AMERICA, AUSTRALIA, Aug. 3 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Exciting advances in the use of medical technology to treat unborn babies are being revealed on a regular basis. Unfortunately, however, they are appearing in a moral climate that encourages their use as search and destroy weapons against “unwanted” children at least as much to heal babies.
In last Thursday’s New England Journal of Medicine a research team reported that “doctors may be able to predict whether a newborn whose oxygen was cut off during birth will suffer a delayed reaction that can lead to serious brain damage.” Looking at the ratio of two chemicals in the urine of 40 babies who experienced a temporary loss of oxygen, “the researchers found that within six hours after birth, the resulting ratio of the chemicals lactate and creatinine among 16 newborns who later developed brain damage was 186 times higher than among the 24 babies later found to be normal,” reported Reuters. As an editorial in the NEJM states, “no therapy to treat the problem reliably has been established.” Tragically, such reports of damage to unborn babies are often their death sentence.
An article this week in The Australian reports that Australian doctors “will soon be able to gain a panoramic 3D view of unborn babies and body organs” as a result of new ultrasound technology that “will give distinct images of the baby’s face.” It will be launched by ultrasound company Acuson at the Australasian Society of Ultrasound in Medicine in September, reported the paper. Unfortunately for some children “any abnormalities in the developing foetus … could be identified quickly,” said Steve Feinberg, acting Australian manager of Acuson, the ultrasound company that is launching the new technology.
The Journal of the American Medical Association reviewed a new book: “The Making of the Unborn Patient: A Social Anatomy of Fetal Surgery”. Written by Monica Casper, it “tracks the steps that have made fetuses into patients, from the development of fetal transfusions for prevention of Rh disease in the 1960s through advances in techniques of prenatal diagnosis to operations on pregnant women for treatment of congenital cystic adenomatoid malformation and diaphragmatic hernia in the 1980s.”
Ms. Casper, though, looks at the issue from the perspective of “women’s health”, meaning that she doesn’t like attempts to move from the notion of the fetus as a patient to the issue of fetal personhood. “Casper rightly worries about the possible pressures on women that this move represents,” says Mary Mahowald, in her review of the book. Ms. Casper’s book draws on interviews with over 50 health care workers from the U.S., New Zealand and Puerto Rico. “The majority are less than enthusiastic, as is she, about its practice,” noters Ms. Mahowald.