A mum who gave birth to her live son after a failed abortion has described the process of watching him die as “torture”.
Loran Denison, 27, from Blackburn learned that her fourth child had Edwards’ syndrome after a diagnostic test at 15 weeks. Edwards’ syndrome, also known as trisomy 18, is a rare genetic condition that can lead to a number of symptoms including learning difficulties, heart, respiratory, kidney and gastrointestinal problems.
Loran decided to undergo a medical abortion at 18 weeks. She took a medical abortion pill on the 6th April and returned to the Women and Newborn Unit at Burnley General Hospital on the 8th April to deliver what was supposed to be a dead baby.
Loran said: “I went in for a medical abortion because he was carrying Edwards’ Syndrome.”
“We had already said our goodbyes when we went in on the 8th, because I’d taken the termination tablet on the sixth.”
However, her son Kiyo Bleu Watson was born alive on the 9th April at 3.50pm, weighing just 150g. His heart was still beating and Loran was told that his heart would stop beating within half an hour. It was not until ten hours later that her son died.
“They said his heart will stop in the next half hour, and I kept ringing the bell to say he was still alive, and I said ‘do you just leave him’ and they said ‘yes’,” Loran said.
“I thought I had done the hard bit when I made the difficult decision to have an abortion, but now it feels ten times worse,”
“I had to watch his heartbeat getting slower and watch his life draining out of him.
“I don’t have words for how awful it was.”
The parents had their baby baptised in the hospital before he died.
East Lancashire hospitals NHS Trust declined to comment.
Pressured to abort
There are numerous anecdotal reports from women who were found to be pregnant with a child that had a genetic disability like Edwards’ syndrome, Down’s syndrome or Patau’s syndrome, and who were then pressured to have an abortion.
Last year, in a tacit recognition of the problem of women being pressured to have abortions, the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) released guidelines emphasising the importance of a non-directive approach to prenatal screening for Down’s syndrome, Edwards’ syndrome and Patau’s syndrome.
Right To Life UK spokesperson, Catherine Robinson, said: “This story is an utterly tragic and profoundly disturbing one. It appears that the mother received all the wrong advice from her physicians and ended up watching her own son slowly die. A child with Edwards’ syndrome is as precious as any other child. It is deeply sad that physicians attempted to end his life by abortion.”
