Month: October 2020

Shout Your ADOPTION!

nancyvalko abortion, adoption, Planned Parenthood

The National Association of Pro-life Nurses (NAPN) has loved to feature stories about adoption and wants to feature more such stories on our website.

As our president Sue Meyers has written:

“We have named the program, “Shout Your Adoption.”

We would like to include more stories of adoption in our newsletter. Pro-Life people are all about offering alternatives to abortion and many adopt babies, children with disabilities and hard-to-place children. As a grandmother to a three-year-old, adorable (just ask me) grandson, I cannot imagine life without Andrew.

Please send your stories to me at lmeyers@nethtc.net .Don’t worry about getting it written perfectly, we will polish it, if necessary. We won’t use names unless you give us permission. Thank you so much! I can’t wait to read your stories!”

When a new life is unexpected and in difficult circumstances, women are often encouraged or even coerced into an abortion and not considering the adoption option.

I saw this myself when my 18 year old daughter became pregnant in 1998.

But when my daughter received help and support, she chose adoption and never regretted knowing her daughter was in loving hands.

These stories may not only help future mothers and babies but also their families and other loved ones. And, especially today, with Planned Parenthood’s “Shout Your Abortion” promotion, our society really needs to hear these pro-life stories.

In 2012, I wrote an article about my my daughter’s and our family’s adoption story for Voices magazine titled “Open Adoption: A Love Story” in the hope that other women and their families would be helped by our story.

I hope you will consider writing yours!

Protecting Premature Babies and Abortion Survivors

nancyvalko abortion, futility, law, medical ethics, ventilators/life support

On September 25, 2020, President Donald Trump signed an “Executive Order on Protecting Vulnerable Newborn and Infant Children” that states:

“Every infant born alive, no matter the circumstances of his or her birth, has the same dignity and the same rights as every other individual and is entitled to the same protections under Federal law. “

This executive order came after Speaker NancyPelosi and House Democrats refused to allow a vote on the “Born Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act” over 80 times.

ELLIOT AND EMERY

The new executive order protects not only babies who survive abortions but also those babies born prematurely like twins Emery and Elliot who were denied medical treatment after being born at 22 weeks and 5 days, despite a doctor’s prior assurances and despite the parents’ desperate pleas for treatment after the boys were born.

In an interview, the twins’ mother Amanda told me that the doctors predicted the babies would be stillborn or die shortly after birth because of their prematurity. However, the doctors were wrong: one of the boys lived for 45 minutes and the other for 2.5 hours.

Amanda and Shaun Finnefrock, the twins’ parents, have been active ever since their boys’ deaths in 2017 , advocating for “equal protection, equal treatment, the equal opportunity for survival — whether they survived an abortion or their mothers wanted them to live, like I did mine.”

They have been working on an Elliot and Emery’s Law for their home state of Ohio to protect other prematurely born babies.

Unfortunately, a 2015 University of Iowa study found that infants born at 22 weeks received potential lifesaving treatment at fewer than one in four hospitals. Almost all hospitals, the researchers found, will treat infants born at 25 weeks, but there is substantial variation among hospitals on whether they actively treat infants born at 23 or 24 weeks.

One obstacle is the fear that premature babies will be at an increased risk of disability as a result of the prematurity. But it is impossible to know at birth if the newborn will have disabilities because of prematurity. 

The good news is that studies are now finding that the majority of premature babies born at 22 weeks survive if given care.

CONCLUSION

When I started my nursing career over 50 years ago, babies more than 3 months premature routinely died because of breathing problems. But when ventilators and especially surfactant to protect the babies’ lungs were developed, “preemies” started to be saved at earlier and earlier stages with good results.

But most importantly, this progress was made because of the willingness of both parents and doctors to try to save these babies that made all the difference.