It was reported today (24/11/11) that a woman in Melbourne Royal Hospital was scheduled to have a late term abortion of a 32 week unborn baby boy, one of twins. The reason for the abortion according to the report, was because the baby had a congenital heart defect and would require “a lifetime of operations”. Inadvertently the “perfect” baby was aborted, and the surviving “imperfect” baby was then delivered by “an emergency caesarean section to end the life of the sick child.”

The whole scenario is sad and sickening on so many levels. Firstly, why not birth the twins and allow the “imperfect” twin to be adopted by a couple who can’t have children of their own? There are many childless couples who are prepared to have any child no matter how “imperfect” in the eyes of the world, and no matter how many operations the child would need over his lifetime.

Secondly, what possible joy would the “perfect” baby, should he have survived, have had in knowing that his twin brother was killed in the womb just because his heart wasn’t perfectly formed?

All media reports state that the clinician and the person who performed the sonogram, as well as the parents, are “inconsolable”. Tragically they are not inconsolable because of the loss of the life of the baby but because the life lost in the first instance, was that of the wrong ie healthy twin! It seems the death of the “imperfect” twin would have been accepted as necessary and acceptable! How sad! How sickening!

The value of human life, born or unborn, does not hinge on our health – nor our parentage, nor our circumstance. The value of human life is intrinsic merely because we are human.