Charity backs couple over Siamese twins

A woman pregnant with a rare form of Siamese twins was backed by a support charity today in her decision not to seek an abortion.

Lisa Chamberlain, 25, had a scan last week which showed her embryos had two heads and one body - making them dicephalus twins.

The Catholic mother-to-be said doctors advised her to undergo an abortion but this was ruled out after talking over the matter with fiance Mike Pedace.

Miss Chamberlain, from Portsmouth, Hants, told The Sun: "To me, my twins are a gift from God and we're determined to give them a chance of life."

A spokeswoman for Great Ormond Street Hospital in London said the twins had a slim chance of survival, particularly if they shared the same heart.

If the babies survive after birth, they will become the first ever British living dicephalus twins.

The condition occurs in just 4% of Siamese twin births.

Michaela Aston, from the charity LIFE which offers counselling and advice about abortion to parents, said: "This young mother is an example to us all as she unconditionally welcomes her twins into the world.

"She knows it will be difficult but she is focusing on the fact that she is already the proud mother of these babies and accepts them however they are. They may not be perfect in the eyes of the world but they are fully human and as such should have the same value and right to life as any other human beings.

"It is sad that this young mother must face a society which is increasingly unable to accept babies who are not genetically perfect and which may judge her for allowing her twins to continue to live.

"There is no way of knowing what their future holds, they may not even survive, but at least their mother will have given them a chance.

"If they do survive, their future will not necessarily be bleak as is demonstrated in the very full and happy lives of teenage twins in the USA who have the same condition, Abigail and Brittany Hensel."

But conjoined twins expert Professor Lewis Spitz told The Sun that Mrs Chamberlain's embryos should be terminated.

They would have a greater risk of infection, he said, and have two heads controlling one side of the body's nervous impulses.

In a nine-week scan carried out on Miss Chamberlain's twins, doctors could only identify a single heartbeat, although they say a second heartbeat could emerge by the time of a 12-week scan. It will only be at the 20-week mark that doctors will know to what extent the twins are conjoined.

A Great Ormond Street Hospital spokeswoman said: "The prospects for conjoined twins vary widely according to how well the children are and in particular how they are joined, and what organs are joined or shared.

"In general children joined at the heart are inoperable and sadly will usually die. The trust has also seen inoperable cases joined at the brain who would also have died, although we have successfully separated two children joined at the brain and the children are doing well.

"Success rates will vary depending on case by case circumstances."

The twins were diagnosed after Miss Chamberlain, a former RSPCA worker, was taken into Portsmouth's St Mary's Hospital on Wednesday with back pain. She found out she was pregnant on December 18.

After the scan results appeared, Miss Chamberlain said doctors and nurses "kept asking each other if they were babies who were close together - or 'something else'.

"Then the emergency obstetrician was called and he took over. He said my babies only had one body and were joined very high up."

She added: "Some might think my twins are strange, but to me they're just special. Everything happens for a reason. Mike and I have spent over seven years trying to have children and we might not get another go."

The couple hope the babies will follow the example of Abigail and Brittany. They were born in March 1990 with shared organs below the navel and are still alive.

The last conjoined twins born in the UK died within a few weeks of each other late last year.

Faith and Hope Williams were born on November 26 and were joined from the breastbone to the top of the navel with a shared liver but separate hearts.

Hope died following surgery to separate them at the beginning of December, and Faith succumbed nearly a month later.