Tiny monument to life
From CBS News:
A little girl who's believed to be the smallest surviving baby in the world has been sent home from the hospital.
Rumaisa Rahman was born in September weighing only 8.6 ounces. That's about the size of a cellphone.
She was discharged on Tuesday from Loyola University Medical Center in the Chicago suburb of Maywood. She currently weighs 5.5 pounds and is more than 16 inches long.
A Loyola doctor says Rumaisa's prognosis is very good and she's expected to develop normally.
Her fraternal twin sister, Hiba, was discharged on January 9. Hiba was only one pound, four ounces at birth but now weighs in at 8.5 pounds.
The babies' 23-year-old mother developed pre-eclampsia, a disorder characterized by high blood pressure, during pregnancy. The condition endangered Rumaisa and her mother, prompting a C-section at 26 weeks. Normal gestation is 40 weeks.
Twenty six weeks -- that's about six and a half months. I wonder how the pro-death crowd can rationalize her being defined a human-being now, while those still in the womb are not? Is humanity defined by location?
Posted by Jack Lewis at February 9, 2005 09:37 AM