TORONTO, Dec 3 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Campaign Life Coalition (CLC) has offered to pay all or part of the hospital costs for Sophia Park’s care so that her child may be delivered safely. Campaign Life has written the Toronto Western Hospital and Ontario Health Minister Elizabeth Witmer requesting that they honour the family’s desire to keep Sophia on life-support at least long enough to have their child delivered safely.
Jim Hughes, National President of CLC told LifeSite, “the tragedy of the pending loss of their beloved wife and daughter is agonizing enough without the forced loss of this child and grandchild to compound the sorrow of the family.” The child is alive in his 25-year-old mother’s womb and is the first and only child the young couple has.
As LifeSite reported yesterday Paul Shin, Sophia’s husband and father of the child, told the media yesterday that the hospital was suggesting that Sophia may be legally taken off life support against the wishes of the family. Critics of the hospital’s motives point out that doctors may have a vested interest in the death of the child. If the baby is born with defects the doctors may be sued since the cause of Sophia’s deterioration into irreversible coma might be attributed to negligent misdiagnosis.
The National Post today reports a previous incident of a US mother in a similar situation whose baby survived along with the mother despite being delivered “while in a six-month-long ‘brain death’ coma.” Barbara Blodgett, the American mother urges those concerned not to give up on Sophia and her baby. Furthermore the Post notes that, “in June, a British woman gave birth to a baby boy after spending six months in a meningitis-related coma. The mother has since died, but the child, born seven weeks premature, is in good health.”
For more see yesterday’s LifeSite story:
Canadian Hospital Refusing to allow Let Baby Live