Nebraska’s New Abortion Law Forced Mother to Give Birth at 22 Weeks and Watch Baby Die
The law, which took effect last October, is based on the disputed argument that a baby’s nerves are developed enough to feel pain at the 20 week stage.
In a letter urging Governor Jan Brewer to veto the bill which which bans abortions after 20 weeks Danielle Deaver,34, of Grand Island, described the pain of waiting to give birth to a baby she knew would die.
‘While we waited, we tried to pray, but we didn’t know what to pray for. So we spent our days and nights telling our daughter how much we loved her, how sorry we were, and how we wished we could do something different.
‘There are no words for how awful the 10 days were from the moment my water broke to the day my daughter died. There are no words for the heart break that cut deeper every time she moved inside of me for those 10 days,’ she wrote.
Ruth Nash, 34, was pregnant with twins when her waters broke 18 weeks early.
She was told her babies had a zero chance of survival and soon after lost her daughter Matilda.
However, the mother from the Isle of Wight managed to delay giving birth to her son Stanley for three weeks by lying with her feet elevated in a hospital bed.
Her precious son was born at just over 24weeks weighing a tiny 1lb - less than a bag of sugar.
Surgeons performed several operations on Stanley including fixing a hole in his heart.
Six months later, Stanley is healthy and showing no signs of his traumatic birth.
The standard of viability, based on the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1973 landmark decision in Roe v. Wade, is generally considered to be between 22 and 24 weeks.
‘The outcome of my pregnancy, that choice was made by God. I feel like how to handle the end of my pregnancy, that choice should have been mine, and it wasn’t because of a law,’ Deaver told The Register.
