Christmas with Emily

The following article won first place in the narrative category during the annual awards ceremony of the Canadian Church Press. Reprinted from December 21, 1998 (pages 21, 22)

Christmas with Emily

A Langley newborn beats the odds, thanks to prayers of people she'll never know

By Paul Schratz

Christmas is nine weeks old for Ron and Marie Rogers.

Nine weeks ago is when Emily Rogers arrived at B.C. Women's Hospital in a delivery room staffed by more than 20 nurses, doctors, medical personnel ...
and one priest.

By the time Emily left the hospital, weighing just over five pounds, she had been baptized with a hypodermic syringe, undergone two major operations, and bolstered the faith of thousands of people around the world who will probably never meet her.

Today, Emily thrives on love in the charming townhouse where she lives with her parents and their dog Murray, who has become Emily's protector.

Emily was born with what her medical file refers to as an "overt congenital abnormality" a gross omphalocele (em-PHAL-a-seel). As she grew within her mother's womb, her liver, stomach, intestines, bowel, and spleen developed outside her body.

Emily's birth and recovery is a testament to faith and the power of prayer, say her parents, Catholics from the new parish of St. Nicholas in Langley's Walnut Grove area. They knew the odds were against Emily. Her condition affects just one child in 10,000 and the chances of survival weren't good. "I really do believe the power of prayer helped us," said Ron, "and it really did help her. No baby has ever done better than her."

Emily needed those prayers. Almost from Day 1, the Rogers knew it wouldn't be an ordinary pregnancy. Their own family doctor was pro-life, but once Emily's medical problems became evident they had frequent encounters with medical specialists offering them the opportunity to terminate the pregnancy.

Absolutely pro-life, the couple, who have been married six years, devised a counter-strategy. They enlisted the prayers of everyone they knew. Then they began interviewing pro-life surgeons for Emily's arrival.

Emily's saga, and her fight for life, began last March when Marie realized she was pregnant. She went to her doctor, delighted, yet with an uneasy feeling that something wasn't right. Because a previous baby - David - had been stillborn in 1997, no chances were taken. Ultrasound tests were ordered, and the radiologist who reviewed them with her promptly determined there was "nothing there."

Marie insisted she was pregnant. "They were looking for a heartbeat at four weeks, but you cannot detect a heartbeat until five and a half." The radiologist insisted it was merely an unfertilized egg and suggested she merely wanted to be pregnant.

Then he announced he had booked a room for her to have a D & C to remove what was there.

Marie was shocked. "I said I've got to be 100 percent sure that there's no baby there." The radiologist's attitude unsettled her, and to this day she talks about sending him a picture saying "This is the baby that didn't exist."

Marie was indeed pregnant, and she had just overcome the first of many hurdles, as she began bi-weekly ultrasounds throughout a pregnancy that would be closely watched because of the previous stillbirth.

At 19 weeks, the Rogers' family physician, Dr. Steven Hansen of Langley, a solidly pro-life doctor, paid them a visit at home one evening to advise of "major complications." The ultrasound had detected an omphalocele and follow-up tests would need to be done the following week at B.C. Women's Hospital.

They knew that they could expect a confrontation at the hospital over the issue of continuing the pregnancy. "We knew that if we had to have an argument, we'd have to have an educated argument." So they spent the weekend doing research, particularly on the Internet.

They began interviewing surgeons, looking for those who wouldn't urge them to end the pregnancy. They also contacted pro-life circles and Father John Horgan (former chaplain at St. Paul's Hospital) for medical ethics advice.

B.C. Women's had its own bioethicist team, Marie said, but they wanted their own. "This is how seriously we take it, I mean you wouldn't leave your baby to the next-door neighbour that you don't really trust or know," said Marie.

"Another strategy we used was we named the baby," said Ron. "After we found out the sex, they started putting it in their charts. Instead of Fetus A, Fetus B, it was Emily Rogers. That helped to personalize it so they could see that was a baby."

Calls for prayer began spreading immediately. Ron talked to a neighbour, pastor of Vineyard church across the street. "The support they gave was just wonderful, having their congregation pray, visiting us in the hospital." Pro-life offices started an international prayer chain. A Grade 6 class at Holy Trinity Catholic School in North Vancouver wrote cards and prayers, joining their prayers with their parish and individuals from schools, churches, and other faiths all over the Lower Mainland.

On Monday they went to B.C. Women's Hospital, where they spent the entire day undergoing a battery of tests, meeting with medical staff, including a perineonatologist and genetic counsellors. As expected, the option of abortion was offered.

When they insisted they were proceeding with the pregnancy, the issue of amniocentesis arose. Half of babies born with Emily's condition have chromosomal problems, and an amnio could determine whether Emily fit that pattern. "We were strongly against the general use of amniocentesis," Ron said. An amnio during Marie's first pregnancy had caused complications with the birth, but the Rogers decided to undergo the procedure to determine whether any problems could be corrected before birth.

"We were never worried about the results," said Ron. "I didn't care, we just wanted a life. We didn't care what God gave us; I always said God gives special kids to special people."

Unfortunately, Marie's membranes ruptured as a result, just one of the complications she had to contend with. She went on short-term leave from her credit union job, and opted to spend the pregnancy getting bed rest. "We kept ourselves up, but 40 weeks seems so far when you're at 20 and there are complications," she said. Even the medical personnel weren't giving them much hope.

One doctor offered to do the Rogers a "favour" of providing an abortion up to 24 weeks if they changed their minds, said Marie, "which just hurt us ... that they thought they were doing me a favour."

Prayers and support got them through the remainder of the pregnancy, and at 36 weeks, the time had come. The C-section was scheduled for Monday, Oct. 19. They spent the weekend in hospital, Marie feeling like "a ticking time bomb."

The C-section went well. Under the skilled hands of three surgical teams, Emily was born at 1226 p.m., emerging loud and crying. Father Mark Hagemoen quickly baptized her with sterile water from a syringe, and Emily's temporarily external organs were immediately wrapped in gauze until they could be placed inside her abdomen four hours later. The Rogers knew there was a 30 percent chance she wouldn't survive that long.

Survive she did, and in a two-hour operation, her spleen, stomach, and bowel were put back inside her. Her liver remained outside, under a "silo" constructed to cover the organ until it settled by itself into the body cavity over the next few days.

The plan went like clockwork, and six days later surgeons closed Emily up. Through her surgical ordeal, Emily was immobilized on drugs, fed sugar water by IV, and kept on a ventilator so she couldn't cry. All the while, doctors worried about infection. Marie would not be able to cuddle her for two weeks.

After surgery, Emily was transferred next door to B.C. Children's Hospital, where she rallied immediately, doing better than anyone expected. On Nov. 19, exactly one month after her birth, she headed home.

Before leaving the hospital, the Rogers held a thank-you party for the staff.

"The level of care at Children's was unbelievable, and the care on their faces was unbelievable," said Ron.

The Rogers proudly display photo albums of black-and-white pictures taken by staff to document the procedure. Surgeons plan to use the photos to educate obstetricians at Women's Hospital, "to say that these babies have a better chance than they think," said Marie.

Undoubtedly the Rogers' faith has left an impact on the medical staff they dealt with. One surgeon told Marie he understood why Emily had made such good progress, acknowledging it was because of the prayer chain.

Even those who put the abortion option before them seem to have been touched. One such doctor saw Emily sucking her thumb at 23 weeks on ultrasound. "She had tears in her eyes just before she left," Marie said. "I know we affected her by using her name, by being so caring, by being so loving toward the baby."

Emily appears to have no other anomalies, and her prognosis is good. The Rogers now hope they can become a resource for other parents. "We said we'd be open to anybody who has a baby with this condition to call us, said Ron. "There is hope; don't give up on those babies."

Marie looks back over the pregnancy and remembers one doctor who suggested that consigning Emily to a life of suffering so she could have a child was selfish. "I squeezed Ron's hand, and I said, `Am I that pathetic - that I'm not able to see past myself?'

"Then I said, `I'm not.'"

Emily will vouch for that.

Copyright 1999. The BC Catholic. All Rights Reserved.
150 Robson Street, Vancouver, BC, Canada, V6B 2A7

Aborted babies in B.C. dying in mothers' arms

Explodes `blob of tissue' myth, says Respect Life office

By MARNIE KO
FOR THE B.C. CATHOLIC
April 19, 1999

Since 1995, at least 16 British Columbia babies have been born alive during mid- to late-term abortions.

B.C.'s coroners service says several babies lived more than an hour after birth, but none beyond six hours, "and in many instances the infant died in his or her mother's arms." All the infants were issued death certificates.

The largest baby, according to B.C.'s vital statistics department, weighed 4.9 pounds and was born in 1997 to a North Vancouver woman more than seven months pregnant.

Most of the live-birth abortions occurred at B.C. Women's Hospital in Vancouver. Ministry of Health spokeswoman Michelle Stewart said induced, late-term abortions are done for genetic reasons. Genetic terminations occur when the pregnancy is planned but the fetus is perceived as having undesirable characteristics, defects, or abnormalities that will result in the infant's death at some time in the future.

Stewart admits women having a late-term abortion should be prepared to deal with a live baby. "In cases where the pregnancy is induced, indeed there is a chance that the baby will breathe when it is born, and the women are aware of that before; they are advised by the hospital that that is a possibility."

Stewart says a baby that exhibits any sign of life, including heart beat or muscle movement, is registered as a live birth.

According to B.C.'s chief coroner Larry Campbell, who concluded an investigation into the live births last month, 11 out of the 16 live aborted babies were born to women 23 weeks pregnant or less, and the infants' expected survival rate would have been "30 per cent or less even if there had been no congenital abnormality."

Campbell has no intention of stepping into the volatile abortion fray. In a March 15 letter to pro-lifer Ted Gerk, who first requested the investigation in February, Campbell said the death of a viable infant born after a mid- or late-second-trimester abortion would not be under the mandate of the coroner's office, regardless of when it occurred or how long the infant survived after the abortion. The coroner said his mandate is only to "investigate death if unexpected."
Peter Ryan, director of the Respect Life office of the Vancouver archdiocese, says the reports "explode the myth that abortion only destroys a blob of tissue."

With 100,000 abortions every year in Canada, there are reports that babies up to 35 weeks gestation (three to five weeks away from due date) have been born alive after abortion.

Methods of abortion vary and include fetal dismemberment, suctioning of the uterus and developing baby inside, poisoning the uterine environment, or induced labour contractions, which deliver a premature baby unable to survive outside the uterine support system.

Stewart says that a late-term abortion in B.C. is often performed by inducing labour before the baby can survive outside the womb without medical help. She also says there have not been many such cases of infants surviving for extended periods. "I believe there has been one such case, not many, and again, the family was aware of that possibility, and faced a very obviously, very tragic situation and a very terrible decision."

She said she's "taken aback by allegations" that anyone had expressed concern over late-term abortions and practices and said it hadn't come to the attention of the ministry.

"First and foremost, abortion is a legal medical service in this country, and that's No. 1," she said, stressing that the ministry supports women's reproductive choices.

Since 1992, which recorded only one incident of an abortion live birth, there has been an increase in live aborted babies, reports the B.C. vital statistics agency. Years 1996 and 1997 each saw six reported cases of babies born alive during abortions. Statistics indicate these abortions occurred between 19 weeks gestation (just under 5 months pregnant) and 29 weeks gestation (over 7 months pregnant).

Campbell said that 11 of the infants were 23 weeks gestation or less and all cases involved "significant congenital anomalies." Of these it is unknown how many were lethal anomalies that would result in the infant's death sometime after birth, and how many were disabilities such as Down's syndrome.

The coroner said that the method of abortion in these cases was "medical induction of labour" through "oral misoprostol with local prostaglandin" inserts into the woman's vagina.

He assured Gerk that "All infants died within six hours of birth, with the majority (56 per cent) succumbing within one hour or less, and with well over half of those cases surviving less than 15 minutes."

According to the coroner, those with longer survival times "usually" were "cared for with compassion and dignity in a pattern akin to the palliative care model and in many instances the infant died in his or her mother's arms." There were nine boys and seven girls.

Penny Ballen, vice-president of women's and family health programs at B.C. Women's Hospital, refused comment on the matter, saying only that giving details of what went on during an abortion or "discussing this terribly sensitive information" would "create danger for women and their providers. They'd be at serious risk." Ballen says the public should be aware that abortion "is a difficult and extraordinarily painful area." Ballen refused to say whether abortions were producing live babies and said she had no further comments because "the media is not the place to discuss this issue. It would create serious risk and I'm not prepared to do that."

An employee of B.C. Women's Hospital involved in abortion services (who refused to give a name for fear of risking firing) says, "These terminated babies had problems, defects ... doctors said they were going to die anyway. Sure, I think it should have happened on its own, and maybe the Down's (syndrome) babies would have lived decent lives ... but some people don't want babies that aren't perfect and `normal.'"

Staff at Vancouver's Elizabeth Bagshaw Women's Clinic on Granville Street could not be reached for comment.

This isn't the first time that British Columbia officials have dealt with public outcry over late-term abortion and terminations for babies with "genetic defects." Ximena Renaerts, a 13-year-old quadriplegic who was born three days after her 22-year-old mother had an abortion at a U.S. Planned Parenthood clinic, reached an out-of-court settlement with Vancouver General Hospital and nine doctors and nurses last summer.

Renaerts, who will require care for the remainder of her life, was left to die in a hospital closet after the hospital diagnosed her as an "incomplete abortion."

Court documents alleged that Vancouver General Hospital nurses ignored the weak cries of the infant struggling for breath in the bedpan and put her in a room reserved for dead fetuses. Forty minutes later, a trauma team was called to suction the baby's airways and provide oxygen, but Renaerts suffered cerebral palsy, brain damage, and was left a quadriplegic from hypothermia and lack of immediate life-saving treatment.

In 1974, Dennis Cocke, then the British Columbia Health Minister, launched a personal investigation into reports that fetuses older than five months gestation were being aborted. In one such case, reported by the Vancouver Sun after it obtained records of an abortion at Vancouver General Hospital, a baby was born alive but died 24 hours after the abortion attempt.

British Columbia isn't the only province where reports of babies surviving abortion are surfacing. Alberta Report magazine last week outlined the grim experiences of nurses on the postpartum unit of the Calgary Foothills Hospital who were forced to administer medication that induces labour, against their religious and moral convictions.

One nurse told Alberta Report "abortions are done in hospital from 14 weeks gestation up to 23 or 24 weeks. After 23 weeks, it's pretty dicey because we're getting into viability ... babies can survive" the induction which is intended to terminate the pregnancy with a dead baby.

With the coroner's lack of jurisdiction in the matter of late-term abortions, Gerk is convinced that nothing short of a public outcry will change the situation. He admits he isn't ready to let the matter rest. "I want to see a Canada-wide investigation into late-term abortion ... staffed with doctors who are not associated with the provision of abortion services. The next step would be a ban on all abortions over 20 weeks, which is when these babies can survive abortions."

Ryan said the way the aborted babies are treated reminds him of "the ancient practice of abandoning newborn infants to die by exposure," and he wants to know whether society is prepared to intervene, "or will nurses, for example, be compelled to stand by and let babies who could survive die?"

The real answer, said Ryan, is legislation protecting infants from being aborted in the first place, "but I worry that as a society we have become so hardhearted on abortion that even now we will refuse to act."

SIDEBAR

Vancouver doctor Jonathan Cope, who presented a paper called "Late Abortion Techniques" at UBC's Medical Symposium on Abortion in 1997, lists a number of reasons women have late-term abortions: "women are awaiting results from genetic testing, women don't know they are pregnant, woman are abandoned by the father which is a common reason, particular areas (of British Columbia) give women difficulty getting referrals (for an abortion), (there is) fear of parental retribution, or that the husband (of the pregnant mother) wants a boy."

He explained that second-trimester abortions "in British Columbia tend to be concentrated in just a few hands because late-term abortions are physically unpleasant. They aren't popular among surgeons" because, as he described in his symposium presentation Secrets for a Successful Evacuation, infants are almost fully developed, clearly look like babies, and can survive outside the womb.

Cope wrote, "It is advisable to use the biggest forceps that you can get through the (woman's) cervix to morcellate (a medical term meaning to cut up) the fetus.... Visually check all the parts as they are retrieved.... This is part of the reason that second- trimester abortion is not popular among surgeons. All those here who do second-trimester abortions will agree that the most difficult ones are those between 14 and 17 weeks ... there is a tendency for the uterus to form an `hourglass' and the head (of the baby) or part of the trunk to be trapped in the upper part and difficult to retrieve. The passage of large, recognizable fetal parts by the woman some hours or days later is extremely distressing for the woman and her family."

The dreaded complication

BC Report February 22, 1999

An increasing number of B.C. babies are born alive after being aborted
- by Celeste McGovern

A four-pound, 14-ounce baby was born alive in 1997 after its North Vancouver mother underwent an abortion at British Columbia's Women's Hospital and Health Centre Society. According to B.C. Vital Statistics Agency, the baby, at 29 weeks gestation, lived only briefly, but long enough to require a birth and death registration in 1997. The death was one of six "infant deaths due to abortion" recorded in B.C. that year-an increase from just one in 1993.

Live births-the "dreaded complication" of the abortion industry-are on the rise in B.C. along with the number of abortions of fetuses well beyond the second trimester and the age of viability.

In both 1993 and 1994 in B.C. one baby born alive after an abortion was recorded officially; in 1995, two; 1996, six; 1997, six, and 1998 (for which statistics are not final), two, according to B.C. Stats. "Live births" are defined as "the complete expulsion or extraction from its mother, irrespective of the duration of the pregnancy, of a product of conception in which, after the expulsion or extraction there is a) breathing; b) beating of the heart; c) pulsation of the umbilical cord; or d) unmistakable movement of voluntary muscle."

All but one of B.C.'s recorded infant deaths from induced abortions between 1995 and 1998 took place at B.C. Women's Hospital; the exception was at Victoria General Hospital in 1997. Most of the babies, according to B.C. Stats' researcher Julie Macdonald, had congenital anomalies. They ranged in gestational age from 19 to 30 weeks (13 of 16 were beyond 20 weeks gestation).

Ms. Macdonald speculates that the increase in live births after abortion is due indirectly to the increase in the average age of mothers. Women over 35 now comprise 18% of all pregnant women in B.C. The risk of genetic anomalies, such as Down's syndrome, increases dramatically with maternal age; and such babies are at high risk for abortion.

A pamphlet produced by B.C. Women's Hospital entitled "Information for Families about Termination of an Abnormal Pregnancy" outlines late-term abortion procedures women will undergo including labour induction surgical dilation and evacuation (D&E). It offers to try to accommodate women's wishes to see their baby-although not after D&E, which dismembers the child-and to provide such "mementos" as baby bracelets and ultrasound pictures.

Dr. Will Johnston, professor of family medicine at the University of B.C. medical school, says that without intervention post-abortion babies are likely to "die within minutes of delivery. The question is whether the staff resuscitate babies who show signs of life, which is required by five-century- old law."

Live aborted babies are known in the business as "the dreaded complication," says Mark Crutcher of Life Dynamics Inc., which documented practices in U.S. abortion clinics using undercover workers. "It happens all the time," he says. "And if it's happening here, you can bet it's happening in Canada."

B.C. Women's Hospital failed last week to answer a request for protocol in the case of live births after abortions or to provide their own statistics on the number of late abortions occurring at the hospital. The Ministry of Health would not provide data on the gestational age of the 16,522 babies aborted in B.C. in 1997-1998. Statistics Canada analyst Surinder Wadhera complains, "The province of British Columbia has simply stopped providing abortion data. What can we say?"

This stonewalling comes as no surprise to Kelowna pro-life activist Ted Gerk, who came across the infant death statistics while researching the death of women undergoing abortion (see story, page 56). He claims recorded statistics do not reflect the true incidence of live births following abortion.

"This is the abortion industry's dirty little secret," says Mr. Gerk. He points to the case of Ximena Renaerts, born at Vancouver Hospital in December 1985, three days after her mother had an unsuccessful abortion at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Bellingham, Washington.

Gasping, moving and crying, Ximena, approximately 27-weeks gestation, was dumped in a "hat pan" in a closet for dead fetuses and left for almost 30 minutes before a nurse finally summoned a resuscitation team. She is now 13 years old, quadriplegic and mentally handicapped; her case never would have been revealed had her adoptive family not filed a $10-million claim (settled out of court) against the hospital and nine doctors and nurses.

David Senn and his wife Margaret Brown are one couple who are glad they did not abort their abnormal pregnancy. A routine ultrasound four years ago at B.C. Children and Women's Hospital when Ms. Brown was 18-weeks pregnant revealed a serious heart defect in her baby. A doctor counseled the couple of three options: hope for the best, experimental surgery or "termination." "We were not pressured to abort, but we were definitely left with the impression that if our doctor was in our position he would choose abortion," says Mr. Senn.

Further genetic testing revealed their baby had Trisomy 13 (a profound chromosomal disorder) and would probably die shortly after birth if not before.

The condition also ruled out surgical intervention. "I was very angry. I did not want this baby," says Mr. Senn. "Why do what seems a complicated, messy, costly thing?" He and his wife had "rationalized the decision to abort" the baby, but decided eventually that "this was my son and I was going to love him and accept him however he was." David Peter was born four weeks early, blue and apparently dead but when handed to his parents the four-pound 11-ounce infant started breathing and turned pink. "We had him about six hours and then he died," says his father. "The privilege of having him and being able to hold him far outweighed anything else."

Mr. Senn has no trouble speaking of his son now. "We have no baggage, no guilt and we really see it as the most positive experience," he says. "What looks like the simple, easy way out is not. And when we love, somehow it's all worth it." BCR