Cassy Gray, 36, from Aberdeenshire, was told by doctors that her baby girl, Megan, “was incompatible with life”. She refused advice to have an abortion. She has no regrets.

Baby Megan was shown to have an undeveloped brain at 12 weeks. Her mother, Cassy, was urged to have an abortion, with doctors telling her that Megan only had a 3% survival rate.

A condition named semilobar holoprosencephaly meant that Megan’s brain had not developed properly. Megan’s state was deemed “incompatible with life” by doctors.

But Cassy clung on to hope and refused to abort her baby.

“We decided right away that termination was not an option”, said Cassy. “I’m not religious but I thought if God wants Megan, he’ll take Megan; if she was going to die, she’d die in her own time – I wasn’t going to take it from her.”

But Cassy admits that, when Megan was born, she “was scared to look at her because of the picture they [the doctors] had painted. I knew I would love her, but I just didn’t know if I would like the way she looked…

“But as soon as she was born, I remember saying to her dad, ‘There’s nothing wrong with her’… She obviously has a brain condition, but she is certainly not incompatible with life.”

SPUC comment

A SPUC spokesperson said: “The defeatist, anti-life attitude that doctors push on parents and vulnerable mothers is increasingly common and must be addressed.

“Thankfully, Cassy’s courage, founded most of all on hope, won out in the end and gave Megan the most precious gift of all: life.  

“Megan has also proven doctors wrong. One hopes that medical staff will not so readily give up on the unborn in the future, whatever difficulties may arise – and especially not ever label a child ‘incompatible’.

“Megan is literally living proof that she is more than compatible, especially with the love and care of her devoted parents.”

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