The 3D scan of a disabled baby’s smile that convinced his mother not to abort him

 

The 3D scan of a disabled baby’s smile that convinced his mother not to abort him – and why she is grateful she was able to cuddle him with joy for a few precious hours
Katyia Rowe was told her baby would never be able to walk or talk
But real-time moving scan showed him blowing bubbles and waving arms
She decided to go through with the birth but he died nine hours later

By LARISA BROWN



A mother was unable to abort her severely disabled son despite doctors’ warnings after seeing her baby’s smile in a 3D scan picture.

Katyia Rowe was told her baby’s brain had not formed properly and that he would never walk or talk and would need 24-hour care.

But after seeing real-time moving scans of him smiling, blowing bubbles, kicking and waving his arms she made the heartbreaking decision to go through with the birth.

Tragically Lucian, as she named him, died nine hours after he was born.


Mother Katyia Rowe gave birth to her severely disabled son Lucian, despite doctors advising her to have an abortion, after seeing a 3D scan of him smiling, pictured

Despite the ordeal, Ms Rowe said she had no regrets going through with the birth as she was able to cuddle her baby son.

Katyia, 26, a training administrator, said: ‘We were devastated to be told our son’s brain abnormalities were so severe they were life limiting we should consider a termination.

‘Further scans were arranged to asses the extent of his disabilities but when I saw him smiling and playing inside me I knew I couldn’t end his life.

‘If he could smile and play and feel then despite his disabilities he deserved to enjoy whatever life he had left, no matter how short. Just because his life would be shorter or different, didn’t mean he didn’t deserve to experience it.

‘As long as he was pain free I vowed to let him enjoy his life both while inside me and outside, no matter how long that be.’

Miss Rowe, from Telford, Shropshire was thrilled to discover she was expecting a baby with partner of four years security officer Shane Johnson, 26, in March last year.

She added: ‘It was a shock but we were thrilled. Shane and I were so excited and looking forward to the birth. We had so many plans for the future and could not wait to meet our baby.


Katyia Rowe and her partner Shane decided to have the baby despite the complications, saying the child deserved to live

‘Our first scan at three months was wonderful. When we saw our baby on screen for the first time we fell in love straight away. As far as we were concerned everything was perfect.’

The couple decided to wed when their son was old enough to walk down the aisle with them.

Only the 20-week scan highlighted complications.

Following further tests, doctors told Miss Rowe and her partner of four years that their baby’s brain had no formed properly and he would be severely disabled.

They were then told the tragic news by experts at Birmingham Children’s Hospital that their child would never walk or talk and would need 24-hour care.

The couple were offered the chance to terminate the baby at 24-weeks.

But despite his poor prognosis, being able to watch her son in real time 3D scans during the screening tests, Miss Rowe said she was astonished to see him smiling, blowing bubbles, kicking and waving his arms.

She said: ‘Despite all the awful things I was being told, while he was inside me his quality of life looked to be wonderful and no different to any other baby’s, he was a joy to watch.

‘I was told he would never walk or talk yet the scans showed him constantly wriggling and moving.

‘As I watched I knew that while I was carrying him he still had a quality of life and it was my duty as a mother to protect that no matter how long he had left, he deserved to live.’

The couple pictured together in the room that was decorated for their baby boy Lucian. Tragically he died nine hours after his birth

Katyia was told if her son survived birth he would require 24 -hour care for the duration of his life expected to be anything up to five years.

She added: ‘It didn’t phase me at all. It was ironic because I had never considered myself particularly maternal but now I wanted nothing more than to care for my son and give him the best quality of life possible. I was more than happy to dedicate my life fully to his care.

‘I researched all his disabilities to prepare myself fully for his needs. I never had a moment of doubt. I only had to look at the scan pictures of him enjoying life in the womb to know I was doing the right thing by giving him a chance.

‘Not knowing how long he would live meant we were determined to enjoy him for as long as we could. We learned he loved the shower and would kick when I sprayed the water on my tummy.

‘As he grew bigger I could see his little feet and hands prodding through my bump when he wriggled. He may not have been born but he was already our son and I took each movement as a sign we had done the right thing.

‘I would talk to him and play him music because I wanted him to experience as much as possible.’

Because of her son’s disabilities he couldn’t swallow the amniotic fluid surrounding him meaning Kaytia had to undergo painful draining procedures for the last nine weeks of her pregnancy.

She said: ‘It was agony and I knew some people questioned if it was worth putting myself through all this for a severely disabled baby that may not live for long.

‘But I never ever thought like that. As a mother you will do anything for your child and for me I became a mother as soon as I fell pregnant, that job had started already.’

And for Katyia the rewards for her pregnancy were she says the most joyful and fulfilling nine hours of her life – the time she spent with her son.

‘It was without doubt the happiest moment of my life. Lucian could have died at anytime in my womb but he held on long enough for us to meet properly.’

- Mother Katyia Rowe


Katyia Rowe who went through the birth of her baby, pictured in a frame, and said she didn’t regret her decision


He was delivered after being induced when her waters went on October 23rd last year at the Royal Shrewsbury hospital and as expected was rushed straight to special baby care for his condition to be assessed.

She says: ‘I was prepared not to be taking our baby straight home like all the other new parents, but beyond that I didn’t know what the future held.’

But shortly after the birth midwives burst into the delivery suite and warned Katyia her son had just minutes to live.

She says: ‘I was shocked but we had already decided that after his birth we would let Lucian lead the way. I didn’t want him given any unnecessary treatment if ultimately it wouldn’t help him.

‘He had already given me the greatest honour of being his mummy for the last nine months. It was up to him now if he was ready to go.’

Katyia rushed to his side and finally the son she had nurtured for nine months was placed in her arms.

She said: ‘It was without doubt the happiest moment of my life. Lucian could have died at anytime in my womb but he held on long enough for us to meet properly.

‘My son looked utterly perfect.

‘The love and joy I felt the moment they put Lucian in my arms told me it had all been worth it.’

She added: ‘I thought I didn’t want to be a mother but Lucian taught me it is the most wonderful job in the world and I will always be grateful for that.’

Before his death he was held in his mother’s arms and he even met his grandparents.

Abortions are a terrible sin ( St. Paisios )

An instructive image: 

Christ, the Most-holy Theotokos and St. Stylianos blessing and protecting those who carry the blessed Cross of family life in Christ. 
A repentant woman wails of her sin of abortion. To the right, the New Herod of Abortion is depicted personified, with the physician helping her, and women bringing them their babes out of love of pleasure, hardness of heart, indifference, etc.
Note: Here Elder Paisios, with the divine illumination that he has, shares what a terrible sin and blight upon the entire world the sin of abortion is. He (and I) are not using this as a ruse to support any specific political candidate or party. And the Elder would never support those who would use violence to make a statement against abortion providers or patients. But may his words grant us all the contrition to realize how great a sin abortion is, and how we might all return to Christ in repentance, acknowledging the sacred image of God that is every human being, even from our mother's womb.

Elder Paisios: "Abortions are a terrible sin"


-Elder, one forty year-old woman, who has grown children, is three months pregnant. Her husband threatened that, if she does not have an abortion, he would leave her.


If she has an abortion, her other children would pay with sicknesses and accidents. Today, parents kill their children with abortions and do not have the blessing from God. In olden times, if a small child was born sick, they would baptize him, and he would die like an angel, and was more secured.


Parents had other older children, but they also had the blessing of God. Today, they kill their older children through abortions, as they strive to keep them alive while they are sick. Parents run to England, to America to heal them. And they continue to bear children even more sick, because they, if they sought to make a family, they could again give birth to sick children, at which point, what would happen? If they bore a few children, they would not run so much for the one who is sick. He would die and go forth as a little angel.


-Elder, I read once that every year, in total there are 50 million abortions and 200,000 women die from complications.


They kill the children because they say that, if the population would increase, there would not be enough to eat, in order for humanity to be preserved. There are so many uncultivated areas, so many woods, so that, with today's tools, for example, they could plant olive groves to give to the poor. It's not that they would cut the trees and there would be no Oxygen, because there would be trees to replace them.


In America, the wheat burns, and here in Greece, the fruit falls into the rubbish heap, etc. while in Africa, the people are dying from hunger. When people were dying from hunger in Abyssinia, because they had a great drought, I told a well-known ship-owner friend to help in these circumstances, to go to the rubbish dump and to load up a boat to take [the surplus foodstuffs] there for free. They didn't allow him to do this under any circumstance.


-How many thousands of embryos are killed every day!


Abortion is a terrible sin. It is murder, and of course a very great murder, to kill unbaptized children. Parents must understand that life begins from the instant of conception.


One night, God allowed me to see a terrible vision, to inform me regarding this matter! It was the evening of the Tuesday of Bright Week 1984. I had lit two candles in two tin cans, as I always do even while asleep, for all those who suffer spiritually or bodily. To those I include the living and the reposed. At midnight, as I was saying the [Jesus] Prayer, I saw a great field surrounded by a fence, studded by wheat that had just begun to grow. I stood outside the field, and I lit candles for the reposed and placed them on the wall of the fence.


To the left there was a dry place, full of rocks and cliffs, which was shaking continuously from a very strong cry from thousands of voices that break your heart and make you shudder. And even the toughest man, if he would hear it, would be unable to remain unmoved. As I was experiencing these heartbreaking cries, I asked within where these voiced were coming from, and what was happening with all that I saw, and I heard a voice tell me: “The field studded with wheat that has just sprouted, is the Cemetery with the souls of the dead that would be raised. At the place which was shaking from the heartbreaking cries are found the souls of children who were killed through abortions!”


Following this vision, I was unable to rest from the great pain that I experienced for the souls of the children. I could neither lie down to rest, though I had been busy that whole day.


-Elder, can something be done to remove the law regarding abortions?


Yes, but the Nation, the Church, etc. must be moved to inform the people about the consequences of declining birth rates. The Priest should explain to the world that the law regarding abortions is against the commandments of the Gospel. Doctors, from their own positions, should speak of the risks that follow the woman who has an abortion. See, the Europeans had royalty, and left this as an inheritance for their children. We had the fear of God, but we lost it and did not leave an inheritance for the next generation, and for this we legalize abortions, political marriage, [etc.]...When a man disobeys one commandment of the Gospel, he alone is responsible. When, however, something that clashes with the commandments of the Gospel becomes the law of the land, then the wrath of God falls upon the whole nation, that it may be chastened.

St. Paisios

An Orthodox View on Abortion ....

Again we pray for the children of God condemned to death by the unjust judgement of men: that the Lord our God would soften the hearts of those who seek their violent destruction, and rescue those who are being led forth to the slaughter, we diligently pray Thee, O Lord, hearken and have mercy!

Lord, have mercy. Lord, have mercy. Lord, have mercy.

Life is a precious gift of God. It is given to us so that we, while completing our earthly course, should acquire Divine Grace, should become members “of the household of God” and spiritual “fellow citizens with the Saints” (Ephesians 2:19). It is for this reason also that the Lord has established His Holy Church. In the life of the Church, of this Kingdom of God on earth, we are already destined for blessedness, and partake of it in proportion to our piety.

But the fall of our forefathers introduced sin deeply into our life. Sin has poisoned it, has become a property of this world: that is why the Apostle John can say that “the whole world lieth in wickedness” (1 John 5:19). This evil surrounds us and lures us with particular force when the opposition to it on the part of the society around us weakens.

At present, society more and more is losing the distinction between good and evil; under the influence of materialism, more and more it is forgetting about the existence of man’s immortal soul, and sees in him only flesh. Disbelief nullifies the moral law, and man arrives at the principle which Dostoevsky so clearly demonstrated in his negative heroes: If there is no God, then all is permitted. And, indeed, what will a man not permit himself once he leaves the Faith and sinks into moral indifference…!

The growth of pornography, the open defense of unnatural sins, narcotics employed by the youth from an early age – all these things tend to convince men that there are no moral limits for man in his quest for fleshly pleasures.

The communion of men and women established in marriage for the sake of the multiplication of the human race and the mutual salvation of husband and wife, is frequently reduced to the satisfaction of lust, a lust which often exceeds that of even the brute beasts. According to the Apostle Paul, many men who are now “past feeling” “have given themselves over unto lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness” (Ephesians 4;19). The Apostle explains that these men act that way “in the vanity of their mind, having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart” (Ephesians 4:17-18).

A new manifestation of this “ignorance and blindness of heart” is the enacting in New York State of a law according to which freedom is given to arrest pregnancy by means of an operation. Thousands of women have already shown their desire to avail themselves of this law and to have such operations.

Termination of pregnancy by destroying the fetus growing in a woman’s womb is not a new crime, but one which was well known in antiquity. It is condemned as murder in one of the earliest written Christian documents, the Didache or Teaching of the Twelve Apostles. It is also condemned in the Epistle of the Apostle Barnabas, which was a very authoritative work until its’ text was distorted by heretics. In the second century, Clement of Alexandria wrote on the subject.

The very earliest rules of the Orthodox Church, beginning with the LXIII Canon of the Council of Elivira, A.D. 306, and the XXII Canon of the Council of Ancyra, 314 A. D. (Concerning women who commit fornication, and destroy that which they have conceived, or who are employed in making drugs for abortion, a former decree excluded them until the hour of death, and to this some have assented. Nevertheless, being desirous to use somewhat greater lenity, we have ordained that they fulfil ten years [of penance], according to the prescribed degrees.), deprive the woman who has destroyed a fetus of Holy Communion for a period of ten years. The same provision is made in the XCI Canon of the Sixth Ecumenical Council and the II and VIII Canons of St. Basil the Great. In his VIII Canon St. Basil gives a succinct and precise definition of abortion: “Those who give potions for the destruction of the child conceived in the womb are murderers, as are those who take the poisons which kill the child.” The only difference between our age and former times is that now this murder is performed not by means of poison but by means of an operation, and that as a result of improved medical techniques, an abortion is now less dangerous to the mother’s life.

Defenders of the new law say that abortion cannot be considered as murder, inasmuch as it is not a child that is destroyed, but a fetus which has not yet been born, and which does not have a soul, and which is not a person. This is the principal argument by which those who seek moral justification for the New York law attempt to salve their consciences.

But that is not how the Orthodox Church looks at the matter.

St. Basil the Great in his II Canon writes, “We do not have a precise distinction between the fetus which has been formed and that which has not yet been formed.” This means that the fruit which is conceived in the mother’s womb passes, as is well known, through several stages of development before it appears on God’s earth with the soul that has been given it by a creative act of the Most High. But from the very beginning of the fetus’s growth life has already been conceived, and dwells in it as a great divine gift. Willfully to extinguish that life is to set oneself against the will of the Creator.

If, in the words of our Savior, even the hairs of our heads are numbered (Matthew 10;30; Luke 12:7), so much the more is it impossible for a fetus to be conceived and grow in the mother’s womb without the will of God. And we know that sometimes this will has brought children into the world when, according to the laws of nature, because of the parents’ age, it was by then impossible to expect the birth of children. Thus we have the birth of Isaac from Sarah, when, according to physical laws, such a thing was already impossible. Upon hearing that the Lord had announced the future birth of her son, she “laughed within herself, saying, After I am waxed old shall I have pleasure, my lord (=husband) being old also?” (Genesis 28:12). Thus also was the birth of the Holy Virgin Mary and of the Holy Prophet and Forerunner of the Lord, John the Baptist, both from extremely aged parents.

Arresting pregnancy by destroying the fetus is an act usually committed for particular reasons which the unhappy mother wold lie to believe re primary. One such reason might be the shame and fear of having her fornication discovered. Not long ago we read in the newspapers of an adolescent girl who became pregnant and wished to have an abortion. Because of her youth, the hospital required her parents consent, which, however, she was unwilling to request, not to reveal her sin to them. To attain her goal – abortion- she started a lawsuit under another name through a lawyer. Another frequent reason for abortion is fear of the material difficulties connected with the rearing of children. These and reasons of a similar nature may, depending on the circumstances, be sometimes more, sometimes less serious, but they do not change the essence of the matter, and can never serve as the justification of murder.

Indeed there are times when another person’s life can cause us great daily hardship and can be a burden to us. But does that mean that in such cases we can permit murder in order to free ourselves from responsibility for our actions, or from cares which are difficult for us? Cold our conscience, for example, justify the murder of, say, an extremely sick relative we are taking care of, so as to make our won life easier? We shall make no mistake if we say that every believing Orthodox Christian would answer this question in the negative, and would reject the very thought of such an act with indignation. Every Orthodox Christian would be clearly aware that whatever the circumstances it would be an immoral act, a violation of the sixth commandment. No believer would commit such a crime even if it were sanctioned by the civil law.

One must give their due to the various Roman Catholic hospitals, doctors, and nurses who, understanding the issues involved, have simply refused to perform abortions, primarily for religious reasons. One may hope that their Orthodox colleagues will show the same understanding – and the same firmness.

Let mothers who have conceived a new human life in themselves remember that to arrest it by destroying the fetus is to commit exactly the same murder for the sake of life’s outward conditions as the murder of a relative, even though the case is not so obvious, since the fetus is hidden from view and doctors do not show the women operated upon the terrible sight of the child which has been removed from their wombs.

Let women never forget that when they discover themselves to be pregnant, this means that a new human life has already begun in them. Not without reason do certain peoples of the East calculate a human being’s age not from the day of his birth, but from nine months before. And in New York State in the case of an abortion the hospital informs the mother of the death of her unborn child. Now they are trying to make this notification more “attractive” by informing the mother of a child of less than six weeks not of its death but of the “cessation of pregnancy”. With pregnancies of over six weeks, however, the mother is informed as before of the death of the fetus. But whatever the law may call it, the fact remains that we are dealing with an inflicted death, and the inducing of such a death is called murder.

Only in rare cases does the conscience of a mother who has agreed to abortion remain completely at rest, when she has been deceived by false rationalizations.

What spiritual director has not had occasion to note this sin of abortion as an act that weighs on the conscience of the woman who has committed it even into deep old age? Women often remember it with bitter tears on their very death-bed. Sometimes they realize too late that for a woman it is more natural to sacrifice her own life in order to preserve that of her child than to destroy that life out of cowardice, or for the sake of personal well-being.

The Church, on the contrary, expects that a pregnant mother will care for the child growing in her womb. In the case of a miscarriage the Church has a special prayer for the woman who has suffered it. That prayer refers to her as “being in sin” for having committed “an unintentional of involuntary murder”. The idea is that she may have not been careful enough in her pregnancy, and may have caused the miscarriage and death of her baby through negligence. An expectant mother must not only observe hygienic rules for preserving her baby’s life and for preparing for a successful delivery. She must also remember that the expected child is bound to her organism in the very closest fashion and that, therefore, for the formation of its future personality, her own spiritual mood when she is carrying it in her womb is not a matter of indifference. It is a time when she must be particularly diligent in prayer and must shield herself from all sinful impressions.

Her care not only for the physical welfare of the expected child but also for its spiritual condition will be rewarded in the future a hundredfold.

Protopresbyter George Grabbe

http://agapienxristou.blogspot.ca/2013/09/an-orthodox-view-on-abortion.html