Westminster MPs have been criticised after new medical guidance saying premature babies can be resuscitated from 22 weeks was issued in the same week as radical new abortion laws allowing abortion up to 28 weeks came into force in Northern Ireland.
The laws in the province changed at midnight on Monday, leading to the decriminalisation of abortion and removing a wide range of protections for women and the unborn, including measures that prevented coerced abortions or terminations on the basis of gender and disability.
On Wednesday, the British Association of Perinatal Medicine (BAPM) released revised guidelines on the care of extremely premature babies in light of improving survival rates brought about by medical advances.
The BAPM said that when its last guidance was published in 2008, only two out of 10 babies born at 23 weeks - more than four months before their due date - were able to survive with intensive care.
Since then, advances in neonatal and obstetric care have improved survival rates for the most premature babies so that today, four out of 10 babies born at 23 weeks and receiving treatment in neonatal units are expected to survive. This rises to eight out of 10 babies born at 26 weeks.
For babies born at 22 weeks, the BAPM said that overall outcomes were "improving" but that "the prognosis remains guarded for extremely premature babies", with seven out of 10 born at 22 weeks dying despite intensive medical treatment.
Nonetheless, the guidelines said that resuscitation could be considered by doctors for babies born alive at 22 weeks onwards - two weeks earlier than the upper time limit for abortions in England, Wales and Scotland.
The Society for the Protection of the Unborn Children (SPUC) said that the guidelines exposed a "glaring contradiction" between medical practice around premature births and the decriminalisation of abortion in Northern Ireland.
SPUC Deputy Chief Executive, John Deighan said: "The effort now to be made to save the lives of tiny premature babies, born before the standard abortion time limit in Britain, exposes a shocking contradiction at the heart of our health service.
"It is a cruel irony that in the same week that politicians in Westminster imposed an abortion free-for-all in Northern Ireland, medical bodies have issued new guidelines highlighting the growing scientific evidence affirming the humanity of the unborn."
