Tuesday, April 18, 2017

Mother Refused When Told to Abort her Son: ‘I’m Just Grateful We’ve Gotten to Know Him’


By Nancy Flanders
Live Action News


After having been advised to abort her first two children due to both social and medical reasons (which she refused), Heather Hobbs was heartbroken to learn that doctors wanted to abort her third child as well. At around 24 weeks gestation, Hobbs was experiencing a nagging feeling that something wasn’t right with her preborn son. 


Concerned, she spoke with her doctor about the sinking feeling she had, but her doctor brushed it off. Still not satisfied, Hobbs asked for an ultrasound just to ease her mind. Thankfully, her doctor agreed, but what they discovered in the ultrasound would send Hobbs and her baby boy down a long road of medical mysteries.
“They found a dark hole, a black hole in his stomach,” explained Hobbs who lives in Oregon. “They sent me to the maternal fetal medicine specialists with a better, more clear ultrasound. They found a big black hole with stuff inside of it. They didn’t know what it was either.”
The ultrasound images were sent to Oregon Health and Science University, where it took five days for doctors to research what might be going on with the baby’s stomach. The diagnosis was meconium pseudocyst. Basically, the baby’s intestines had burst inside of his body and a shell had formed around that area. It was filling with stool and becoming infected.

Hobbs was told there was a high risk of infection for both her and her baby if the pocket ruptured, and that he likely wasn’t going to survive. If she didn’t abort, they said, she could die too.

“They gave a less than one percent chance that he would live if that happened,” she explained. “They strongly suggested aborting. I told them I couldn’t do it. I told them I was willing to take on the risk if they would be willing to just keep him alive.”
The doctors agreed but were sure to provide consent papers for Hobbs to sign indicating that she was going against their advice. This freed them of any liability should she die.

Gideon right after birth

Doctors wanted Gideon to grow more. At this point, he was still only at 26 weeks gestation and they wanted to get him to 32 weeks before they induced labor and tried to save his life with emergency surgery. 

Unfortunately, things didn’t go as planned and Hobbs went into preterm labor at 28 weeks. Medications failed to stop the labor and she was airlifted to Portland where she gave birth to baby Gideon.


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