In 2017, Created Equal helped expose what happened to the Finnefrock family. Mark Harrington, founder of the human rights defense group, tells One News Now the mother, pregnant with twins for 22 weeks and five days at the time, went into labor at Riverside Methodist Hospital in Columbus, Ohio.
"The Riverside Hospital determined that that's the point at which they will not resuscitate babies who are born prematurely," Harrington laments. "So for about two hours, both babies survived."
Video of the babies shows Emery and Elliot Finnefrock were moving and breathing for two hours; the recording also shows the mother frequently crying out for hospital staff to save her twins.
Ohio State Senator Terry Johnson (R), a practicing physician, a medical educator, and a retired military officer, has now submitted Senate Bill 151, "Emery and Elliot's Law," regarding infant medical treatment.
"If a baby is delivered at 21 weeks or before, the hospital is required to provide aggressive, life-sustaining treatment and not put on medical hold," Harrington explains about what the measure demands. "In other words, if there's a pulsating umbilical cord, if there's movement in the baby, sounds, or a heartbeat."
A study in The New England Journal of Medicine shows an increasing number of 22-week-old babies surviving outside the womb with appropriate care. A few babies born at 21 weeks have also beat the odds and survived after their premature births.
