A pregnant mother in Louisiana was allegedly denied an abortion after doctors diagnosed her unborn child with a lethal birth defect.
A Louisiana mother says she was denied an abortion even though doctors told her that her baby had a rare birth defect and would not survive. She plans to travel to another state to have the procedure done. https://t.co/JiwHFdtqcy
— NBC News (@NBCNews) August 27, 2022
Doctors told Nancy Davis, 36, ten weeks into her pregnancy that her preborn child has a rare but lethal birth defect known as acrania, a condition in which the child’s skull does not develop in the womb, according to NBC News.
Woman’s Hospital denied the abortion for Davis, stating that the pro-life laws that went into effect in June prohibit the hospital from administering the abortion, according to WWNO.
“Basically they said I had to carry my baby to bury my baby,” said Davis, NBC News reports.
“Louisiana lawmakers inflicted unspeakable pain, emotional damage and physical risk upon this beautiful mother,” said Ben Crump, Davis’ lawyer, according to The Guardian. “They replaced care with confusion, privacy with politics and options with ideology.”
“This is not fair to me and it should not happen to any other woman. This has truly been an emotional roller coaster,” said Davis, according to NBC News.
Related: ‘Teen Vogue’ Calls Parental Consent Laws For Abortion ‘Paternalistic’ and ‘Unfair’
No doubt such a diagnosis is devastating, especially for a parent; however, the fact that doctors recommended an abortion is troubling. An argument can be made when the difficult decision to abort the child is necessary to save the mother’s life, but to tell a mother that her baby is going to die anyway, so she might as well kill him or her, is not what medicine should be about.
Even when all seems futile, the preservation of life should be the goal for doctors. Imagine oncologists recommending suicide to their patients, or the same recommendation for anyone with a degenerative disease.
The true horror of this story is that this poor child has such a terrible condition with such a terrible prognosis. Instead, the mainstream media and the mother are making the issue about being able to kill the child as soon as possible.
Davis will be seeking abortion services in North Carolina as early as next week, WWNO reports.
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