Treating newborn infants with serious life-threatening conditions is a specialized branch of medicine. Perinatal palliative care is a strategy that includes “options for obstetric and newborn care” that focus on “maximizing quality of life and comfort for newborns with a variety of conditions considered to be life-limiting in early infancy.” This is NOT after birth abortion.
https://www.salon.com/2024/09/11/where-trumps-execute-the-babies-lie-comes-from/
It’s estimated that less than 1% of abortions in the U.S. occur after 21 weeks of gestation. The reasons pregnant people might seek abortion care after 21 weeks is generally due to severe medical complications — such as the fetus having a fatal anomaly. In fact, when Trump is suggesting that Democrats want to “execute” babies after birth, he is referring to perinatal palliative care. .....
According to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), perinatal palliative care is a strategy that includes “options for obstetric and newborn care” that focus on “maximizing quality of life and comfort for newborns with a variety of conditions considered to be life-limiting in early infancy.”
The priority in perinatal palliative care in a situation where a newborn is born with a life-limiting condition is to both ease patient suffering and honor values. What this looks like will vary depending on the life-limiting condition. Dr. Stacy Seyb, an Idaho-based maternal-fetal medicine specialist, told Salon in July that for some lethal anomalies, like holoprosencephaly, it could be keeping the patient warm, allowing them to be with their parents, and keeping them comfortable. .....
The idea that infants are being born in the third trimester of pregnancy and being aborted after birth is a “scare tactic” and “an insult to the medical profession,” Seyb said.
But as ACOG states: “At no point in the course of delivering a newborn with life-limiting conditions and subsequently providing palliative care does the obstetrician–gynecologist end the life of the newborn receiving palliative care.”
David Hackney, a Cleveland-based maternal-fetal medicine specialist, told Salon, “perinatal comfort care” often gets conflated with “abortion,” and "euthanasia.” But as ACOG emphasizes, “abortion cannot be performed after a pregnancy has ended.”
I remember that when we decided to put my father-in-law into a hospice, we met with palliative care specialists who were there to help my mother-in-law deal with the end-of-life issues. I understood the concept of palliative care and had to explain these concepts to my mother-in-law. This was not a fun job. The same concepts apply to babies born with severe medical conditions.
The claims of after birth abortions are truly offensive and are wrong. I was glad that TFG was fact checked during the debate.
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