The parents of a baby boy born with a cleft lip tell of the harrowing ordeal they endured when doctors tried to coerce them into leaving their baby to die.

Kristi Burton Brown, attorney and pro-life activist, tells the story of Quentin and Jodi Aidan whose son Aidan was born on October 7, 1997 at a hospital in Modesto, California. Weighing in at eight pounds, 14 ounces, they knew something was wrong when doctors whisked the baby out of his parents’ sight seconds after he was born. The bewildered couple was told their son was born with a bilateral cleft lip, one of the most common major birth defects in which an opening in the lip and/or roof of the mouth is caused by incomplete development during early fetal formation. The condition occurs in about one or two out of every 1,000 births and is considered to be highly treatable. Most children born with this condition can have surgery to repair the defect within the first 12-18 months of life.

But this isn’t what the Petersons were told. The day after Aidan was taken into the NICU (neonatal intensive care unit) the hospital pediatrician called Quentin into the nursery and advised him to sign Aidan over to the hospital. He was told that children born with this condition tended to have neurological problems and would require so many surgeries it would bankrupt the family.

“The “treatment plan” the doctor told us was that they’d give our son pain medicine, and let him die (of starvation and dehydration),” the parents told Brown.

When Jodi began to cry and refused to comply with the recommendation, the doctor turned to Quentin and said, “Get her out of here, she’s being irrational.”

Once Jodi was removed, he tried to convince Quentin to sign over the baby but he also refused.

“We didn’t have a plan, and didn’t know where to find help, but we could not fathom abandoning our son to a certain death alone,” they said. “It had to be the grace of God, to give us courage to choose life when the hospital authority was telling us otherwise. It was for both of us, the absolute scariest time in our lives.”

But anything was better than abandoning their baby. “We could not imagine anything more heartbreaking than to have a helpless child left alone for the brief entirety of his life. Even if he had one day to live, he would spend that day being loved by us.”

Not long after their brave decision was made, God’s intervention began. A nurse contacted a woman who had also been born with a cleft palate. She brought the couple a special bottle designed for babies with this condition, bottles that are supposed to be in every hospital but for some reason were not available to the Peterson’s.

“This meant that our baby was finally able to eat,” the Petersons said. “That hungry baby took his first bottle and rested in our arms. This was an unbelievable blessing. We did take him home, and he thrived.”

Aidan underwent eight surgeries to correct his lip and palate and will probably need a few more, but that hasn’t stopped him from growing into a completely normal young man. Now 15 years old and a freshman in high school, he’s an avid reader with a variety of interests such as in aviation, the military, writing and history. He’s a member of his church’s teen group as well as the 4H and especially enjoys playing paintball with this friends.

As Brown points out in her article, stories like Aidan’s are far too numerous, and not all of them end as happily.

“We’re aware that many doctors in the United States recommend abortions for babies whose potential disabilities show up on ultrasounds or in prenatal testing. We’re also aware that, sadly, all too many parents choose abortion in these cases. And all too often, their babies are discovered to either be perfectly ‘normal’ or the parents later on discover that the disability or defect was one they definitely could have lovingly dealt with, had they only been given accurate and complete information,” Brown writes.

“Our society has become consumer and product focused in an ultimately dangerous way. When we, the consumer, discover the news that our child, the product, is not quite up to par with our expectations, we are given the choice to end an innocent life. Perfection – though impossible to define – is the standard demanded.”

She adds: “And who among us truly meets it?”

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