Eye on Innovation, Design and Technology: Baby Rumaisa and the Implications on Viability

December 21, 2004

Baby Rumaisa and the Implications on Viability

There has been a lot of publicity regarding the survival of the smallest size baby (8.6 ounces) ever recorded in the U.S. What has received less publicity is the following

(The baby) developed pre-eclampsia, a disorder characterized by high blood pressure and other problems, during pregnancy. The condition affected Rumaisa in the womb and her mother's health, prompting a Caesarean section at 25 weeks and 6 days. Normal gestation is 40 weeks.

The publicity of events like this has staggering implications for the pro-abortion groups in regards to their support of the procedures known as "late term abortion" and "partial birth abortion", because it brings attention to one of the most unpublicized facts about the abortion dilemma: That medical science has redefined the concept of "viability", which is crucial to the definition of a human being, but the practice of the procedure has remained static in regards to the time period when is still legal to have an abortion. The Supreme Court defined that abortions can be carried out as long as the fetus is not viable.

In Colautti v. Franklin (1979), a challenge to a Pennsylvania law, the Court reaffirmed the principles established in Roe and Danforth and elaborated on its views concerning viability: "Because this point [viability] may differ with each pregnancy, neither the legislature nor the courts may proclaim one of the elements entering into the ascertainment of viability—be it weeks of gestation or fetal weight or any other single factor—as the determinant of when the State has a compelling interest in the life or health of the fetus."

The Court thus upheld the lower court in saying that it is the professional responsibility of the physician to determine whether the fetus has the capacity for "meaningful life, not merely temporary survival."

advances had "no bearing on the validity of Roe's central holding" that viability marks the point when the state's interest in the fetus becomes compelling. And, it added, "the soundness or unsoundness of that constitutional judgment in no sense turns on whether viability occurs at approximately 28 weeks, as was usual at the time of Roe, at 23 or 24 weeks, as it sometimes does today, or at some moment even slightly earlier in pregnancy, as it may if fetal respiratory capacity may be somehow enhanced in the future. Whenever it may occur, the attainment of viability may continue to serve as the critical fact."

Thus, the Supreme Court made it clear that the determination of viability, which depends on a variety of individual factors, must be left to the professional judgment of the individual physician. Provisions that establish a specific age—usually 20 or 24 weeks—after which abortion is prohibited (and, presumably, the fetus is considered de facto viable) are unconstitutional and unenforceable.

It is estimated that between 3000 and 4000 third trimester (after 26 weeks) abortions occur in the U.S. every year. There is no data on how many occur between 20 and 26 weeks. John Hopkins has some data on the survival rates under 26 weeks

A 1993 study at the John Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore reviewed the outcome of 142 infants born at 22 to 25 weeks’ gestation. The study concluded that no infants born at 22 weeks gestation survived. With intensive resuscitation, 15% of those born at 23 weeks and 56% born at 24 weeks survived. It was found that the more immature the infant, the higher the incidence of neonatal complications.⁴⁶

Thus, if over 50% of the babies can survive after 24 weeks, yet abortions are still being carried out past 26 weeks, it is time that the practice of abortion is brought back to reflect the current advances in medical science and the new concept of viability.

Posted at 04:34 PM | Permalink

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