Archives: Aid urged for abortion survivors

Vancouver Sun May 30, 1986
- by Terry Glavin

Somewhere in B.C. there is a normal, healthy child, not yet live years old, who survived an abortion attempt in Vancouver some years ago.

The child was rushed to the intensive care unit at Children's Hospital after a woman, across town at another hospital, delivered a live fetus during an abortion procedure known as the prostaglandin method.

The procedure, also called a prostin abortion, induces labor by the injection of a harmone and is generally used when the fetus has reached a stage of development beyond 16 weeks. It Is a common procedure in B.C. hospitals.

Other methods, used early in gestation, include the dilation-evacuation method and the saline abortion. Hospital policy in Canada denies an abortion once a fetus exceeds 20 weeks.

It is not unknown in B.C. for a fetus to survive a prostin abortion only to die, usually within minutes, either for lack of immediate attention or because It was so underdeveloped.

But in this specific case, the fetus survived long enough to be rushed to the premature infant ward at Children's hospital, and after being cared for by a team of doctors over a period of several weeks, the infant was subsequently discharged. Nothing more is known about the child, and doctors will not discuss the matter further.

Now, a group of about 50 B.C. lawyers wants the provincial government to take a serious look at abortion survivors.

"We admit these are uncharted waters and there are a variety of scenarios," said anti-abortion activist George Carruthers, spokesman for Advocates for Human Life.

"But children, if they are out there with handicaps because they are survivors of late abortions, should have a remedy, a mechanism, to entitle them to compensation for damages."

Carruthers said he is not proposing that the child cared for at Children's Hospital be informed of the circumstances surrounding the birth, only that the government establish a process to ensure the rights of abortion survivors are protected.

"(But) if the abortion caused severe damage to the child, the child could have the option of seeking compensation under the common law tort of assault."

Mindful of doctor-patient confidentiality, doctors at the Children's Hospital premature infant ward were reluctant to discuss details that could lead to the identification of the child.

But neonatologist Dr. John Smyth, specialist at the premature infant ward who worked with the team of doctors assigned to treat the baby, confirmed the case. He added that the affair raised serious questions about medical practice in such cases.

Incidents traumatic

"For people doing my job...it's a dreadful contradiction," said Dr. Smyth.

"It's kind of strange that at one point you have a fetus that is considered suitable for disposal and just a very few weeks later, vast amounts of time, energy and resources are expended to keep the baby alive."

Norah Hutchinson, spokesman for the Concerned Citizens for Choice on Abortion, said instances of abortions that produce children instead of dead fetuses are tragic, painfully traumatic for everyone involved, and totally unnecessary.

But unlike Carruthers, who says the live-birth abortions demonstrate that abortion, is "the killing of an unborn child, no matter how you dress it up," Hutchinson says the cases demonstrate that women should have more ready access to abortions without the delays posed under the mandatory therapeutic abortion committee system.

Clinics backed

Abortions in Canada are illegal unless they are approved by a legally constituted therapeutic abortion committee, usually affiliated to hospital adminisratIon boards.

Hutchinson said abortions should be decriminalized and the system should be replaced with abortion clinics to prevent delays.

The likelihood that the woman will suffer complications arising from an abortion increases about 2O per cent with each week of gestation from seven weeks onward, she added.

"Maybe Carruthers should try and get abortions out of the Criminal Code," she said. "Then maybe these things wouldn't happen."

But Carruthers says such occurrences will inevitably continue so long as abortion is legal, and pointed to Centers for Disease Control statistics in the United States - where there is virtually no "red tape" ,- which show that 13,000 abortions occur every year after the 20th week of gestation.

Carruthers said legislation should be enacted requiring medical personnel to provide medical assistance to abortion survivors, and the provincial government should establish a public inquiry into the number of children born during the process of an abortions.

Hospital sensitive

When he was first interviewed earlier this mouth, Dr. Ian Grant, medical coordinator at Vancouver General HospItal, said he doubted reports that an infant was treated after being aborted and had survived until childhood.

He said he would raise the question with hospital obstetricians and get back to The Vancouver Sun with answers.

Several days later, Dr. Grant said: "The situation is this - the chance of producing a fetus that exhibits signs of life is extremely rare, usually because the process of the prostin inevitably kills it."

He said the obstetricians he questioned have never witnessed a fetus exhibiting signs of life, but he said VGH obstetricians conceded having heard of such situations.

Won't watch it die

"But if there's any sign of life, then that's it. We (would) call the resuscitation team and we (would) try to save it.

"If you see life, you're not going to stand around and watch it die, especially if it's young."

But it happens, says Kathy Harper, a registered nurse who teaches prenatal classes in Vancouver and works part-time in the VGH operating room.

Harper said she once responded with a practical nurse to a prostin abortion patient's nurse-call alarm and when she arrived in the patient's, room she found that the patient had delivered, on her own, a live infant in a bedpan.

She called the head nurse, and was told to take a coffee break. That was the last she heard of it, she said.

For some nurses, assisting in prostin abortions - no matter what their personal views on abortion may be - is a task they refuse to take on.

For Kathryn Larouche, a 30-year-old post-partum nurse at Grace Hospital who spent a year in the VGH ward where prostin abortions were performed, the abortion left scars. When she resigned from the ward, five other nurses resigned along with her.

During her year in the VGH ward, she said she saw three infants die after they were delivered live during the prostaglandin procedure.

She added that she assisted in "hundreds" of prostin abortions and is not "judgmental" about women who choose abortion.

Larouche, who stresses that she disagrees with the tactIcs of the anti- abortion movement, says she has since undergone counselling treatment to help her cope with the idea that she was "aiding murder" during her year assisting in abortions.

"We were supposed to turn the other way," Larouche said of the live birth incidents. "We weren't supposed to do anything, There were a couple of people - I don't want to say who. They told us, 'Don't do anything. Leave it alone. It will die'"

Delayed death

In her first live-birth experience, Larouche said the woman undergoing the abortion asked her what was wrong. Larouche said all she could do was tell her to wait a moment, and when signs of life were no longer evident, Larouche cut the umbilical cord.

"I didn't want to look," she said. "I didn't want to see more. The limbs were moving, but I couldn't look long enough to see any breathing.

In the prostin abortion, the fetus is not dismembered, as in the more common suction method and the dilation-evacuation method. Neither does at involve the injection of saline solution to dehydrate and kill the fetus.

The prostaglandin method involves the injection of a hormone which simply induces labor and the woman evacuates from her womb a whole fetus, usually into a bedpan.

In almost every prostin abortion, the fetus exhibits no sign of life because it is "kiIIed" in the process of labor and is simply "delivered" and removed for disposal.

Dr. Grant said Hospital policy prohibits abortions when the fetus is determined to be 20 weeks or older because after 20 weeks, "you can produce a living child."

The fetus that lived and was treated at the Children's Hospital's "preemie"
ward went on to become the only known case in B.C. of an infant reaching childhood after surviving an abortion.

But there were other survivors.

In 1974, The Vancouver Sun obtained records of an abortion at Vancouver General Hospital in which a was born in the process of an abortion and lived for 24 hours.

In the controversy that ensued, severaI other cases came to light, including a 1970 case at Royal Columbian Hospital in which an abortion produced a live infant who was left to die in a pan.

Another well-known incident was the 1979 Baby Grieve case, in which a baby was born during an abortion performed on a mentally retarded inmate of the Glendale institution in Victoria.

The child lived for 10 hours. The birth and death were registered with the department of vital statistics and a coroner's inquest determined that the Criminal Code had been violated, because no recognized therapeutic abortion committee approved the abortion, but the mater was dropped.