Doctor: New law keeps terminally ill babies alive against parents' wishes

COLUMBIA, Mo. - Four terminally ill newborns were kept on life support at a state-run hospital against their parents' wishes out of fears that doctors could be charged with murder under Missouri's new law banning a type of late-term abortion, the babies' attending physician said.

"We are in legal straitjackets with our hands tied behind our backs," said Dr. John Pardalos, a specialist in neonatal intensive care at University Hospital and Clinics in Columbia.

All four infants, born since the passage of the 1999 law, eventually died while on ventilators to assist their breathing, Pardalos said. Some died in just a few days, but one lived 2 1/2 weeks after the parents asked to withdraw life-sustaining treatment.

Pardalos said the events turned parents' grief into "hatred of the political system."

The new law, meant to ban what opponents call "partial-birth" abortion, makes doctors guilty of "infanticide" if they purposely cause a living infant's death "by an overt act performed when the infant is partially born or born." The crime is equivalent to second-degree murder.

Part of the law's definition of a "living infant" is a child "who has not attained the age of 30 days post-birth."

The abortion foe who wrote the law said the hospital lawyers were wrong to advise the doctors for the four terminally ill newborns that the law may apply to them.

"If that's their legal advice, they're not lawyers," said Louis DeFeo, lobbyist for the Missouri Catholic Conference. He said the law specifically excuses doctors practicing "usual and customary standards of medical practice."

"There is a difference between acting with the intent to cause death and knowing that to withdraw a treatment, death could be a consequence," DeFeo said. "If you are simply making a medical judgment, that's not a crime. It's not a crime for a baby or for a 90-year old."

As in other states where "partial-birth" bans have been overturned, Missouri's law is being challenged in federal court on the grounds that it also limits otherwise legal kinds of abortions. The law is on hold for now while the lawsuit is pending.

But the "waiting period" in the law of 30 days after birth has so far not been challenged. So Marvin E. "Bunkie" Wright, the University of Missouri's general counsel, said he is telling school doctors not to withdraw life support from infants younger than 30 days, despite parents' demands.

"That's the way it is until they receive a court order or court opinion," Wright said.

A check of other Missouri hospitals with large numbers of births found no restriction similar to those at the university hospital, which delivered 1,244 babies last year.

Dr. Robert M. Nelson, chairman of the Bioethics Committee of the 55,000-member American Academy of Pediatrics, reviewed the Missouri law and said he had heard of no similar restrictions anywhere.

"I can't imagine the Legislature intended this bill to bar withdrawing support from an infant who is going to die," said Nelson, a neonatologist at Children's Hospital of Wisconsin. "If it was intended, it's going against decisions parents and physicians make every day around the country."

The law was passed last year after Missouri's Legislature overrode the veto of Gov. Mel Carnahan, who supports abortion rights and has argued that it puts doctors at risk of prosecution.

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