From: bense@oasys.dt.navy.mil (Ron Bense)
Newsgroups: talk.abortion
Subject: Re: Good News from a Premie!
Date: 15 Sep 92 18:43:07 GMT
Reply-To: bense@oasys.dt.navy.mil (Ronald Bense)
Organization: Carderock Division, NSWC, Bethesda, MD

In talk.abortion, cbrand@cac.washington.edu (Carol Brand) writes:
>care unit.  They (I was unable to attend) got to see a premie who was
>born at 26 weeks.  This brought up the subject of how old babies have to

So you get to see a sickly individual hooked up to all kinds of equipment
in an effort to keep them alive.

>be to survive.  The instructor, commented that to her knowledge, the
>youngest child to ever survive was born at 20/21 weeks down in Australia.

Didn't ever hear of this one, although I did hear of the 34/34 week
old one.

>In the US, a little girl in California was born around 23/24 weeks and
>had just finally gone home with her parents.

At some exhorbitant cost, too, if I remember correctly. And people wonder
why insurance premiums keep going up and the average individual can't
afford it anymore. It's because rediculous life-saving measures are
deemed necessary where they probably shouldn't be covered. I don't know
whether the 23/24 w-o's treatment was covered or not, and/or whether
the parents were exceptionally wealthy if it wasn't, but it does sound
rediculous to me to expect this treatment as a normal part of child
birth. After all, one of the main complaints these days is that insurance
companies want mom and child out of the hospital by the end of the next
business day after delivery, barring complications that require medical
treatment. 10 years ago, that would have been three days, and 25+ years
ago, it would have been a week. Part of the reason? Medical costs have
sky-rocketed so much due to things like medical insurance, and costs
of bizarre treatments like those for the 23/24 w-o premie, that they
can't afford to without raising rates more, which would mean that even
fewer could afford insurance.

>serious thinking about acceptable cutoffs for abortions.  In the state of
>Washington, a woman can have an abortion through the 24th week.  It seems
>rather hypocritical to have a doctor in one room fighting to save a life
>while in another a doctor is ending one.

Why? Does it seem hypocritical to you that one family asks a vet to
save a puppy, while the next one asks to have seven put to sleep? They
have about the same awareness, and perhaps the puppies have more, as
myelination has just started in the human brain, although I have no
idea when it starts in a puppy's. Parallel development says it should
have started before it was born. A vet care to comment?

If you wish to put this in human only perspective, consider the case
where two individuals have suffered similar injuries in a car crash.
The families have been told that there is little chance for recovery
to anything approaching normal life. One family, aware of their relatives
wishes not to be forced to live a quadrapalegic life, refuses treatment
other than normal (such as a heart machine, or breathing aparatus) and
the individual dies. The other family, unsure and hurting at the possible
loss of a loved one ask that all be done that's possible. (there are
no gaurantees, and the analogy stops here) What's hypocritical about
this? Both follow the wishes of the patient or their relatives, if they
cannot make their wishes known.

Ron

Potassium Benzoate included as a preserver.
Newsgroups: talk.abortion