(LifeSiteNews) — A groundbreaking first of its kind fetal surgerical clinical trial approved by the FDA saved the life of a baby girl in utero. A routine ultrasound discovered that a Louisiana baby in the womb (Denver Coleman, daughter of Derek and Kenyatta Coleman) had brain abnormalities and an enlarged heart, leading to a medical diagnosis of a “vein of Galen malformation.”
When the blood vessel carrying blood from the brain to the heart does so without first going through capillaries, the unborn child suffers dangerously high blood pressure, creating a risk of heart disease, brain damage, and/or organ failure. Babies born with this condition often don’t survive birth or, if they do, the odds for death prior to their teenage years are 30% to 40%.
Prior to this operation, doctors were only able to try and treat the condition after childbirth. However, little Denver’s case was so severe that doctors gave her a 1% chance of actually surviving to childbirth. Given the critical nature of her ailment, her doctors and parents struggled to find an answer. It was provided by doctors at Boston Children’s Hospital’s Cerebrovascular Surgery and Interventions Center. They had developed an experimental treatment to adjust and connect arteries with the correct veins by inserting needles into an unborn baby’s brain.
The Boston doctors were able to eliminate symptoms of this potential deadly vascular malformation by inserting 23 tiny coils deep within the unborn baby’s brain and successfully slowed the blood flow. By doing so, the baby was born healthy, avoided heart failure, severe brain injury, and death before or after birth. Sent to the neonatal intensive care unit upon birth, doctors observed that newborn Denver did not experience the cascade of health problems or symptoms most babies diagnosed with vein of Galen malformation typically endure.
Dr. Darren B. Orbach of Boston’s Children Hospital, the lead doctor in the operation, commented how thrilled he was that “the aggressive decline usually seen after birth simply did not appear.” To date, there are no symptoms reported and the child appears to be able to live a normal life.
Fetal surgery origins
Surgical intervention on an unborn baby in the womb is meant to correct birth defects, diseases, disorders, and structural defects that would likely be too advanced to correct after the baby is born. Fetal surgery, recognized as one of the most promising disciplines within pediatric medicine, has become an important option to save a growing number of babies diagnosed with birth anomalies.
The concept of fetal surgery is credited to Sir Albert William Liley, a New Zealand medical practitioner who advocated for the rights of a child within the womb. He led the team that carried out the first successful fetal transfusions in the world. In 1963, he developed the technique for diagnosing and treating fetuses suffering from a dangerous anemia as a result of Rh disease. It was not until 1981 that fetal surgery was introduced in the U.S.
Prior to its development, most women, after learning that their fetus has a severe disease or disability, faced a choice of either (1) terminating the pregnancy, (2) preparing for a short-lived nonviable birth, or (3) making arrangements for a child with a long-term medical condition.
Fetal surgery, on the other hand, opens the possibility of a treatment that could alleviate or even eliminate certain medical issues before birth. While fetal surgery is presently used to treat a wide range of conditions, perhaps the “poster child” for the success of laser fetal surgery, according to officials at the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists (AAPLOG), is a condition known as “twin to twin transfusion syndrome (TTTS).”
Boston Children’s Hospital states that about 80% percent of identical twin fetuses with a condition of TTTS will die if there is no treatment at all. Moreover, when only one fetus initially dies in utero, there is a high incidence of subsequent brain injury or death to the other fetus.
AAPLOG asserts that in severe cases of TTTS, laser fetal surgery successfully reverses a 70% to 100% death rate for both twins into a 70% to 90% chance of survival. It is indisputable that these figures significantly outperform survival rates for a termination option either by selective feticide (only 50% of fetuses survive by definition) or total abortion (0% survival rate).
TTTS is a condition in which the blood flows unequally between identical siblings that share a placenta and a network of blood vessels that supply oxygen and nutrients essential for development in the womb. Without intervention, the recipient twin receives too much blood and thus may develop fluid overload, heart failure, and die while the donor twin gives away more blood than it receives and risks death from malnourishment and organ failure.
Another illustration of the potential benefits of utilizing fetal surgery is to repair a condition called spina bifida. In this situation, a malformed spinal cord can lead a baby to likely suffer brain malformations, hydrocephalus (excess fluid on the brain), incontinence, inability to walk, learning deficiencies, and perhaps problems with swallowing or breathing. Studies indicate that fetal surgery for spinal bifida, performed before 26 weeks’ gestation, preserves neurological functions in the fetus and reverses existing anomalies. A 2011 study of 183 children with spina bifida receiving fetal surgery evidenced a major benefit in outcomes at age 30 months, including the ability to walk independently. A follow-up study showed the benefits of prenatal repair for spinal bifida continuing into childhood for up to 10 years after birth.
The timing of fetal surgeries may vary. Depending upon the condition to be treated, it can be as late as shortly before birth or several weeks after the time medical devices can detect a baby’s heartbeat (which is a sign of life, just as cessation of a heartbeat is a sign of death.)
In many cases, the promising clinical outcomes of fetal surgery have alleviated the desire to terminate a pregnancy because of fetal abnormalities. Reducing abortions was a primary motivating factor in Sir Albert William Liley’s development of fetal surgery. While not a cure-all, termination of pregnancy for fetal abnormalities through abortion has diminished because of advances in fetal surgery.
One or two patients
The cumulative effect of these medical advances has influenced the legal, social, and moral understandings impacting public opinion on the abortion issue. Doctors engaging in prenatal surgery anesthetize the fetus separately from the mother “because the doctors realize there are two patients.” Are doctors correct in considering two separate patients (the unborn child and the mother) rather than dealing with only one patient (the mother until birth of the unborn child)?
The prevailing view appears to treat the fetus as independent of its mother and thus as a viable human being with legal standing, even though this conclusion may create a potential conflict between their interests, one commentator recognized, “It is becoming increasingly accepted that neither personhood nor patienthood are static categories, and they develop along with social practices and technological advances.”
Such a conclusion infuriates abortion supporters. To them, abortion is sacred. They argue that fetal surgery “can never replace the option for abortion,” and further argue that fetal surgery “should not be considered an alternative to abortion care.” Their position is simple: the fetus should be treated as part of the mother until birth. This approach concludes that the only patient to be considered is the mother. She retains total autonomy (including the right to abort).
As may be typical within today’s woke culture and as part of the left’s arguments raised against fetal surgery’s ability to treat the fetus both as a patient and as a person is the canard of racism, i.e. people of color are either being abused or exploited by this procedure. Thus we read that fetal surgery eligibility criteria “exclude many families and disproportionately affect socioeconomically disadvantaged individuals … [thereby] more likely to burden people of color, which is why most studies of maternal-fetal surgery have lacked racial and ethnic diversity.”
Query as to the accuracy of the above statement and its reference to “most studies.” Most studies are “color blind.” Advocates of alleged racism lament that an overwhelming majority of the studies do not report race or ethnicity and thus ironically admit “socio-demographic reporting quality in maternal-fetal studies is poor and inhibits examination of potential health disparities.”
It is paradoxical that those who stand by the racist thesis or claim “systematic” or “institutional” racism overlook the indisputable fact that the first family to benefit from fetal surgery for vein of Galen malformation was not a white family of alleged privilege but rather the Colemans, a black family from Denham Springs, Louisiana.
Does this fact matter? Likely not! Unabashed abortion supporters like Planned Parenthood conveniently overlook the fact that their organization was founded by Margaret Sanger, who desired to decrease the number of blacks in America and “to exterminate the Negro population.” In fact, research done a few years ago by the Life Issues Institute found that “79 percent of abortion-offering Planned Parenthood facilities are within walking distance of black or Hispanic neighborhoods,” and “62 percent are near black neighborhoods.”
Importance of shared traditional values
There is a deeper moral question here. Thanks to the sexual revolution, today’s “woke” culture, and the ongoing dismantling of traditional family structures, “for the first time in recorded history, a predominantly Godless society” has been born. Instead of asking what God wants from us, we are now asking: what do we want for ourselves,” thereby shifting from a “theocentric, collectivist value” to an “anthropocentric, individual goal.” This narcissism has created a toxic brew of family instability and encouraged those on the left to continue advocating abortion when responding to the advances of fetal medicine. Without understanding the shared human dignity of all races, eugenic impulses can easily make their way into our culture’s policies and practices.
When it comes to the ability of fetal surgery to save the life of an infant and the ability to abort for a fetal anomaly, the shared values of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are premised on the Noahide Code. It declares that prenatal life cannot be disposed of at will; every unborn child has a soul and is beloved by God.
A biblical prohibition against killing a fetus is based on the injunction in Genesis 9:6 against shedding the blood of a person except in highly unusual circumstances. Even apart from biblical revelation, reason leads to the inescapable truth that it is always wrong to kill intentionally an innocent human being. Clearly, no one is more innocent than an unborn child.
These universal values — accessible via both reason and revelation — make the protection of all human life paramount, inside the womb or out, regardless of race. It also encourages us to incentivize advances in fetal surgery.
In the research article released after the novel in-utero intervention for vein of Galen malformation, the doctors performing the operation reported a “complete elimination of the expected aggressive postnatal natural history. This approach represents a paradigm shift in management of this challenging condition, from a strategy focused on reversing severe multi-organ pathophysiolgy after onset, to one focused instead on prevention via embolization in utero.”
Amid the agony and feelings of hopelessness of the parent after receiving a negative fetal diagnosis of their child, the advances in surgical interventions during pregnancy on unborn children provide real hope to parents. We now know that it is possible for some fetuses with previously life-limiting or life-threatening diagnosis “to not only survive to birth but also to experience increases in the quality of life and lifespan.”