Inspiring. “Uplifting,” “amazing” and “beautiful.”

Those were some of the praises lavished on an upbeat Washington Post story about a 28-weeks-pregnant woman with COVID-19. As she was overtaken with respiratory failure, obstetricians quickly delivered her very premature twins in March.

It was at the height of the coronavirus crisis. Moreover, the mother was black; a subgroup that has much higher maternal mortality rates than do white women. Suddenly, after the birth, the mother improved.

So why are we commenting on this? Why did GetReligion readers send us this URL? Look at the wording, folks.

On a bright October day last fall, Ebony Brown-Olaseinde and her husband, Segun Olaseinde, found out that their longtime dream had finally been realized: They were going to be parents. After three years spent trying to conceive, they had succeeded through in vitro fertilization — and they soon learned that their twins, a boy and a girl, were due in June 2020.

By the beginning of March, Ebony, 40, an accountant in Newark, was feeling grateful that her high-risk pregnancy had progressed so easily. Segun, 43, an operations manager for UPS, couldn’t wait to be a father. Ebony’s doctors told the couple that she’d reached an important milestone: At 24 weeks, their twins were viable, more likely to survive if they arrived early

Twenty-four weeks?

As recently as a year ago, the Post was referring to babies that far along as fetuses. Let’s read on:

That was one week before the World Health Organization formally declared the coronavirus pandemic. Ten days after that, Ebony suddenly began feeling short of breath.

What follows is a nail biter of a story where, for awhile, it was unclear as to whether the mother would survive the birth.