A pediatric neurosurgeon reflects on his intense job, and the post-Roe landscape , by Dave Davies, NPR
I will tell you a story about my niece and my niece has allowed me to talk about this. My niece … called me one day after being pregnant for a few weeks to say, ‘I’m with the OB, we’ve just done our 13-week ultrasound and they say that there’s a problem with the brain and they say that I need to come see you, Uncle Jay.’ And we get her into the fetal clinic, we do the ultrasound. I’m right there with them the whole time — my niece, who I’ve known since she was a baby, my children walked in her wedding — and there’s this encephalocele. It’s giant. And the entire brain is on the outside of the skull and it’s kind of inverted. So now it’s also at the mercy of amniotic fluid, which is that caustic fluid that gets more caustic over time, which is why fetal surgery for spina bifida makes a difference.
So in that scenario, the choices are to have a child that is ultimately born, that’s in constant pain, that has no ability to communicate or see or interact with the world around them. They’re in a wheelchair, the type of wheelchair that holds your neck still. They have G-tube feedings and over time they never grow up from being a baby. They become adults who have that degree of care that’s needed. In situations like this before, with other patients, we’ve talked about termination and that’s what we talked about with my niece. …