Life Legal is representing a mother whose infant daughter Olivia* suffered a serious brain injury last week and is on a ventilator at a children’s hospital.
On Tuesday, just one week after Baby Olivia was admitted, the hospital’s “ethics” committee called an impromptu meeting to urge her mother to give up on Olivia and remove the vent.
Olivia’s mother said she wants to give her baby more time. The ethics committee said they believe Baby Olivia will be permanently disabled and that she would not want to live with a disability. They questioned Olivia’s mother about her Christian faith and her reasons for wanting Olivia to continue living.
At the meeting, Olivia’s mother learned, to her horror, that the hospital had not fed her baby since she was admitted. She insisted that the hospital start feeding Olivia, which it eventually did.
This morning Olivia’s mother texted me saying, “She is doing much better…she opened both eyes this morning. The doctor said she is amazed at how much I love my daughter.”
Please pray for Baby Olivia and her mother. It is daunting to have to fight for your baby against an entire hospital system and, at the same time, try to figure out what to do to give your baby the best possible chance for recovery. Please pray also for Life Legal attorneys who are working to ensure that the baby continues to receive medical care and treatment.
*Name changed for privacy
I cannot believe a hospital would not feed a child for a week. How can that be? What horror. I imagine there must have been at least 1 nurse that gave the child nourishment that she was still alive.