There was a horrible story out of England last week about a mother who went into labor at 21 weeks and 5 days. She delivered a very tiny living baby boy – and the doctors refused to provide him treatment because he had not made it to 22 weeks. Adding to her grief, British standards say not to even provide a birth certificate for babies of less than 22 weeks development.
She is now challenging the standards created by the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, standards which resulted in her son not receiving any treatment. She is not the first to call their standards into question.
Al Mohler discussed the Nuffield Council in 2006, along with the terrible development that the Church of England was actually endorsing some of the Council’s standards for withholding care from disabled babies. I hope this mom’s efforts attract both attention and change.
But in the several stories I read about this mom and her son, there was never any mention of the father. Her five-year-old daughter is mentioned several times, and pictured at least once. The father never appears.
That boy needed his dad. Even with care he might have only lived a short time, or lived with significant disabilities. The man who fathered him should have been there to be part of it.
And this might be the most shocking fact in the midst of this terrible situation – not one news account even seemed to notice dad was missing.
The Works of God 
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