Doctors: This Baby 'incompatible with life,' - This Touching Video Proves Otherwise

Ben Johnson : Mar 21, 2014
LifeSiteNews.com

"Sweet Avonlea… is very much alive."

(Charlotte, NC)—Geoff and Cheyenne Schultz became photographers "to create art that matters and to genuinely care for people." They say that, thanks to their latest project, "living out our mission statement was taken to another level."

On March 6, the photographers posted a video featuring pictures they took of Avonlea Powell, a baby girl born with Trisomy 13.

At six-and-a-half months into their pregnancy doctors told the newborn's parents, Melissa and Brian Powell of Project Life Photography, that the diagnosis was "not compatible with life."

When the baby was born alive, the Powells asked their fellow Charlotte-based photographers to capture the child's first days on film.

"Sweet Avonlea… is very much alive," the Schultzes wrote. "Thank You, God, for this baby."

Ethicists say describing the condition as "incompatible with life" is often misleading.

"Although many of the congenital syndromes that used to be lethal no longer are, they are still routinely referred to as 'lethal anomalies," according to the Hastings Center, a non-profit bioethics research institute. The group warns that description "is not only inaccurate, it is also dangerous: by portraying as a medical determination what is in fact a judgment about the child's quality of life, it wrests from the parents a decision that only the parents can make."