Lifesaving treatment for babies born at 22 weeks doesn’t mean abortion law should change
October 25, 2019
Dominic Wilkinson, Consultant Neonatologist and Professor of Ethics, University of Oxford
When new guidance relating to the outcome and medical care of babies born extremely prematurely was recently released, it led some to call for UK abortion law to be revised.
This was because one of the new recommendations from the British Association of Perinatal Medicine is that it is sometimes appropriate to provide resuscitation and active medical treatment for babies born at 22 weeks gestation (four and a half months before their due date). This is a week earlier than was recommended in the last version of the framework, published in 2008.