Rob Merrick: The baby battle

May 14 2008 by Rob Merrick, Liverpool Daily Post

CASE closed – the two words that sprang to mind on reading the latest research on survival rates for babies born before 24 weeks, ahead of next week’s crunch abortion vote.

How can anyone convincingly argue for a cut in the time limit for most abortions to just 20 weeks, now we know for certain that almost all these babies will die, or survive with terrible disabilities?

Make no mistake, that is what an authoritative study published last week by the British Medical Journal makes plain to all but the most blinkered eye.

The study, involving 16 hospitals with more than 55,000 births a year, found prospects for babies born before 24 weeks are desperately poor and have not improved, despite medical advances.

Looking at two periods – 1994 to 1999 and 2000 to 2005 – the researchers found the survival rate for 23-week births virtually unchanged at about 18%.

None of the 150 babies born at 22 weeks lived. The results also suggested, say the authors, that medicine may have reached its limits in keeping the earliest premature babies alive.

Of course, the study – led by a professor at Leicester’s neonatal unit – will not stop the 20-week campaign by anti-abortion MPs, one of whom immediately condemned it as a “desperate piece of tosh”.

Hence, the stage is set for a Commons showdown on an amendment to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, the first attempt to cut the time limit since 1990.

Backed by Tory leader David Cameron and armed with heart-tugging pictures of thumb-sucking foetuses appearing to “walk”, the anti-abortion MPs believe the wind is in their sails.

That’s because nervous Labour MPs, pondering their tiny majorities and their growing unpopularity, may decide it would be the kiss of death to be “name and shamed”, having refused to buckle.

Next week, we will hear a lot about higher survival rates in some American hospitals, where very expensive special care units are made available.

But the anti-abortion MPs will not talk about the appalling disabilities they are left with, how such units will be paid for – or which babies born later will be turfed out to make room for them.

Rightly or wrongly, next week’s battle will be fought on what science tells us about when a foetus becomes “viable” – and the anti-abortionists have lost.

COMMUNITIES Secretary Hazel Blears has pledged to campaign personally in Crewe and Nantwich, to try to save Gwyneth Dunwoody’s old seat for Labour next week.

Could this be the same Ms Blears condemned by the late MP for pursuing a “venal and personal” agenda, as she pushed forward unpopular plans to merge Cheshire’s councils?