Recently a girl gave birth to a healthy baby whilst in a car on the hard shoulder of a motorway. The press had a field day, describing the event as ‘dramatic’ and using phrases such as the ‘child raced into the world’ to set the scene of cars whizzing by as the baby ‘just popped out’. However, mother’s and grandparents’ emotions were neatly juxtaposed by the fact that ‘joy and wonderment’ soon turned to ‘desolation’ 6 days later, when the child was taken into care. A Family Court Judge had agreed with the Local Authority that there was ‘reasonable cause to believe’ that the child was ‘likely to suffer significant harm’ if not immediately removed from her parents’ care. All of this despite the fact that the grandparents were offering to care for their grandchild. Actually the law of averages might conspire to make such an event entirely predictable. On average there are about 700,000 babies born every year in the UK. The average number of babies aged 12 months or less who are taken into care every year is around the 67,000 mark. Throw into the mix the facts that the number of care cases generally is rising and that Britain has the highest rate of teenage pregnancies in Western Europe. In fact the rate of teenage pregnancies is sky-high, with nearly 3 out of every 100 girls aged between 16 and 19 giving birth every year. So, nearly 50,000 babies are born to teenage mums in the UK every year. And of course between 2000 and 2015 the number of cars on UK roads rose from 27 million to 32 million. Despite the high drama caused by the facts of this case, the most amazing motorway birth is surely the one where the mother gave birth during a 100 mph pursuit by motorway police! In another case an expectant mother was taken to hospital by helicopter after going into labour on the A1! Extremely high drama!
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