The short life of Baby Milo
Post Reports
The Washington Post
4.4 • 5.1K Ratings
🗓️ 19 May 2023
⏱️ 27 minutes
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Summary
Today, a story about the uncharted legal territory of a new abortion law, and the consequences for families and doctors who end up in the middle.
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Nobody expected Baby Milo to live a long time. The unusual complications in his mother’s pregnancy tested the interpretation of Florida’s new abortion law.
Earlier this year, Washington Post reporter Frances Stead Sellers shared the story of Deborah Dorbert, a woman who was carrying a pregnancy to term after being denied an abortion, despite the fetus having a rare fatal condition. Florida’s abortion ban includes an exception for fatal fetal abnormalities, but her doctors told her they could not act as long as the baby’s heart was beating.
While that story went viral around the world, Debbie continued to do the best she could to prepare for delivering a child that wouldn’t survive even a few hours.
Debbie and her husband Lee named their baby Milo. He lived for 99 minutes.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | A warning, today's episode includes candid discussions of pregnancy complications and the |
| 0:08.6 | loss of a child. |
| 0:10.0 | Continue for five miles. |
| 0:17.6 | So here we go along a palm line street with a blue sky behind us. |
| 0:22.4 | Such a pretty place. |
| 0:26.8 | And we're here for such a sad story. |
| 0:29.5 | Exactly. |
| 0:40.8 | Recently I was in Lakeland, Florida. |
| 0:44.4 | It's a small city about halfway between Orlando and Tampa and I was with |
| 0:49.9 | reporter Francis Steedsellers. |
| 0:53.4 | We were driving to see Deborah Doerberg or Debbie as her family calls her. |
| 0:59.3 | Debbie and her husband Lee have a four year old named Kaden and they were so excited when |
| 1:04.8 | they found out that he was going to have a younger sibling. |
| 1:07.8 | But halfway through Debbie's pregnancy at a routine anatomy scan, she learned something |
| 1:13.2 | devastating. |
| 1:15.4 | The fetus was not developing kidneys. |
| 1:18.1 | The lungs would be underdeveloped too. |
| 1:20.6 | The doctors told her the baby wouldn't live more than a couple of hours after birth. |
| 1:26.6 | Through the trauma of learning that she had decided that she would choose to dominate |
| 1:31.9 | that pregnancy, it was a very difficult decision, but she thought it was what was right for |
| 1:36.6 | her own physical and mental health. |
| 1:39.5 | So Debbie and Lee had been preparing for this really difficult moment, terminating a very |
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