The boy was delivered in hospital after his 24- year-old mother changed her mind about wanting the child after feeling it move on the way home from an abortion clinic.

Although the clinic had told her an ultrasound scan had confirmed the child was dead, she went into labour that afternoon and the boy was born alive.

Now two years old and healthy, he is the first long-term abortion survivor to have been born so prematurely. His remarkable entrance into the world is documented in the Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology.

The mother had not realised she was going to have a baby until 22 weeks into the pregnancy and felt that she could not cope with a second child. She was given a series of abortion drugs over four days at a private clinic.

After birth the child was rushed to the hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit where he was on a ventilator for 7Å weeks. He fought off several life-threatening infections and suffered from severe lung disease for his first six months. He was allowed home after seven months of treatment.

Dr Paul Clarke, one of the report’s authors and the baby’s doctor at Hope hospital in Salford, Greater Manchester, said: “This mother went through extreme hardship waiting to see if her baby was going to make it. She was told to expect him to die so many times. I am full of admiration for her.”

The attempted abortions had been carried out at the British Pregnancy Advisory Service’s Blackdown clinic in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire.

Clarke reveals that paediatricians often intervene to save babies who have survived abortions.

He writes: “Late abortion raises serious practical, ethical and professional concerns. The dilemma of being telephoned about an infant born showing signs of life following termination of pregnancy is one that many paediatricians have faced. If viable, and resuscitated, those infants who survive may suffer significant illness.”

The paper calls for a review of late abortions at private clinics where there are no staff qualified to give emergency treatment if babies are born alive.

Ann Furedi, chief executive of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, said: “It sounds highly unusual. Usually we would keep a woman at the clinic until she delivered the foetus. When women are having a late medical abortion they are normally attended in the clinic by nursing staff with specialist midwifery training.

“It would never be the case that a woman would be discharged with the expectation that she would deliver at home.”

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