A child born in Iowa is celebrating his first birthday and was declared the youngest premature baby ever by Guinness World Records.
Nash Keen weighed just 10 ounces, about the same as a bar of soap, when he entered the world at 21 weeks of gestation on July 5, 2024. The formerly tiny newborn, nicknamed “Nash Potato,” is now thriving and hitting milestones after spending six months in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) at the University of Iowa Health Care Stead Family Children’s Hospital, per the Associated Press.
“Nash is so full of personality,” his mom Mollie Keen told the outlet. “He’s a happy baby.”
“Being in the NICU as long as he was, you’d think that he would be, you know, more fragile and stuff,” she added. “And he’s not. He’s a very determined, curious little boy, and he’s just all smiles all the time.”
Upon reaching his first birthday, Guinness World Records declared Nash the world’s most premature baby, beating out by a single day the organization’s previous record holder born in 2020 in Alabama.
Guinness World Records named Nash the world’s most premature baby after he reached his first birthday. The previous record holder was born in Alabama and was older than Nash by just one day.
These incredible stories help to turn the pro-abortion argument for “personhood” being linked to viability on its head as increasingly younger premature babies are able not just to survive, but to thrive, even when they are born very early. This is thanks to advancing technology and a dedication to providing excellent medical care to fragile newborns.
Mollie reportedly said that she had a previous miscarriage and was concerned she would also lose Nash when she went into preterm labor. However, she and her husband, Randall, discovered that the University of Iowa Health Care Stead Family Children’s Hospital was capable of caring for extremely premature babies.
“One of the things I noticed about the medical team is that they were very calm,” she told AP of the staff there. “You never really saw them, like, get anxious or anything. And so we kind of just learned to, like, watch them. If the doctors and the nurses weren’t freaking out, there was no reason for us to freak out.”
“We wanted to give Nash a chance,” Molly told Guinness World Records during an interview.
Despite being born so early and therefore being at risk for a slew of medical complications, Nash is developing in what his doctor says is the best outcome possible for him.
Although he is still on oxygen and using a feeding tube, his parents plan to introduce solid food soon. He is rolling over, and they hope he’ll crawl soon, too.
“He’s truly the best thing to ever happen to us,” Mollie said.
The Guttmacher Institute, a pro-abortion organization, “updated” its definition of viability in August 2022, stating, “A fetus generally reaches viability between 24 and 28 weeks LMP (gestational age).”
This definition is out of date, considering the increasing number of cases like Nash’s, where very premature newborns survive and thrive. These kinds of cases prove that viability is not a fixed gestational point in time, and more broadly, does not determine the humanity of an unborn baby.