{"id":163728,"date":"2017-03-18T13:33:19","date_gmt":"2017-03-18T17:33:19","guid":{"rendered":"\/news\/?p=163728"},"modified":"2017-03-24T17:36:41","modified_gmt":"2017-03-24T21:36:41","slug":"parents-of-little-girl-brittle-bone-disease-refused-abortion-we-would-not-change-zoe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/parents-of-little-girl-brittle-bone-disease-refused-abortion-we-would-not-change-zoe\/","title":{"rendered":"Parents of little girl with brittle bone disease refused abortion: We ‘would not change Zoe’"},"content":{"rendered":"
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An adorable six-year-old girl is brightening up the world around her thanks to her parents’ refusal to abort her. Chelsea and Curtis Lush chose instead to love their daughter Zoe by letting her live her life and helping her through it.<\/p>\n

A 4-D ultrasound showed that at 19 weeks gestation, there was something wrong with Zoe. As Curtis Lush wrote on GoFundMe<\/a>:<\/p>\n

When the perinatologist gently pressed the wand down firmly on Chelsea’s belly, Zoe’s soft skull molded from a circle to an oval shape under the pressure of the wand. A closer look revealed further damage. Zoe’s femur was in two separate pieces and many of Zoe’s ribs were in multiple stages of fracture. Zoe’s bones were already breaking in the womb.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Told that their daughter might not survive until her due date, the distraught parents were offered abortion. They were even told to donate Zoe’s body to science.<\/p>\n

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“The specialist recommended or suggested that we could just terminate the pregnancy, but it was more than that to us. It was our first child together,” said Chelsea Lush in a video for BBC<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“We actually did\u00a0contemplate the abortion that [the doctor] was telling us was the only thing that was humane,” explained Curtis Lush. “We were in a panicked state.”<\/p>\n

Three months after that ultrasound, Zoe was born. She had great APGAR scores and was breathing on her own, but she had a rough start and fractured her collarbone during birth. Over the course of her first month outside the womb, she broke both arms, a leg, and then an arm again. She was officially diagnosed with Osteogenesis Imperfecta Type III, or Brittle Bone Disorder, a type of dwarfism.<\/p>\n