Two days after tweeting a link to an uplifting story in the New York Times about experimental prenatal surgery to treat a baby boy for spina bifida, Planned Parenthood of Maryland deleted the tweet. The article about the “small person who had surgery before he was even born” was a follow up on an October Times article that described the surgery, which lessens but does not cure the disability.
The article described how the in-utero procedure, performed at Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston, succeeded even beyond expectations:
The earlier October article began with a description of the unborn child (“the patient”) at 24 weeks:
The tweet about this surgery from an affiliate of the largest abortion provider in the country produced a small stir among a few conservative outlets, but otherwise went largely unnoticed. The tweet was deleted sometime on Friday without explanation.
Neither Planned Parenthood of Maryland nor Planned Parenthood of America responded to a number of requests for comment about the deletion, including a direct inquiry by this writer on Twitter shortly after the tweet first appeared. Neither organization responded to a request for Planned Parenthood’s position on prenatal surgery either.
Planned Parenthood’s website briefly mentions spina bifida relative to amniocentesis and other prenatal testing, but is silent on options for parents facing a positive test result.
