Washington Times letter links abortion & brain damaged babies:

[Washington Times Letter - August 24, 2004]

_______________________________________________________________________
Reducing cerebral palsy incidence
    In her Thursday letter, "Just consequences for malpractice,"
Barbara Rubin said in referring to a prior article that there is
no "medical information ... to tell readers why a particular suit
won by [Sen. John] Edwards might not have been a case of actual
malpractice."

    As a lawyer, Mr. Edwards won large court awards involving
infants with the brain injury of cerebral palsy.

    How can the incidence of cerebral palsy be reduced? A hint
comes from Australia. In the spring of 2004, Australian Justice
Michael Grove found Dr. Alan Kaye, an obstetrician, not guilty of
causing cerebral palsy in Kristy Bruce, who had been born in 1989.

     Justice Grove wrote, "As a matter of hindsight, considerable
suspicion must be directed to the very recent termination which
[mother Sharon] Chevelle underwent just prior to becoming pregnant
with the plaintiff."

    In Kristy's case, her mother's uterus ruptured as labor began,
probably because it had been perforated during an abortion a year
earlier, about which she had not told her obstetrician.

    Kristy's brain was starved of oxygen, and when she was born by
emergency Caesarean section, she was a victim of cerebral palsy
with an APGAR score (a measure of a newborn's health) of zero.

    Kristy Bruce was born overdue, but a disproportionate number of
newborns with cerebral palsy are born prematurely. The overwhelming
evidence that prior induced abortions boost preterm birth risk was
published in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons in May
2003. [ www.jpands.org/vol8no2/rooney.pdf ]
The Texas Department of Health started warning women in December
2003 that prior abortions elevate preterm birth risk and that
preterm births are a risk factor for cerebral palsy.
[ www.tdh.state.tx.us/wrtk/after-abortion.htm ]

    BRENT ROONEY
    Research director
    Reduce Preterm Risk Coalition
    Vancouver, British Columbia
    [ [email protected] ]