Category: Quotes

A student midwife identified as MK tells the following story:

It happened in 2015, in the hospital delivery room. One patient was present, she was 22 weeks +3 days amenorrheic [without a period] and was there for a late miscarriage. The child was born alive, and to prevent it from crying, the doctor quickly covered his face. He was then taken into a side room (baby resuscitation room) where I could join him. I was able to find that there was no apparent defect, he struggled to breathe and he had some slight gestures.

He was fully formed, had eyelashes, hair, nails … (He had even slightly long nails!) He weighed 565g and was about 27cm. The doctor came in and asked me if he was still breathing, or else we would make an injection for that “to be resolved.”

Five minutes later he came back and grabbed a syringe KCl (lethal injection for this premature baby). Somewhat bewildered, I asked him if we cannot do something “more natural”, but he answers my question by sweeping [sic] he prefers not to let the child suffer. He then pierced the baby in the heart, and injected the product. The child, during the injection, moved all its members. I do not know what that meant, but perhaps he suffered.

The little boy lived just a quarter of an hour. The medical team told the parents of the child that he was stillborn. This is why we did not want him to cry at birth: it would be too traumatic for them.

What shocked me personally, is the cold-blooded doctor (head of department) that had injected the child in the heart. The fact that the child was alive was a problem that needed to be addressed: it has never been contemplated to tell the parents what really happened.

Grégor Puppinck PhD (Dir.), Claire de La Hougue PhD, Andreea Popescu, Christophe Foltzenlogel.  “Late Term Abortion & Neonatal Infanticide in Europe: Petition for the Rights of Newborns Surviving Their Abortion” European Centre for Law and Justice

From a European report on babies born alive after abortions.

Midwife M.J. tells her story. She and a male nursing student were handed white sheets rolled like a ball and told to check for instruments. They discovered, however, that inside was a baby still breathing.

We opened the sheet, removed all the compresses and discovered a lot of clotted blood: we discovered within the blood, a mass, that was a fetus, and he was still breathing. We were shocked.

It all felt so frigid! The nursing student and I talked and agreed to say that he was alive and that we had to do something immediately. So, we wiped and washed the little body and wrapped him in a “cloth diaper.”

We delicately placed him on the tray and covered him. I do not know what his gestational age was, but he was a boy and his members were well formed. Another nurse arrived, and she saw us near the fetus. She said we did well and we took this opportunity to question her:

“What happened to the mother? “She did what she had to do to abort and lost a lot of blood by expelling the fetus. She is now in the operating room and it is unclear if she will make it!” My colleague and I stayed near the fetus who was breathing heavily with increasing spaces between each breathe. It felt like time had stopped. We were there to look at him, this little living being, talking to him and stroking his little body through the drape for 45 minutes at least. … He finally stopped breathing and we left him on his tray.

Grégor Puppinck PhD (Dir.), Claire de La Hougue PhD, Andreea Popescu, Christophe Foltzenlogel.  “Late Term Abortion & Neonatal Infanticide in Europe: Petition for the Rights of Newborns Surviving Their Abortion” European Centre for Law and Justice