LONDON - A British baby has now become a cause célèbre for his mother and pro-life advocates in the United Kingdom for miraculously defying twin death sentences from abortion and genetics.
Finley Crampton's birth has overwhelmed his mother, Jodie Percival, who is happy that in the end her baby beat the enormous odds against him to be born a healthy boy.
Percival, 25, had decided to abort baby Finley at 8 weeks, because she carries a gene which triggers multicystic dysplastic kidney (MCDK) - a condition where cysts grow on the kidneys of an unborn baby. The condition is fatal when it affects both kidneys; however patients who have MCDK in one kidney can live normal lives, provided the other is healthy.
Percival's first child, Thane, had died from MCDK just 20 minutes after birth, and her second son, 20-month old Lewis also suffers from the disorder and now has one kidney. Percival and her fiancé Billy Crampton, 35, had been using the contraceptive pill to frustrate pregnancy when they discovered Percival was pregnant again. They opted to abort the baby.
"Deciding to terminate at eight weeks was just utterly horrible, but I couldn't cope with the anguish of losing another baby," Percival, 25, told the UK Daily Mail.
Miraculously, baby Finley survived the abortion attempt. Percival was unaware that her child had survived the abortion until she felt him move in her womb months later. A doctor's scan then confirmed Percival was 19 weeks pregnant.
"I couldn't believe it," said Percival. "This was the baby I thought I'd terminated. At first I was angry that this was happening to us, that the procedure had failed."
Percival first berated the hospital for the failed abortion, which the hospital insisted was a rare anomaly in the business of killing unborn babies.
Although the child in her womb was still under the 24-week limit abortion limit, Percival and Crampton decided to keep the baby, as he had survived the abortion and doctors said he would likely be born healthy with only minor damage from MCDK.
In November 2007, Finley was born three weeks premature, at 6lb 3oz, with just minor kidney scarring; doctors expect he will live a normal healthy life.
"I knew if that operation hadn't failed he wouldn't have been there," Percival told the Mail. "I just couldn't believe that this child had got through it all and looked so perfect."
"I still struggle to believe just what he has fought through. Now he's here I wouldn't change it for the world."
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