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Baby born two weeks below abortion limit goes home after 4 months in hospital

A baby born at 22 weeks weighing only 500g has just gone home after four months in hospital.

Baby Sofia Viktoria Birina was due on the 1st February 2021, but instead was born in University Wishaw Hospital on the 2nd October 2020.

Her mother, Egija, said: “Everything was fine at the 20 week scan. Then just over a week later, I felt pain so I went into hospital and was told that I was already dilated and had to go into labour”.

“After 10 days’ bed rest our beloved daughter Sofia made an appearance”.

“Sofia was literally the size of a hand, so fragile and small and her skin was see-through. I had to wait a week to hold her for the first time because she was so fragile. Once I was able to hold her, they couldn’t get her out of my hands”.

During her time in hospital, Sofia has had to overcome a heart defect, stage one brain bleeds, an eye disease, retinopathy of prematurity and multiple infections.

She had seven blood transfusions and, being so premature, respiratory distress symptom as her lungs weren’t fully developed.

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When baby Sofia was born at 22-weeks she weighed just 500g (1.1lb) and could fit in her mother’s hand – Image credit: NHS LANARKSHIRE

Sofia was born at just 22 weeks and four days

Her mother continued: “I was at the hospital all the time. Some days as long as 16 hours, and my husband would come after work. I just didn’t want to leave her, especially on the many really tough days when we didn’t think Sofia would make it”.

“She was hooked up to lots of machines and she was ventilated for several weeks to help her breathe. First time they tried to get her to breathe on her own, she only lasted 20 minutes then her heart rate dropped and I felt like I was losing her – but the medical and nursing staff were great”.

Since then, Sofia has been slowly weaned off her ventilator and has gained sufficient weight and strength to go home.

“She’s now four months old and I look at her and think she could still be in my tummy because of how small she is, even though she is now four times her birth weight”.

Sofia was born at just 22 weeks and 4 days and is believed to be one of Scotland’s youngest surviving babies.

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Sofia’s parents are able to finally take baby Sofia home after four months in hospital – Image credit: NHS LANARKSHIRE

Late term abortion in Scotland

The abortion law in Scotland (and England and Wales) permits abortion up to the 24th week of gestation in most cases, and up to birth under certain conditions, such as if the child is disabled.

The latest abortion statistics in Scotland show that in 2019, 129 abortions were performed at 18 weeks’ gestation or over and in England and Wales, 3,323 abortions were performed at 20 weeks’ gestation or over. 

As the inspiring case of baby Sofia shows, babies are able to survive outside the womb from as early as 22 weeks’ gestation. Once she was born, she was entitled to full protection under the law, but at 22 weeks in the womb, she could still be aborted.

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Baby Sofia was in an incubator for three months – Image credit: NHS LANARKSHIRE

Right To Life UK spokesperson, Catherine Robinson, said: “Advances in medical technology and the amazing work of our doctors and nurses are ensuring that premature babies are able to survive earlier and earlier”.

“Sofia’s very existence contrasts sharply with our abortion laws. At 22 weeks, Sofia would be offered the same protections under law as any other British citizen. Whilst she was still in the womb however, and whilst there are other babies in the womb at the same gestation and older, it would be perfectly lawful to have had an abortion. Surely this contradiction needs to end”. 

“Abortion at any stage of pregnancy is wrong, but the transparent contradiction at the heart of our abortion laws in terms of the basic rights we rightly grant to human life outside the womb but wrongly fail to provide to human life in the womb, is on clear display in these cases of premature births”.

Dear reader,

You may be surprised to learn that our 24-week abortion time limit is out of line with the majority of European Union countries, where the most common time limit for abortion on demand or on broad social grounds is 12 weeks gestation.

The latest guidance from the British Association of Perinatal Medicine enables doctors to intervene to save premature babies from 22 weeks. The latest research indicates that a significant number of babies born at 22 weeks gestation can survive outside the womb, and this number increases with proactive perinatal care.

This leaves a real contradiction in British law. In one room of a hospital, doctors could be working to save a baby born alive at 23 weeks whilst, in another room of that same hospital, a doctor could perform an abortion that would end the life of a baby at the same age.

The majority of the British population support reducing the time limit. Polling has shown that 70% of British women favour a reduction in the time limit from 24 weeks to 20 weeks or below.

Please click the button below to sign the petition to the Prime Minister, asking him to do everything in his power to reduce the abortion time limit.