Ultrasound Use as
Late Abortions Skyrocket
Because late abortions have doubled since the government began offering
ultrasound screenings to pregnant women at 20 weeks, some Dutch
lawmakers are hoping to change the standard use of the tool, according
to the Dutch daily newspaper NRC Handelsblad.
Gynecologist Hajo Wildschut told the paper that many women decide to
abort their child after the 20-week ultrasound because it is at that
stage that defects such as Down syndrome and spina bifida can be
observed. That leaves women four weeks to decide whether to have
the
child killed before the legal cutoff for abortion at 24 weeks.
The Dutch government introduced the 20-week ultrasound for all pregnant
women in 2007. Since then, the number of abortions between weeks
20
and 24 have doubled, according to data published by the Netherlands
Health Care Inspectorate Thursday.
"Most of these children are wanted," said Wildschut. "But then the
pregnancy takes such a tragic turn. The parents are struggling terribly
with the questions: can we raise a child who has spina bifida or Down
syndrome? Can we live with the decision of ending this pregnancy?"
Some lawmakers are pushing to delay the ultrasound: members of
parliament with the pro-life Christian party, ChristenUnie, want to
postpone the official ultrasound to the 24th week.
"The life of a person with disabilities is a valuable life,"
ChristenUnie MP Esmé Wiegman said last Tuesday. "We should
be able to
count on a careful approach when the life of an unborn child with a
disability is involved."
If her proposal to move the ultrasound fails to get support, Wiegman
said she would work to cap legal abortion at 18 weeks.
Experts have also concluded that the ultrasound was one reason there
were no reports of euthanizing newborn babies in 2008, as children who
would have been euthanized for severe birth defects instead were killed
in the womb. The euthanasia of newborn infants is permitted in the
Netherlands under certain conditions set forth in the so-called
Groningen Protocol.
Some have also complained that the ultrasound was leading parents to
kill children with minor defects, such as cleft lip, that could be
corrected with a just few surgeries.
"We explain the child can be helped by undergoing three or four
operations. And we will supervise the child for years, watch it grow
up. We will never tell the mother: ‘this life is not worth it,'" said
Marjan Nijhuis-Kloen, a nurse and cleft lip expert at a hospital in
Nijmegen.
Contact: Kathleen Gilbert
Source:
LifeSiteNews.com
Publish
Date:
February 15,
2010
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