UK Baby Born Healthy After Doctors Misdiagnose Child, Recommend Abortion

LONDON — A mother in the United Kingdom is upset at her local hospital in realizing that she could have aborted her baby, being told that she had a rare disease, when the child was actually born completely healthy.

Kamelia Walters, 25, told The Sun that when she went to St. George’s Hospital in Tooting last January, she was advised that the scan showed that her baby’s bones were fractured and that she “probably” had Osteogenesis Imperfecta Type III, also known as “brittle bone disease.”

According to the Osteogenesis Imperfecta Foundation, type III is the most severe form of the condition, as “infants generally have mildly shortened and bowed limbs, small chests, and a soft calvarium (head)” and “[t]here may be multiple long-bone fractures at birth, including many rib fractures.”

Walters said that the diagnosis frightened her and it was recommended that she obtain an abortion.

“I was so scared when I first got told,” she told the outlet. “They started telling me I could get an abortion.”

“I was just petrified when I came home that day,” Walters recalled. “I was just crying to my mum, and she said she didn’t believe it because nobody in my family has anything like that.”

She said that doctors outlined that she could undergo testing to obtain a more sure diagnosis, but that the test also posed a risk of miscarriage. Walters decided to decline and moved forward with her pregnancy.

When the baby was born, a girl that she named Kyla-Shae, the child was found to be completely healthy.

“I said, ‘She doesn’t look like there’s anything wrong with her,’ and I just started crying,” Walters remembered. “I knew already somehow that there was nothing wrong with her, and when she was born, it just confirmed it.”

Klya-Shae, who is now 18 months old, remains in good health, and her mother is disturbed in realizing that she could have aborted her daughter after being told that the child had a serious disease.

A representative for St. George’s Hospital told The Sun that while they cannot comment on specific cases, the hospital “would welcome the opportunity to meet with [Walters] on an individual basis to discuss the concerns she has raised.”

As previously reported, other mothers have expressed outrage after being counseled to abort a child that turned out to have no medical condition whatsoever.

Melanie and Damien Sheenan of Ireland were told that their son had brain and spine abnormalities, and that his condition left him “incompatible with life.”

“They felt that the child wouldn’t survive birth and if it did, it would be so profoundly disabled that, their words were, ‘It would have no quality of life,’” Melanie recalled. “I was put under immense pressure to go ahead with the abortion.”

The couple refused the doctors’ advice, and their son, named Joshua, was born completely healthy.

“The doctors’ diagnosis was completely inaccurate,” Melanie said. “… And if we would have went with the doctors’ diagnosis, he wouldn’t be here today.”

In 2013, UK mother Sarah Hagan sued City Hospital Sunderland after doctors told her that her son was brain dead, missing an eye, and had no chance of survival. They urged her to either take the abortion drug Mifepristone to end the child’s life, or go to the infirmary where doctors would stop his heart and then extract him from her body.

After pondering the matter overnight, Hagan followed through with her doctor’s advice and took the recommended abortion pills. However, as time passed, Hagan realized that her child was miraculously still alive. She returned to the hospital where doctors were likewise surprised that the baby had indeed survived the abortion.

Hagan was then told that she must deliver her son right away. He was born weighing in at 1 pound, 7 ounces, and contrary to assertions, the baby was not brain dead, and had two bright blue eyes.

The baby boy, who Hagan named Aaron, did, however, suffer from ailments stemming from premature birth due to the attempted abortion.