{"id":172374,"date":"2017-09-26T10:23:36","date_gmt":"2017-09-26T14:23:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=172374"},"modified":"2017-09-26T01:18:32","modified_gmt":"2017-09-26T05:18:32","slug":"doctor-questions-fatal-fetal-abnormalities-fatal-parents-led-believe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/doctor-questions-fatal-fetal-abnormalities-fatal-parents-led-believe\/","title":{"rendered":"Doctor questions whether ‘fatal fetal abnormalities’ are as fatal as parents are led to believe"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u201cWhen a child is discovered to have a life-limiting condition after birth, we do not suggest to families
\n<\/em>that their grief and devastation will be helped if we hasten death. <\/em><\/p>\n

Why do we do so before birth?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

This question, asked last week by Breda O\u2019Brien in the Irish Times<\/a>, is one pro-life advocates have been asking for a very, very long time. And it is one which more disability rights advocates are also beginning to ask, as they see what appears to be the increasing discrimination against preborn children with prenatal diagnoses.<\/p>\n

O\u2019Brien tells the story of Dr. Marty McCaffrey, a \u201cclinical professor in neonatal-perinatal medicine at UNC Chapel Hill\u201d who, upon attending a disability conference in 2009, discovered that \u201cfatal fetal abormalities\u201d might not be so fatal after all. McCaffrey noted that many of the children attending the conference with their families had conditions that most in the medical community label as \u2018incompatible with life,\u2019 and yet, these children were very much alive. When McCaffrey looked for an explanation on the matter, O\u2019Brien says he found something \u201cdisturbing, a medical version of the self-fulfilling prophecy. He dubbed it \u2018lethality begets lethality\u2019. In short, if children with trisomies were expected to die, they did \u2013 in far greater numbers.\u201d<\/p>\n