Parents Refuse to “Allow” Their Child to Die, 20 Months Later She is Thriving and “Nonstop on the Go”

By Dave Andrusko
National Right to Life

NRL News Today often carries stories of parents who refused to be bullied into aborting a child with a grim prenatal diagnosis. They simply refuse and whether the child lives and thrives or dies peacefully after birth, the child has been wrapped in love, not abandoned.

Less often (because we hear about it so seldom) are the stories of parents who will not be cajoled into “allowing” their child to die.

Such is the case with Cortney and Peyton Noland and their baby (now a 20-month-old toddler) Willow as profiled in a wonderful story that appeared in the Columbus Dispatch.

Reporter JoAnne Viviano begins by telling us that a doctor flatly told the couple there was no hope for Willow, born at 22 weeks gestation and weighing just 1 pound, 5 ounces. But she survived, undergoing four surgeries over 236 days to address sepis, an intestinal disease and a lung disorder.

But “along the way,” as Viviano put it, “doctors continued to ask the Nolands if they wanted to withdraw care. If they wanted to simply let Willow die. They would not. And Willow survived. And thrived.”

But the miracle began at her birth–that she was treated at all–and then continued in the months of excruciatingly delicate care yet to come. 

The Noland's story of their refusal to be bullied by doctors continues