50 Babies A Year Are Alive After Abortion

This makes my heart weep. I read this yesterday and I am still having a very hard time wrapping my mind around this.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1892696,00.html

A GOVERNMENT agency is launching an inquiry into doctors reports that up to 50 babies a year are born alive after botched National Health Service abortions. The investigation, by the Confidential Enquiry into Maternal and Child Health (CEMACH), comes amid growing unease among clinicians over a legal ambiguity that could see them being charged with infanticide.

The Royal College of Obstetricians andgynecologists, which regulates methods of abortion, has also mounted its own investigation. Its guidelines say that babies aborted after more than 21 weeks and six days of gestation should have their hearts stopped by an injection of potassium chloride before being delivered. In practice, few doctors are willing or able to perform the delicate procedure.

For the abortion of younger foetuses, labour is induced by drugs in the expectation that the infant will not survive the birth process. Guidelines say that doctors should ensure that the drugs they use prevent such babies being alive at birth.

In practice, according to Stuart Campbell, former professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at St Georges hospital, London, a number do survive. Yhey can be born breathing and crying at 19 weeks gestation, he said. I am not anti-abortion, but as far as I am concerned this is sub-standard medicine.

Also, in the same article:

Paul Clarke, a neonatal intensive care specialist in Norwich, has treated a boy born at 24 weeks after three failed abortion attempts. The mother decided to keep the child, who is now two years old but is suffering what doctors call significant ongoing medical problems.
The survival of this child was not recorded in any official statistics, Clarke said. There is nothing at the moment to force abortion practitioners to account for their failures.

Words can not describe how I feel about this. This is just sick. It is an abomination.