by Gretchen Keiser

“Live births” – babies born prematurely following an abortion attempt – face very long odds against survival, according to information gathered from some specialists in care for premature infants.

The sophisticated technology and care available in neonatal units cannot substitute for a mother’s womb in providing the proper environment for very immature infants, a neonatologist at Crawford Long Hospital in Atlanta said. Dr. Ann Critz, who is in charge of the hospital’s nursery and specializes in care of the newborn, said the best care available typically can only help premature babies that are at least 26 weeks old. “The key is the gestational age” of the premature baby, she said.

Dr. Critz said that typically a baby of less than 26 weeks’ gestation has not developed air sacs in the lungs that would permit use of a ventilator to help breathing and the intestinal system is not sufficiently developed to allow nourishment of the baby by intravenous feeding.

“Our methods are such that they just aren’t any good for (babies of) less than 26 weeks,” she said, adding that something like an artificial womb would be needed to oxygenate the lungs of the baby and an artificial placenta would be needed to nourish the baby.

While 26 weeks’ gestation is about the minimal time needed in the womb before the intensive care of medicine and science can possibly take over, “live births” seemingly occur earlier in the pregnancy.

Abortions in the second trimester of pregnancy, which is through the 24^th week, have sometimes resulted not in the death of the baby, but in a “live birth” – a phenomenon which has come to be called “the dreaded complication” in abortion medicine around the country.

The Georgia Bulletin reported April 28 on state death certificates filed between 1980 and 1982 which showed 14 “live births” had occurred at Midtown Hospital, an Atlanta facility specializing in abortions and performing them through the second trimester of pregnancy.

The death certificates indicated that the babies had lived anywhere from less than half an hour to 13 hours.

Statistics on abortions performed throughout the state in 1980, the last year in which complete figures are available at present, show that Midtown Hospital performed the overwhelming majority of late second trimester abortions performed in the Atlanta area.

Midtown Hospital performed 331 abortions between the 21^st and 24^th week of gestation during 1980, while other hospitals in DeKalb and Fulton County combined performed a total of 19 abortions later than the 21^st week of gestation during the same year.

Ten of the 14 “live births” recorded by Midtown Hospital occurred between 1980 and 1982.

In addition to the 14 “live births” recorded by Midtown Hospital between 1980 and 1982, there have been two infants treated at Grady Hospital’s neonatal unit in the past six years after surviving abortions.

The Grady unit which is a specialized care center for infants serving a 40-county area, has a specialized communications system and transport team available to go out, if called, and bring critically ill babies to the facility for intensive care.

Two “live births” have been received in the last six years, according to Donna Carson, social worker at the nursery.

One baby lived for approximately one day and the other lived for between six and seven months, never leaving the hospital’s neonatal unit, Ms. Carson said.

She declined to say where the abortions which resulted in the two “live births” took place, but said the calls were the only two to come into Grady during her six-year tenure at the unit.

The babies would receive the same type of specialized care as those born prematurely from causes other than abortion.

Dr. Critz, who has not treated a “live birth” case, said that the basic care for the premature infant sufficiently developed to benefit from it would be a ventilator to help the baby breathe, intravenous feeding, and any special care needed in individual cases such as treatment for shock.

Often premature babies suffer strokes, she said, and may suffer additional injuries from whatever trauma brought on early labor in the mother.

But the key factor remains the baby’s gestational age if it is to survive in an environment less hospitable than the mother’s womb, she said. At 26 weeks, and particularly beginning at 28 weeks, the specialized care can help a baby, Dr. Critz said. Below that age, she said, “there’s nothing to do” to help the baby survive.