still lay in her bed and all we could do was cry in each other's arms. Shortly after nine, when the nurse [re-entered], my wife asked her ‘is he gone’ to which she responded ‘his heart has stopped beating now.’”

Although the hospital could not comment on the specific case, they said that the hospital follows the guidelines of the Canadian Pediatric Society. According to the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, the baby had about a 1% chance of leaving the hospital alive.

In an email to LifeSiteNews, Jackie O’Brien, Media Relations Manager for the hospital stated, “Our paediatricians’ first instinct is to help, and any decision to not intervene would not be made lightly.”

“While the most important factor for making a decision about a baby’s viability is gestational age, other factors are taken into account as well, such as the baby’s birth weight. If a baby’s care team feels that there is a reasonable chance of survival and quality of life, interventions would be made. If a baby could breathe on their own without our help, we would consider and likely perform resuscitation. It should also be noted that a physician would likely look for a second opinion from another physician when making a decision to not resuscitate.”

She indicated as well that the first choice would be “to try to prolong a women’s pregnancy until a baby reaches a viable gestational age,” but that’s not always possible.

The Chaulks have started a Facebook group which is generating a great deal of interest and support. They blame the hospital and the attending physician specifically for the failure to care for their son.

“Please help my wife and I get answers as to why this was allowed to happen,” they write. “We know it won't bring back Aiden, but my last words to him were ‘daddy's never gonna stop fighting for you buddy.’”