In ‘Pro-Choice 1990: Skeletons in the Closet” by David Kuperlain and Mark Masters in Oct “New Dimensions” magazine Dr. David Brewer talks about witnessing a late term abortion for the first time.
“I remember an experience as a resident on a hysterotomy. I remember seeing the baby move underneath the sack of membranes, as the cesarean incision was made, before the doctor broke the water. The thought came to me, “My God, that’s a person” Then he broke the water. And when he broke the water, it was like I had a pain in my heart, just like when I saw that first suction abortion. And then he delivered the baby, and I couldn’t touch it… I wasn’t much of an assistant. I just stood there, and the reality of what was doing on finally began to seep into my calloused brain and heart. They took that little baby that was making little sounds and moving and kicking, and set it on that table in a cold, stainless steel bowl. Every time I would look over while we were repairing the incision in uterus and finishing the Caesarean, I would see that little person moving in that bowl. And it kicked and moved less and less, of course, as time went on. I can remember going over and looking at the baby when we were done with the surgery and the baby was still alive. You could see the chest was moving and the heart was beating, and the baby would try to take a little breath, and it really hurt inside, and it began to educate me as to what abortion really was.”
One common type of abortion practiced up until the early nineties was a saline abortion. In these second and third trimester abortions, a salt solution would be injected into the mother’s womb.
Protected from her uterus by the amniotic sack, this caustic solution would poison the baby and burn his or her skin. In a few hours, the baby would die and labor would begin. The mother would then give birth to a dead baby.
Besides causing many live births, this type of abortion tended to be dangerous to the woman involved.
Other methods of abortion that cause live births are prostaglandin, in which a strong drug causes the uterus to contract violently and expel a severely bruised (but sometimes alive) baby; and hysterotomy (seldom used) in which the aborted baby is removed in a procedure similar to a C-section.
Here are some accounts of abortion live births.
“But one night, a lady delivered and I was called to come and see her because she was uncontrollable. I went in the room and she was going to pieces. She was having a nervous breakdown, screaming and thrashing. The nurses were upset because they couldn’t get any work done and all the other patients were upset because this lady was screaming and I walked in, and here was her little saline abortion baby. It had been born and it was kicking and moving for a little while before it finally died of those terrible burns. Because the salt solution gets into the lungs and burns the lungs too.”
From the workshop “Meet the Abortion Providers” held in Chicago, former abortion provider David Brewer, M.D.
“Since hypertonic saline was so toxic if it was injected into the uterine wall instead of the amniotic sac; there was a constant search for the ideal drug. Prostaglandin has now become the drug of choice, but one of the early experiments was with hypertonic urea. The major disadvantage in using it, was the problem of live births. I remember using it on a patient that the psychiatric residents brought to us from their clinic from an institutionalized patient who really was crazy. I’ll never forget delivering her nearly two pound baby, and hearing her screams, “My baby’s alive, my baby’s alive.” It lived several days.”
This incident comes from England.Office manager Julie Robb, 38, was admitted to Queen’s Park Hospital for a “therapeutic termination” after a scan revealed that her 23-week-old foetus could have serious abnormalities, (cerebral palsy, water on the brain, or downs’ syndrome)… A team of medics induced Mrs Robb who gave birth to Elizabeth, weighing 696 grams (1 lb 8oz), at 2.25am on December 7 of 1994.
A lawsuit was filed because the baby was born alive and no effort was made to give her medical care.
According to the testimony of medical experts, the baby “gasped” after it was born and showed signs of life. She also had hearbeat. The team (2 midwives and 2 specialists) decided not to revive the baby. The death certificate showed that the baby was alive for 90 minutes, Medical personnel testified it was less than 35 minutes.
Verdict was in favor of hospital.
“My ‘beautiful’ abortion baby” Lancashire Evening Telegraph Nov 1, 1995
A doctor who has cared for premature babies described experiences he had while still a resident.
He assisted a doctor in performing hysterectomy/TAB- a procedure where a pregnant uterus is removed as a type of sterilization and abortion in one.
“I already had assisted on two other hysterectomies, one for endometrial cancer and the other for a benign tumor. I had been taught during the first two cases to “always open the uterus and examine the contents” before sending the specimen to pathology. So, after the professor remove the uterus, I asked him if he wanted me to open it, eager to show him that I already knew standard procedure. He replied, “no, because the fetus might be alive and then we would be faced with an ethical dilemma.”
A couple of weeks later, now on the obstetrical service, I retrieved a bag of IV fluid that the resident physician had requested. The IV fluids were to administer prostaglandin, a drug that induces the uterus to contract and expel. The patient made little eye contact with us. A few hours later, I saw the aborted fetus moving its legs and gasping in a bedpan, which was then covered with a drape.”
He then goes on to describe how a fellow resident spoke about a new procedure called a D & X abortion (dubbed partial birth abortion by pro-lifers.) He relates his reaction and what transpired when the abortion was performed on a handicapped baby in the third trimester.
“The resident described how he was going to deliver the body of the baby and then, while the head was entrapped, insert a trochar (a long metal instrument with a sharp point) through the base of the skull. During the final portion of this procedure, he indicated that he would move a suction catheter back and forth across the brainstem to ensure that the baby would be born dead. Several of the pediatric residents kept saying, “you’re kidding” and, “you’re making this up” in disbelief…
Later, that afternoon, the obstetrical resident perform the procedure, but unfortunately the infant was born with a heart beating and some weak gasping respirations, so the baby was brought to NICU: He was a slightly premature infant, who weighed about 4 pounds or 5 pounds. His head was collapsed on itself. The bed was a mess from blood and drainage. I did my exam (no other anomalies were noted)…. then pronounced the baby dead about an hour later….
No one held this baby, a fact that I regret to this day. His mother’s life was never at risk.”
Hanes Swingle “A Doctor’s Grisly Experience With Abortion” the Washington Times, July 23, 2003 page a 18
An incident at the Florida Hialeah abortion clinic has attracted attention in the mainstream press. The Miami Herald ran an article about an eighteen-year-old woman who claimed to have given birth to a living baby at the clinic.
Other witnesses confirmed the story. From the article:
“She told police she went for an abortion on July 19 and clinic employees gave her drugs to begin dilation. The next day, the teen said, she went to the clinic to complete the procedure. When she told the clinic staff she wasn’t feeling well, they put her in a recovery room while she waited for the doctor to arrive.
In the recovery room, she said, she suddenly gave birth. She told detectives she saw the baby gasping for five minutes as clinic staffers began shrieking, according to a search warrant.
On July 22, detectives searched the clinic — but did not find the baby. Five days later, a source told police the baby had been tossed on the roof of the one-story strip mall.
On July 28, investigators raided the clinic again. This time, they found the baby inside a red biohazard bag in the clinic.”
In an autopsy the age of the baby was estimated at 22 weeks after conception. One week older than this premature baby who survived:
It was later determined that the living baby had been stuffed into a plastic bag by Belkis Gonzalez, co-owner of the clinic.
Detective Tony Rodriguez, the lead investigator on the case, was quoted saying:
“In 24 years of law enforcement, I have never seen a case like this.”
In November an autopsy on the aborted baby girl revealed that she had indeed been born alive. She had black hair and brown eyes. The baby was named Shaunice Denise Oshbourne. According to a spokesman for Operation Rescue, who obtained the autopsy:
“Once she [Shaunice] was born, she was deserving of the same protections under the law as the rest of us….Shoving her into a plastic bag and tossing her onto a roof to die is just unconscionable.”
Despite the undisputed fact that a baby was born alive, no charges have been filed, and none are foreseen since the baby would not have officially been considered ‘viable’ for another week.
Sources:
“Fetus’ Age Key to Possible Charges Against Hialeah Abortion Clinic: Procecuters Looking into a Case at a Hialeah Abortion Clinic Where a Baby was Born Alive are Weighing Whether to File Criminal Charges” Susannah A. Nesmith, David Ovalle and Jacob Goldstein, The Miami Herald Sep 17, 2006
“Autopsy Confirms that ‘Aborted’ Florida Baby was Born Alive” OR Press Release
“Dead Baby Found in Abortion Clinic: Clinic Closed” by Dave Malkoff
Dr. Martin Haskell was at the center of another live birth controversy. In the National Review article “Dismemberment and Choice” by Michael R. Heaphy, a possible live birth is described by University of Cincinnati student Yvonne Brower. Brower called up Dr. Haskell for permission to witness abortions because she was working on a term paper. She witnessed these abortions on September 21, 1989.
Later, she filed a complaint with police.
The following is an excerpt from the police report:
She stated that by 11 o’clock she had already observed two “D&E” three-day procedures on two patients. She stated on the third patient, however, the abortion was different …. The patient’s water was already broken and she spontaneously gave birth prematurely before the proper D&E procedure could be done. She stated that the baby was delivered feet first very quickly through the birth canal. The head was on its way out when Dr. Haskell reached over and got his scissors and snipped the right side of the baby’s common carotid artery.
Even then, the report reads, the baby wasn’t dead.
The complainant stated that the baby was still moving when she looked at it once again …. it was breathing shallow breaths, as was evidenced by the chest moving up and down. She stated that she could also observe the baby’s hand having slow, controlled, muscular movements, unlike the short jerky twitchy motions she had seen and learned to expect when the baby was already dead before it came out of the birth canal.
Dr. Martin Haskell described the abortion (in The Dayton Daily News) as follows:
“it came out very quickly after I put the scissors up in the cervical canal and pierced the skull and spread the scissors apart. It popped right on out …. the previous two, I had to use the suction to collapse the skull.”
It was Brower’s word against the abortionist’s. No charges were filed.
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.”
“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.’
