Another incident of a live birth was recounted in Linda Bird Francke’s book The Ambivalence of Abortion (New York: Laurel) 1982 p 53
This was an account from a New York nurse:
“We had one saline [type of abortion]born alive. I raced to the nursery with it and put it in an incubator. I called the pediatrician to come right down, and he refused. He said, “That’s not a baby. That’s an abortion.”
From The American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology 1976 Sept 1, 126(1) 83-90.
“You have to have a feticidal dose” of saline solution, said Dr. Kerenyi of Mt. Sinai in New York. “It’s almost a breach of contract not to. Otherwise, what are you going to do – hand her back a baby having done it questionable damage? …”
The scenario Kerenyi describes did in fact happen, in March 1978 in Cleveland. A young woman entered Mt. Sinai Hospital there for an abortion. The baby was born live and, after several weeks of intensive care at Rainbow Babies and Children’s Hospital, the child went home – with its mother.
The circumstances were so extraordinary that medical personnel broke the code of confidentiality and discussed the case with friends. Spokeswomen for the two hospitals confirmed the sequence of events. Mother and child returned to Rainbow for checkup when the child was 14 months old, the spokeswoman there said, and both were doing fine.
The mother could not be reached for comment. But a source familiar with the case remembered one detail: “The doctors had a very hard time making her realize she had a child. She kept saying, ‘But I had an abortion.'”
“These more common methods for abortion after the midpoint of pregnancy use the instillation of either saline solution or prostaglandin. In these procedures, some of the woman’s nurturing amniotic fluid is drawn out of the womb by an injection through her belly and is replaced with the abortion-inducing drug. (The amount of fluid in the womb is kept relatively constant to make sure the womb does not rupture.) The two instillation substances work in different ways. Saline solution poisons the fetus, probably though ingestion, though the process is not completely understood. Usually within six hours, the fetal heartbeat stops. At the same time, the saline induces labor, though supplemental doses of other labor-inducing drugs often are given to speed this effect.
Prostaglandin, on the other hand, is a distillate of the chemical substance that causes muscles to move. It is thought not to affect the fetus directly but instead is potent at inducing labor. Fetal death, if it does occur, is from prematurity and the trauma of passage through the birth canal…
And the high incidence of live births [with prostaglandin] (40 times more frequent than with saline, according to one study) also has lessened its popularity. But saline is not foolproof either in preventing live births.”
Describing how they deal with abortion live births in one hospital, an unnamed obstetrician had this to say:
“As the infant is lifted from the womb, said one obstetrician, “he is only sleeping, like his mother…You want to know how they kill him? They put a towel over his face so he can’t breathe. And by the time they get him to the lab, he is dead.”
Some nurses discussed experiences with living aborted babies:
“Nurses are the ones who bear the burden of handling the human-looking products of late abortions. And when an unintentional live birth occurs, they are the first to confront the waving of limbs and the gasping.
Reluctant to talk about their experiences, most of those interviewed for this article did not want their names to be published, and out of professional loyalty, they did not even want their hospitals to be named.
They spoke of being deeply troubled by what they have seen of late abortions in American hospitals.
Linda is a nurse in her late 50s in Southern California. Hurrying out of a patient’s room one day to dispose of the aborted “tissue,” as nurses were taught to think of it, she felt movement. Startled, she looked down, straight into the staring eyes of a live baby.
“It looked right at me,” she recalled. “This baby had real big eyes. It looked at you like it was saying. ‘Do something – do something.’ Those haunting eyes. Oh God, I still remember them.”
She rushed the five-pound infant to the nursing station. She took the heart rate – 80 to 100 beats a minute. She timed the respirations – three to four breaths a minute. She called the doctor.
“I called him because the baby was breathing,” Linda said. “It was pink. It had a heartbeat. The doctor told me the baby was not viable and to send it to the lab. I said, ‘But it’s breathing’ and he said, ‘It’s non-viable, it won’t be breathing long – send it to the lab.’ ”
She did not follow the order. Nor did she have resources at her command to provide any life-saving care. Two hours later the infant died, still at the nursing station, still without medical treatment. It died in a makeshift crib with one hot water bottle for warmth and an open tube of oxygen blowing near its head.
The nursing supervisor, Linda said, had refused to let her put the baby in the nursery, where there was equipment to assist premature babies in distress. “She said to follow the doctor’s orders and take it to the lab. I kept it with me at the station. We couldn’t do an awful lot for it.”
This happened eight years ago, in 1973, but Linda is still upset. “I stood by and watched that baby die without doing a thing,” she said. “I have guilt feelings to this day. I feel the baby might have lived had it been properly cared for.”
Jane, about 50, is the head floor nurse in an Ohio hospital. She and her fellow nurses successfully petitioned their hospital in 1978 to stop doing late abortions.
Twice before that, she witnessed live births after abortions. She recalls vividly the 16-year-old patient who phoned her mother after her abortion and and said in an agonized voice, “Ma, it’s out – but Ma, it’s alive.”
That happened in 1975. Jane still speaks of it bitterly, her eyes flashing anger. A year earlier Jane saw the second abortion live birth in her experience. “I was called by the patient’s roommate,” she recalled. “When I got there the baby’s head was sticking out and its little tongue was wiggling. Everybody felt they couldn’t do anything until they called the doctor. It was a little thing – it only lasted about 15 minutes. But it was alive, and we did nothing. And that was wrong.”
It rankles, too, that she was routinely forced to handle dead fetuses, the size and shape of well-formed premature babies.
“Because of my position,” she said, “I had to pick them up off the bed and put them in a bottle of formalin [a preservative fluid]. Sometimes you had to have a very large container. Our gynecologists seemed to have a very poor ability to estimate gestational age. Time and again they would say with a straight face, ‘This woman is 20 weeks pregnant’ when she was actually 26 weeks.”
From the article “When Abortion Becomes Birth: A Dilemma of Medical Ethics Shaken by New Advances” by Dena Kleiman published Feb. 15, 1984. It was published in the New York Times.
“Told about the subject of this article, many doctors declined to return telephone calls. In one case, the director of obstetrics at a major New York hospital spoke in detail of an aborted infant’s survival last year, and the impact this event had on the hospital’s staff. The next day, he called back to deny the incident had ever occurred.”
…..
“While publicly the great majority of hospitals agree that any infant that survives an abortion or miscarriage should be kept alive, doctors acknowledge privately that the practice varies widely from hospital to hospital.”
”It’s necessary to remember that these days abortion is done on request and therefore not a procedure you undertake in the interest of the fetus,” said Dr. Gordon W. Douglas, the chief of obstetrics and gynecology at New York University Medical Center…”
”It makes us all schizophrenic,” said Dr. Richard Hausknecht, an associate clinical professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Mount Sinai Hospital who specializes in high risk pregnancies. ”Nowadays we are asked to terminate a pregnancy that in two weeks doctors on the same floor are fighting to save.”
The article then goes on to discuss how the new procedure, D & E (discussed elsewhere on this site) eliminates the possibility of live births, but is very upsetting to the doctors. It goes on at length in this vein.
From the book Whatever Happened to the Human Race? by Francis Shaeffer and Doctor C. Everett Koop (former U.S. Surgeon General) Crossway Books, Westchester, Illinois.
“Of 607 second trimester abortions done at Mt. Sinai Hospital in Hartford, Connecticut, 45 resulted in live births. Although a fetus may live only a few hours, it must be pronounced dead by a physician, must receive both a birth and death certificate, and is sent to a funeral director for burial or cremation. A more expedient solution is offered in the publication of The International Correspondence Society of Obstetrics and Gynecologists (Nov 1974)
“At the time of delivery it has been our policy to wrap the fetus in a towel. The fetus is then moved into another room while our attention is turned to the care of the gravida (the mother) … Once we are sure her condition is stable, the fetus is evaluated. Almost invariably, all signs of life have ceased.”
“Hysterotomy gives the fetus the best chance for survival, but it is allowed to die through neglect or sometimes killed by direct act. In 1977 a Boston jury found Dr. Kenneth Edelin guilty of manslaughter for killing the fetus of this type of abortion. Dr. William J. Waddill, Jr., an obstetrician in California, was indicted and tried in 1977 for allegedly strangling to death a baby born alive following a saline abortion. The trial resulted in a hung jury when the judge introduced new thoughts on the California definition of death. The former mother-to-be sued for $17 million on grounds that she was not adequately informed of the possible outcome of the abortion.
“In 1977 the medical staff at Hollywood’s Memorial Hospital (Florida) protested, “We’ve had preemies that have lived that were less developed than some of the abortions were.”
“Thirty-eight live births following induced abortion were recorded in Upstate New York between July, 1970, and December, 1972. Twenty-six followed saline-induced abortion; twelve of these occurred at one hospital, and eight were associated with one physician. Underestimation of gestation and exchange of inadequate volumes of amniotic fluid and hypertonic saline produced concentrations insufficient to cause intrauterine death. Viable infants with iatrogenic central nervous system damage from salt poisoning are a possible consequence of improperly planned saline-induced abortions.”
From the article “Reported live births following induced abortion: two and one-half years’ experience in Upstate New York” by Stroh G, Hinman AR on Medline. If thirty-eight babies were born alive in one part of N.Y. in only two years, how many were born alive in other parts of the country?
In his textbook on how to do abortions, abortion practice, Dr. Warren Hern says the following:
“The advantages of the D&E procedure for the patient are significant. The complications rates are lower in most respects even in preliminary analysis. The time of terminations of the procedure is predictable, and preparation does not require overnight hospitalization. Parental or spouse consent is, therefore, not required, and confidentiality can be protected. The patient does not have to experience a prolonged and painful labor, which may be unproductive. She does not have to experience the expulsion of the fetus, which may or may not have signs of life, whereas in the strictly pharmacological approach, this event is common and the patient may be unattended when it happens.”
He also says, in chapter 5:
“The signs of fetal life on expulsion and the repugnance of dismemberment plague the alternatives in midtrimester abortion.”
“Abortion Practice” by Warren Hern, M.D., Boulder Colorado Abortionist published in 1984 by the J.B. Lippenott
In his book Mortal Lessons: Notes on the Art of Surgery (New York: Simon & Shuster) 1976, author Richard Selzer describes watching a saline abortion. He says that after seeing this abortion, the abortionist took him aside.
“Later, in the corridor, the doctor explains that the law does not permit abortions beyond the 24th week. That is when the fetus may be viable, he says. We stand together for a moment, and he tells me of an abortion in which the fetus cried after it was passed.
“What did you do?” I asked him.
“There was nothing to do but let it live,” he says. “It did very well. A case of mistaken dates.”
This exchange was also quoted in Robert M. Baird and Stuart E. Rosenbaum The Ethics of Abortion: Pro-Life vs Pro-Choice. (New York: Prometheus Books 2001) p 24
Abortionist Enrique Gerbi of Detroit Memorial hospital performed an abortion in October 1984 which resulted in the live birth of a 29-week girl. He shrugged and said that
“It happens all the time. This is not the first time, and it won’t be the last. It happens all the time.”
28 week-old unborn baby
Note: while live births from abortion or less, now than they were in the 80s, due to the increased use of the D&E procedure rather than the saline or prostaglandin procedures, they still happen. Go here to learn more.
“For the most part, the abortion industry stopped using saline and prostaglandin procedures because of the number of live births. A live birth means you have to let the baby die, or dispose of it in some distasteful way. Most second and third trimester abortionists use the D&E method, (dilation and evacuation) The abortionist uses large forceps to crush the baby inside the mother’s uterus and removes it in pieces. The side effects of live births and the mother going through labor are avoided. But it is a horrible procedure in which the baby must be re-constructed outside the uterus to be certain all the parts have been removed.”
Carol Everett, former owner of 2 abortion clinics and director of 4, on the procedures for second and third trimester abortions.
Quoted in an interview with her in the “Human Life Alliance Advertising Supplement” 1994.
