“I had hoped someone would question me before my abortion. But, I was not asked why I chose abortion. If I had been questioned at all, someone would have heard quite a story…I feel the state let me down….If abortion had been questioned in my case, I may have had a baby. I may have been happier. I may not have gone through the suicide attempts. I know that abortion has long term affects on women…”
David C. Reardon, Julie Makimaa, and Amy Sobie. “Victims and Victors: Speaking Out About Their Pregnancies, Abortions, and Children Resulting From Sexual Assault” Springfield, IL: Acorn Books) 2000 p 138
“I have talked with pro-lifers who consider my abortion acceptable, under the circumstances. I want to tell people “If you really want to be compassionate, give this mother the opportunity to choose life for her child. If you really love the mothers who have been victimized, don’t let them be exploited again by someone who will make a profit from their dead child- a memory that will haunt them for the rest of their lives.”
David C. Reardon, Julie Makimaa, and Amy Sobie. “Victims and Victors: Speaking Out About Their Pregnancies, Abortions, and Children Resulting From Sexual Assault” Springfield, IL: Acorn Books) 2000 p 125
“THE DAILY MAIL” (UK newspaper): Tuesday June 29, 2004 OUR BABY DAUGHTER LIVED THREE HOURS AFTER THE ABORTION
“A couple whose baby was born alive after an abortion at 21 weeks have told of their anguish as Health Service staff stood by and let her die.
The little girl, who had Down’s Syndrome, survived for three hours after being delivered into a cardboard bowl.
Her parents, who claim they were ‘coerced’ into a termination in the first place, claim nurses at Macclesfield District General Hospital were reluctant to offer any medical help.
They say that they were told later that their baby had not ‘really’ been alive, even though she was clearly breathing.
The disturbing case follows a warning from doctors and midwives that babies are being born alive after botched abortions then denied medical care and left to die.
The parents, who do not wish to be named, already have a toddler, a teenager and a 12-year-old with learning disabilities and felt unable to cope with another special needs child.
Consultants and nurses did not suggest the possibility of continuing the pregnancy and having the Down’s child adopted, it is alleged.
The 41-year-old mother, who is considering legal action, said last night:
“I don’t want any other woman to go through the same nightmare.”
“If I had been given any idea that the baby would be born alive after an abortion I would never have gone through with it. They coerced me.
“I have seen how society treats children with disabilities and it frightened me to bring another special needs child into the world, but somehow we would have coped with it.”
Two days before the abortion in March, the woman was given tablets which she was told would cut off the blood supply to the placenta and kill the baby in the womb.
She said:
“We were sent home and to our distress the baby was still clearly moving. When we went back to hospital on the Monday we were told the tablets didn’t kill the baby but they were to get the baby ready for labour.
“We said if there was an outside chance of this baby being born alive we would not go through with it, but they assured us the baby would die during labour.”
The baby was born after a two-and-a-half-hour labour induced by drugs.
The mother said:
“She was perfectly formed and tiny. I wanted to hold her and was handed the baby in a cardboard dish. My partner got her out and she gasped for breath. Her heart was visibly beating.
“She felt really cold and so he put her inside his shirt to keep her warm. All the time she was alive there were about ten different staff who came in and looked but they never said a word. The offered no assistance.”
After an hour and a half, she begged for an incubator, which was wheeled in and not switched on. The baby eventually died in her aunt’s arms.
The day after her death, a nurse told the mother: “The baby was not really alive. She was just having reactions.” The 46-year-old father, a trading analyst for a betting firm, said he was “devastated” by the tragedy.
“Our lives have been changed for ever” he said. “Emotions ran high, our relationship suffered. We have stumbled through our lives since that day.”
Pro-life campaigners said the case was a tragedy for the entire family.
Nuala Scarisbrick, of LIFE, said:
“They are the victims, not just the baby. The callousness of putting a baby in a sick bowl and the mother having to warm the baby is appalling.”
East Cheshire NHS Trust, which runs the Macclesfield hospital, said guidance from the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists for late abortions had been followed.
A spokesman added:
“It is regrettable that the patient’s experience was so distressing and we would wish to reiterate our sympathies.”
“The confusion regarding the status of abortion survivors is reflected in events that happened two years ago in Cincinnati, Ohio. A young woman learned she was pregnant and sought the assistance at the clinic of the abortionist Dr. Martin Haskell, inventor of one variation of the partial-birth abortion procedure.
Dr. Haskell performed the first step of the partial-birth abortion procedure–dilating the woman’s cervix–and she was to return the next day. The next morning the woman began experiencing severe abdominal pains and reported to the emergency room of Bethesda North Medical Center in Cincinnati. While she was being examined, the young woman gave birth to a baby girl.
The attending physician placed the baby in a specimen dish–like any other substance that is removed from the body–to be taken to the lab by a medical technician. When the technician, Shelly Lowe, saw the baby girl in the dish she was stunned when she saw the girl gasping for air.
`I don’t think I can do that,’ Ms. Lowe reportedly said. `This baby is alive.’
“After doctors concluded that the baby was too premature to survive (by some estimates she was born at 22 weeks, although some members of the hospital staff believed she was older), Ms. Lowe held the baby, whom she named `Baby Hope,’ until the child died, wrapping her in a blanket and singing to her as she stroked her cheeks. Ms. Lowe said: `I wanted her to feel that she was wanted. . . . She was a perfectly formed newborn, entering the world too soon through no choice of her own.
22 week sonogram
Surprisingly, Baby Hope lived for 3 hours, without the benefit of an incubator or other intensive care, and breathing room air, but her condition was not reassessed by the physicians.”
The following are cited:
“Finger-Pointing Follows Baby Hope” Cincinnati Post, April 22nd, 1999 15A
Mona Charen, “Baby Hope” Washington Times May 17, 1999
Mona Charen, “Baby Hope, Part 2” Washington Times May 24, 1999
More on Baby Hope comes from the article “The Story of Baby Hope” by Liz Townsend.
“Hospital workers who cared for Baby Hope report continuing feelings of sadness and grief, but also peace — “peace that she was comforted, held close, and even sang to until she took her last breath,” according to nurse Connie Boyles. Emergency room technician Shelly Lowe held the baby until she died three hours and eight minutes after her birth. “I sat and held her. I felt no one should die alone,” said Lowe at an April 20 news conference held by local pro-life groups. “We had her baptized. I named her Hope because I’d hoped she would make it.”
Lowe said that her whole view of the abortion issue has been changed since Baby Hope’s death. “I was always pro-choice, and I’ve changed to pro-life,” she said. “This is a baby that could be alive right now.”
The article goes on to quote Mrs. Lowe
“Her bottom lip would go in,” Lowe said. “She would move her hands. The hands would open and close.” The baby’s death certificate reinforces the tragedy of her short 1ife. The cause of death is listed as “extreme prematurity secondary to induced abortion,” which is deemed a “natural” manner of death. She has no official first name and no social security number, and her life is succinctly described by the stark words “never married” and “never worked”. She was cremated.”
The nurses who went public with the story of Baby Hope were shunned by fellow members of the medical community for coming forward. Pro-Choice groups also attacked the workers in press releases.
“We are … extremely concerned about the seeming disregard for this woman’s confidentiality exhibited by hospital employees who went to Right to Life with this story”, National Abortion Federation Executive Director Vicki Saporta said in an April 20 press release. “No woman should have to fear that her personal medical experience will be used as a tool by politicians and anti-choice organizations to further a political agenda.”
“Talking points” included with the press release described the incident as the “miscarriage of a 22-week nonviable fetus.”
Also:
“A spokeswoman for another pro-abortion group, Sue Momeyer, chief executive officer of Planned Parenthood of Southwest Ohio and Northern Kentucky, told the Associated Press, “I am concerned that what looks like a very difficult and tragic situation is being used for political purposes.”
This comes from organizations that see absolutely no problem in exploiting the situations of individual women who died from illegal abortions, even when those women put themselves in danger precisely because they wanted to keep their abortions secret.
From a summary of the hearing for the Born Alive Infant Protection Act, which can be found here, Library of Congress Report 107th Congress House of Representatives Allison Baker, a registered nurse, testified about several live birth abortions she witnessed:
20 weeks
“The first occurred on a day shift. I happened to walk into a `soiled utility room’ and saw, lying on the metal counter, a fetus, naked, exposed and breathing, moving its arms and legs. The fetus was visibly alive, and was gasping for breath. I left to find the nurse who was caring for the patient and this fetus. When I asked her about the fetus, she said that she was so busy with the mother that she didn’t have time to wrap and place the fetus in a warmer, and she asked if I would do that for her. Later I found out that the fetus was 22 weeks old, and had undergone a therapeutic abortion because it had been diagnosed with Down’s Syndrome. I did wrap the fetus and place him in a warmer and for 2 1/2 hours he maintained a heartbeat, and then finally expired.”
The second baby was 20 weeks old.
“[d]uring the time the fetus was alive, the patient kept asking me when the fetus would die. For an hour and 45 minutes the fetus maintained a heartbeat. The parents were frustrated, and obviously not prepared for this long period of time. Since I was the nurse of both the mother and the fetus, I held the fetus in my arms until it finally expired.”
Also in the document:
“The third incident witnessed by Mrs. Baker involved a 16 week-old fetus with Down’s Syndrome. `Again,’ Mrs. Baker testified, `I walked into the soiled utility room and the fetus was fully exposed, lying on the baby scale.’
16 week unborn baby
Mrs. Baker then found the nurse who was caring for the mother and the baby and offered her assistance.
`When I went back into the soiled utility room,’ Mrs. Baker said, `the fetus was moving its arms and legs. I then listened for a heartbeat, and found that the fetus was still alive. I wrapped the fetus and in 45 minutes the fetus finally expired.’
“Mrs. Stanek testified about another aborted baby who was thought to have had spina bifida, but was delivered with an intact spine.”
And
“On another occasion, an aborted baby `was left to die on the counter of the Soiled Utility Room wrapped in a disposable towel. This baby was accidentally thrown in the garbage, and when they later were going through the trash to find the baby, the baby fell out of the towel and on to the floor.’
Edith Young, a 12-year old incest victim who became pregnant when her stepfather assaulted her, writes this 25 years after her abortion:
“Throughout the years I have been depressed, suicidal, furious, outraged, lonely, and have felt a sense of loss…Often I cry. Cry because I could not stop the attacks. Cry because my daughter is dead. And I cry because it still hurts….As you can see, the abortion which was to ‘be in my best interest’ just has not been. As far as I can tell, it only ‘saved their reputation’ ‘solved their problems’ and allowed their lives to go merrily on.”
David C. Reardon “Aborted Women: Silent No More” (Chicago: Loyola University Press) 1987, 217-218
An incest victim writing under the pseudonym “Mary Jean Doe” says:
“Abortion on demand, no questions asked, makes it easier for incest and child abuse to continue. Abortion for incest victims sounds compassionate, but in practice it is simply another violent and deceptive tool in the hand of the abuser.”
Mary Jean Doe “Incest and the Abortion Clinic” The American Feminist, Vol. 4 (4) Winter 1997-98, 15-16
A woman who identified herself as “Patricia Ryan” who had an abortion after her rape said that the abortion led to emotional suffering. She said:
“Given my own experience, I would definitely discourage a woman from having an abortion following rape or incest. While it may appear to be the quickest, easiest solution to a painful, humiliating “problem,” it is only a band-aid approach and has terrible ramifications of its own.”
David C. Reardon, Julie Makimaa, and Amy Sobie. “Victims and Victors: Speaking Out About Their Pregnancies, Abortions, and Children Resulting From Sexual Assault” Springfield, IL: Acorn Books) 2000 p 57
Another woman who was raped and had her baby, identified as Sharon “Baily” says:
“There is no doubt in my mind that abortion should be discouraged. Abortion is a terrible way of dealing with a pregnancy resulting from rape, although I suppose it is a way for people to ignore the victim and her needs.”
David C. Reardon, Julie Makimaa, and Amy Sobie. “Victims and Victors: Speaking Out About Their Pregnancies, Abortions, and Children Resulting From Sexual Assault” Springfield, IL: Acorn Books) 2000 p 89
Should abortion be legal in cases of rape or incest? That is a difficult question. Each individual must use their own conscience to decide whether or not to support abortion in those cases. But I hope that reading the quotes here will make you think about whether abortion is good for women, even in these extreme cases. To finish, I will leave you with the words of one woman who was raped and had her child before Roe v. Wade:
“Never, in the years after her birth, did I ever regret giving life to my daughter. However, there have been many times when I have looked back grateful that no state legislature had provided an easy, instant answer of a free abortion for me. I’m grateful because, at that time, I might have bought into the lie that an abortion would fix all my problems. But fortunately that temptation wasn’t there.”
David C. Reardon, Julie Makimaa, and Amy Sobie. “Victims and Victors: Speaking Out About Their Pregnancies, Abortions, and Children Resulting From Sexual Assault” Springfield, IL: Acorn Books) 2000 p 94
