The headline in The Local read, “Woman forced to give birth after failed abortion.” (The Local is Swedish news written in English.)
I was intrigued by the headline so I read on. How was she “forced,” for example.
Heads up: this is a gruesome story, dressed up as a violation of “abortion rights.”
Turns out that the woman was given abortifacients to abort her baby “before the 18th week – which is the legal limit for free abortions in Sweden.” But, we’re told, the hospital “forgot to ask her to come back for a follow-up appointment, it was not noticed until months later that they had failed to work.” Presumably it was the mother who did not do the noticing.
She comes back to the hospital, now 21 weeks pregnant, and “the doctor had to request permission from the National Board of Health and Welfare (Socialstyrelsen) to end the pregnancy.” She gets permission but (get this)
the patient did not respond to the treatment, regional Swedish newspaper NSD reports. In the end, she had to give birth to the fetus in her 23rd week, with the help of a suction pump.
According the doctor who reported the incident the fetus was alive for at least 20 minutes before it died.
I have no idea what they mean by “with the help of a suction pump,” but it sounds hideous.
The baby is, of course, potentially viable, but you would surmise that no attempt was made to help the now-delivered baby. All we know is that baby died 20 minutes later.
Using the popular site, the Baby Center we read that at 23 weeks
With her sense of movement well developed by now, your baby can feel you dance. And now that she’s more than 11 inches long and weighs just over a pound (about the size of a large mango), you may be able to see her squirm underneath your clothes. Blood vessels in her lungs are developing to prepare for breathing, and the sounds that your baby’s increasingly keen ears pick up are preparing her for entry into the outside world. Loud noises that become familiar now – such as your dog barking or the roar of the vacuum cleaner – probably won’t faze her when she hears them outside the womb.
Keep up with the latest pro-life news and information on Twitter. Follow @LifeNewsHQ
But, no matter, the thrust of the article is that the hospital has been harshly criticized. The language is stunning:
After investigating the incident for a year the Health and Social Care Inspectorate, has now sharply criticized Norrbotten county council for not ensuring that the early abortion had been successful.
“The caregiver should have made some form of effort to organize a follow-up. The handling of the case was not safe for the patient,” Swedish Christian newspaper Dagen quotes the medical watchdog as noting in its report.
The hospital changed its procedures after the incident to make sure it would not be repeated.
Caregivers? Those who gave abortifacients to a woman approximately half-way through her second trimester?
“Not safe for the patient”? How about the nearly-foot long baby sucked out of her/his mother’s womb?
Not going to happen again? By that they mean the “error” of not making sure a chemical abortion “worked.”
How about assuring that the “incident”–aborting a baby at 23 weeks and doing nothing for the live-born baby–never happens again?
LifeNews.com Note: Dave Andrusko is the editor of National Right to Life News and an author and editor of several books on abortion topics. This post originally appeared in at National Right to Life News Today —- an online column on pro-life issues.
