Jill Stanek, R.N., who first brought the issue of “live birth abortions” to the public and legislators, discusses cases of infants refused medical care after being born during abortions- well after the Born Alive Infant Protection Act was passed.
“When President Bush signed the Born Alive Infants Protection Act into law two years ago this month, I thought the practice of aborting babies alive would end.
It hasn’t.
Because I travel the country and speak about my experience as a nurse who witnessed babies being aborted alive, I am occasionally approached by nurses who relate similar stories.
And when I am interviewed on the radio, nurses will invariably call in and tell about them, too. Kentucky, California, Pennsylvania, everywhere.
The following came to me via email from a nurse just a few months ago. The hospital where this took place is in the Columbus, Ohio, area:
A woman without prenatal care arrived at the hospital at 22 weeks [gestation] with twins. She had no insurance. On assessment she was found to have a heart problem and very high blood pressure. She was seen by our high-risk perinatologist, who recommended delivery for her health. She was placed on I.V. Magnesium Sulfate and monitored. In the morning, while I was caring for her, her blood pressures were stable, and her life did not seem in imminent danger. I even discussed the possibility of turning the Mag off with her doctor.
The residents then went in to her room. I remember one of them saying, “We can’t make her out as some sort of monster because she does not want these babies.” I believe if the patient had wanted the babies, every effort would have been made to keep her pregnant until they were viable.
However, since this was an unwanted pregnancy and “her life was in danger,” approval was given to induce labor. The twins were born. No measures were made to resuscitate the infants. They were not assessed by anyone but the RN caring for the mother. They died shortly afterward. The weights were not taken until the babies died. It was absolutely horrible.”
A nurse in Florida sent this to me:
“I came to work one morning to find myself assigned to a 25-week termination. At 25 weeks, a baby’s organs are all formed, the eyelids open, and the baby has the potential for survival outside the mother. This baby was being aborted because he had a genetic abnormality called Trisomy 18.
When I said I didn’t want to do this, I was told I had a responsibility to care for the patient.
I was called to the room by my patient when she felt the baby coming. The obstetrician was not in the hospital.
The baby delivered quickly, totally encased in the amniotic fluid- filled sac. When I broke the bag of water, the baby began breathing. I never expected the baby to survive, and I immediately panicked, because everything in me said I needed to resuscitate this baby.
I called the neonatal nurse practitioner to the room. She said I could do nothing but monitor for the time of death. I can’t even begin to convey to you the overwhelming emotion that came over me – fear, anger, grief. I sat on the patient’s bed sobbing as I waited for the heartbeat and respirations to cease. The baby died in approximately one hour. I immediately resigned.”
Another nurse related the following story to Jill Stanek:
The mother was expecting to deliver a baby with severe interior anomalies and external defects. Instead, the baby came out alive-with no signs of the external defects that should have been immediately obvious.
“The mother freaked out and started screaming, ‘Someone help my baby!’ ” Stanek recalled being told. “At the parent’s insistence, a neonatalogist was summoned who told the parents there was nothing he could do because the baby was born too early. The baby was wrapped in a blanket and given to the grandparents to hold until it died. The mother was so traumatized she had to be sedated.”
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