Mainstream media in Nebraska and neighboring Iowa have used one heart-wrenching story as a way to try to pour cold water on the success of a Nebraska law that prohibits abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy. Danielle and Robb Deaver shared their story of how they were denied an abortion under the new Nebraska law, even though pregnancy complications reportedly made it unlikely their child would be able to breathe on his own. The couple ironically asked for an abortion to kill their baby as opposed to supposedly letting the child suffer. But Sean Kenney, M.D., a maternal-fetal specialist from Lincoln, responded to the story with an opinion column the Omaha World-Herald newspaper printed:
Danielle Deaver was diagnosed with pre-viable premature rupture of the membranes (Pre-viable PPROM) at 22 4/7 weeks. . . . What most specialists try to do in these situations is maintain the pregnancy for as long as possible. If Mrs. Deaver had delivered two days later at 24 weeks, the baby’s chance of survival without profound neurodevelopmental impairment would have increased to 50 percent, 65 percent if she had received steroids. . . . Tragic as the outcome was, the pessimism that predicted inevitable death for the baby was certainly unwarranted. One of my greatest success stories is a 22 6/7-week infant whom I wasn’t planning on resuscitating, but at delivery I heard him cry and ran him to the neonatal intensive care unit. Several years later, he was helping to translate for his mother, looking very neurologically intact.
Editor: The moral of the story is, when given a poor prenatal prognosis, seek a second (pro-life) opinion.
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