I’ve heard enough stories about doctors advising women to abort, that I believe many of them - they do ring true.
And my MIL, a nurse in the early 60s and later a physician, told me that they did use to let severely deformed and handicapped babies die then, give them a little sedative to keep them comfortable.
But cleft palate is so routinely fixed, and while there is an association with neurological defects, the neonatologist can do a neurological exam, there are brain scans, that I cannot believe any doctor in the country would say of a full term, otherwise healthy looking baby with a cleft palate, just throw him away and try again.
Why no complaints to the hospital board, the medical board, their clergyman, their congressman? Show me the documentation from the time, name names, and I’ll believe them.
Again I suggest to you as I did to Morgana that you actually ask for details of exactly what the doctor said....precisely and specifically. If on the other hand you are just reading these stories from varoius websites you have NO factual information to offer.
It is AGAINST the cannon of ethics for a doctor to advocate (ie advise a mother) for abortion. As to the comments from your mother-in-law please put them into perspective. Premies in the 60s had almost no hope. There was very little that could be done for them as medicine did not have some of the wonderful tools they have today. There were no good ways to set IVs. There were not incubators readily available. And staff was not trained for the intensive care needed by such babies.Some of them survived but not many. Today’s medicine provides a much better level of care for such babies.
One of the reasons why I called dumb bell on this story is precisely because there is no traceable information about hospital or doctor. Do not always make the assumption that these stories are correct. They are not. Parts os them may be but the whole of this story is bogus as the day is long
The parents were to never see the baby again, so who is to say what would have happened to the baby once there wasn't anybody who cared watching out for it. Evil things are able to happen when nobody thinks that such evil can take place. The hospital, if this is a true story, needs to be investigated.