By Dave Andrusko
Sarah Hagan, 38, is suing City Hospitals Sunderland, claiming doctors at Sunderland Royal Hospital “wrongly advised her to abort her ‘brain dead’ baby.” In fact, after unsuccessfully attempting to abort Aaron, “he was born weighing just 1lb 7oz with both eyes and now, at 15-months-old, he is developing as any other boy his age would,” according to the British newspaper, the Daily Mail.
According to reporter Emma Innes, on May 4, 2012, Hagan went in for her 24-week scan. Medics took Ms. Hagan and her 66-year-old mother Val into a consulting room where “she was told her baby’s brain had not formed.”
“I just broke down in tears,’ she told Innes. ‘My mum asked if the baby would survive, and we were told there was no hope of survival.”
She was told “I could take tablets or be sent through to Newcastle’s Royal Victoria Infirmary where they could perform a foetal heart stop.” After a night with little sleep she decided to take the tablets. [The story does not specify what they were.]
“I took them believing that a termination was the only way,” Hagan said. “They even told me they would have to carry out a post mortem examination to find out what had gone wrong.”
But just a few days later she was back because the tablets did not appear to be working.
“I was seen by another medic who asked if I’d spoken to a neo-natal doctor,” she told Innes. “I said ‘no’ and he seemed flabbergasted. So they sent for one who then examined me and said he was going to deliver my baby”!
Incredibly Aaron Hagan Perry was born the next day. “He was immediately put on a ventilator and also suffered an almost fatal infection and heart condition,” Innes reports.
“Despite what they said, he was born breathing and kicking,” Hagan said. ‘When I look at him now, I can’t believe what almost happened because someone made a presumption from a scan.”
Hagan added, “I still find it hard to believe they could get it so wrong, that it was just presumed my baby would not survive. When I look at him now and think what could have happened, it brings me to tears.”
Aaron did have a succession of health problems, because he was born so young, including chronic lung issues and a cyst on the brain.
Ms. Hagan said, “If I had been allowed to go longer into the pregnancy, I am sure he wouldn’t have had any of these problems.”
But “despite being told he was brain dead, Aaron’s brain is on par with any other baby of his age,” Hagan told Innes.
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