The Price of Life
Today’s latest technology and facilities have made it possible to fight for the survival of a baby born at just twenty-three weeks old, which is four months early and still young enough to be aborted. But is this a lifesaving development in our society or is it going against nature? Only nine out of one hundred babies born at twenty-three weeks with societies most state-of-the-art technology will survive and of those nine just one will survive without a disability. It is the parents that are left to make these decisions on whether to go ahead and resuscitate or to simply let nature take its course.
It can be argued that performing extraordinary measures in order to drag a baby’s life out a few days or weeks, with the extremely slim possibility that the baby will survive, is unnecessary. This may sound cruel and inhuman but until you fully understands the effects this can have on the baby, parents and society you cannot make a decision on this issue.
If the parents of a baby born at just twenty-three weeks decide to conduct extreme measures in order to attempt keeping the baby alive, the baby undergoes an extraordinary amount of stress and pain. After the baby is born he or she will be unable to breathe due to underdeveloped lungs, so a tube is forced down the throat to allow breathing. Infusions are given to boost the baby’s blood pressure and prevent blood clotting. Drugs are administered to fight infection and encourage lung development. These are the treatments that would be conducted on a baby who is in the best case scenario; treatments are far more extensive for babies worse off.
Babies’ worse off can require multiple surgeries and additional drugs. All of these treatments take their toll on the baby and as well as having many short term consequences, they also have many long term consequences too. These long term consequences involve mild to severe disabilities, including; lung disease caused by the plastic tubes to help the baby breath, cerebral palsy caused by the drugs to accelerate lung development and complete collapse in fragile guts caused by the medicine used to heal the heart.
If the baby survives and develops a disability it is incredible hard on the baby, they require support throughout their whole lives and face discrimination in society. As you can see the baby suffers a great deal from the many treatments that are administered in the hope for the baby’s survival. It is for these reasons that resuscitating babies born at twenty-three weeks is not fare on the baby, it is wrong.
The Parents of a twenty-three week old baby undergo much emotional pain and heartache. When the premature baby is born, the parents are required to decide whether or not extreme measures are to be taken. This decision is extremely hard on the parents as saying no to these measures can feel like killing their child and they must live with their decision for the rest of their lives. The measures can also give the parents hope and a stronger emotional attachment to the baby that is all too often crushed when the baby dies.
In the unlikely, but possible, chance the baby survives he or she will very likely have disabilities that can be extremely expensive and emotionally draining for the parents. The parents must understand that if they are willing to support the baby in the beginning, they must be willing to support the baby right through till the end. It is clear that parents should not be faced with this decision, that measures should not even be considered a possibility for twenty-three week old babies.
As for twenty-four week old babies, the chance of survival is considerably higher; 39%. Although there is still a 70% chance of the baby developing a disability. Babies born just a week later at twenty-five weeks have a 50% chance of survival but there is still a 60% risk of the baby developing a disability. The chances of survival are significantly higher as the week’s progress but the risk of disability is