In July 1997, a married couple in Oldenburg, Germany discovered in the twentieth week of the wife’s pregnancy that the child the woman was carrying had Down syndrome. The woman was in her twenty-fifth week of pregnancy when she underwent a saline abortion.

In order to truly understand this peculiar case, it is necessary to belabor the obvious. The second trimester of pregnancy ends at the twenty-fourth week with the end of the sixth month of pregnancy. Thus, this wife had started her seventh month of pregnancy and the third trimester – a time period in which it was quite possible, even in 1997, for prematurely delivered babies to survive. (In the decades since, their chances have improved so that most premature babies delivered at week twenty-five will live.)

The law in Germany allegedly stated that abortions could be legally performed through the first thirteen weeks of pregnancy. After that, it was still legal to abort but only if the pregnant individual said she was unable to carry to term because her physical or mental health was threatened by continuing the pregnancy. Banning abortion unless the pregnant woman claimed to be unable to carry to term hardly seems like a ban at all — as this case would indeed demonstrate. Writer Annalisa Teggi commented on this standard being a “loophole” with “ample wiggle room” for virtually any woman who just wanted to abort.

It is, of course, not unusual that a woman is distressed to find her fetus has a medical abnormality. After learning that she was carrying a fetus with Down syndrome, this distraught pregnant woman claimed she could not stand to carry to term and said she would commit suicide unless the pregnancy was aborted.

An abortion was scheduled. A saline solution abortion was performed. Expelled from the woman’s vaginal canal after hours of soaking in the toxic saline solution and gulping it, a surprise came out.

The abortion had failed. No tiny shriveled corpse was expelled. Instead: a tiny living baby — breathing, moving arms and legs and head, heart beating. He weighed only a pound and a half.

But he was alive.

However, medical personnel expected him to die very soon. Nurses wrapped him in a towel, but nothing was done to treat him due to the assumption he would soon perish.

The tiny infant proved shockingly hardy. Nine hours later he was still breathing, his heart still beating, although his body temperature had dropped a great deal. Physicians decided to finally treat the baby who refused to die.

As a result, both of the abortion and the lack of immediate care, the boy who would be named Tim but called the “Oldenburg Baby” by the German media had more severe disabilities than most Down syndrome babies. Extensive damage had been done to his brain, eyes, and lungs. Physicians predicted he might live one year or maybe two. Because he had been forced into the world two months prematurely, his lungs were underdeveloped, leaving him susceptible to infections. In the first years of his life, he would indeed require several operations.

His birth parents placed him for adoption. They also sued the hospital, claiming medical professionals had caused them unnecessary trauma because they had failed in their duty to inform them that it was possible for a baby to survive an abortion if it took place that late in the pregnancy. The hospital denied these allegations. This author was unable to learn what eventually became of the lawsuit.

According to an article by Katarzyna Dzido that was published by the

Life Institute, the physician who performed the abortion and failed to give a live baby attention when he survived “was supposed to be charged with battery, yet no charges were ever pressed against him and the public prosecutor’s investigations were brought to an end.”

Tim spent much of the first year of his life in a children’s clinic. In 1998, foster parents Simone and Bernhard Guido took him in. When they initially applied to be foster parents, it was with a different expectation of fostering than what they would get with Tim. “It was supposed to be a healthy girl,” Simone Guido is quoted as writing in a book about their life with Tim. However, when she and her husband saw Tim, they sensed a powerful bond with this damaged, but remarkably resilient, little baby. “We immediately thought: he belongs with us,” she wrote  .

As previously mentioned, Tim had more problems than most with Down syndrome due to the abortion, the absence of care for the first nine hours of his life, and being two months premature. As well as special vulnerabilities in his eyes and lungs, Tim showed signs of autism.

The Guidos not only wrote a book and ran a website about their lives with Tim but they started campaigning against late-term abortions. The Guidos also campaigned against the use of pre-natal tests to make abortion decisions. As the article written by Annalisa Teggi and published in Aleteia reports, in Germany roughly 90% of pre-natal Down syndrome diagnoses end with an abortion.

It should be noted that the Guidos enjoyed caring for children and did not find the special challenges of caring for kids with Down syndrome beyond their abilities. The couple had two children of their own without special challenges and fostered two children besides Tim; both the other foster kids had Down syndrome.

In 2003, Tim was given what is referred to as “dolphin therapy.” The practice is controversial because some observers believe it is not a “therapy” but only a recreational activity. However, for whatever reasons, the boy seemed to make improvements in digestion, motor skills, and even speech after contact with these marine mammals.

In that same year, the doctor who performed the abortion and then failed to treat him for nine hours after he was born alive, was penalized with a fine. The fine was not for the lateness of the abortion but only for failure to give care to a newborn as required by German law. It was also in 2003 that, after years of being treated by psychotherapists, Tim’s birthmother reportedly committed suicide.

Beginning in 2004, Tim attended a school for children with disabilities where he impressed others as a likable person.

What is to be made of this bittersweet tragedy? Perhaps the first lesson is that, even for those favoring abortion rights, abortions make little sense when it is possible for the unborn to live outside the womb. It resembles moral insanity to be desperately rushing to save a baby in one area of the hospital that was born prematurely while ignoring another that was forced out of the uterus at exactly the same time period just because the individuals who carried had opposite attitudes.

Moreover, regardless of the legal status of abortion, the question of a woman’s “choice” becomes moot once her body and that of the body she carried part ways. When a live baby is separate from the body of her who once bore it — even for a second — that baby is now a separate patient with the same entitlement to care as a baby born under normal circumstances.

Tim had extraordinary disabilities. His life was full of pain. Inevitably, if with great discomfort, some must wonder: Was his life worth saving? Was it worth living? In an article at LifeIssues.net titled “Failed Abortions: The People Who Survive,” it was reported that those who knew Tim recalled him as having a love for animals and described him as happy and confident. Elsewhere, a photograph taken of Tim with dolphins shows a happy child basking in enthusiasm for the company of these marine mammals; a smiling little Tim, his light brown hair in a longish rice bowl haircut, wearing sunglasses with powder blue rims, uses his small human hands to grasp the mouth and snout of his dolphin buddy. There are other photographs online of Tim as a child, a teenager, a young adult. He seems relaxed and comfortable. The Guidos put together a video about Tim that is on YouTube and appears to have been viewed over 200,000 times. The language spoken is German, which I do not understand, and there is no close captioning in English. The film shows Tim playing with a friendly dog, Tim enjoying toys, Tim energetically bouncing on a trampoline, Tim at family meals, Tim interacting with siblings and parents.

A smile needs no translation.

Tim’s was a life worth living.

In January 2019, Tim died at the age of twenty-one after he contracted a lung infection that took his life. He was at home with the Guidos. According to Derek Scally, they reportedly shared on the Guido family website that he had spent a “wonderful Christmas” at home with them. They related, “We are very sad and don’t yet know how we should come to terms with the loss of our son who was unique, full of life, and spread joy.”

Was that abortion at all necessary? It is natural that a pregnant woman panics when informed of a fetal abnormality. She might even become suicidal at the prospect of carrying to term — especially if she were ignorant of the realities of the lives of people with that particular abnormality. It seems to this writer that much tragedy might have been avoided by consoling this particular pregnant woman and then educating her about how happy people with Down syndrome often are and how accomplished they can be with education oriented toward their special situations. She could have been introduced to people who had Down syndrome and their families and realized that the prospects were not nearly as bleak as she had assumed.

The 2003 suicide of Tim’s birthmother places a bitter irony over the entire case. The pregnancy was reportedly aborted because she said she could not stand to carry to term a baby who had Down syndrome and would kill herself if forced to do so. The abortion was performed and the baby survived — but with far more disabilities than most with Down syndrome have. Despite his disabilities, Tim and his foster family enjoyed themselves, enjoyed each other, enjoyed animals and games and fun, enjoyed life, while we can speculate that his birthmother might have been tormented with guilt over Tim’s abortion — a guilt psychotherapists were unable to adequately treat and that may well have led her to commit suicide six years after his birth.

Tim was not the tragedy. The way others viewed his disabilities was the tragedy. Tim, the Oldenburg Baby, the boy who was not meant to be, became a child and then a youth who “spread joy.”

Sources:

Boquet, Shenan J. and William Lawyer. “Failed Abortions: The People Who Survive.” Apr. 30, 2021.

Dzido, Katarzyna. “Oldenburg Baby Tim Turns 13.” The Life Institute. Aug. 16, 2019.

Guido, Simone and Bernhard. “Simone und Bernhard Guido – Tim Lebt!” Video.

Scally, Derek. “German Man Who Survived Abortion Dies Aged 21.” The Irish Times. Jan. 9, 2019.

Teggi, Annalisa. “Famous Late-Term Abortion Survivor Has Died at the Age of 21.” Aleteia. Jan. 26, 2019.