"I can't stop thinking about it.".(Brief Article)

Editor's note. Many organizations, such as National Right to Life, and individuals played pivotal roles in the passage of the "Born-Alive Infants Protection Act" recently signed into law by President George W. Bush. Near the top is Jill Stanek, R.N., a nurse whose allegation that late-term babies who survived abortion attempts at a Chicago-area hospital were left to die without receiving treatment stirred enormous controversy. In these abortions, Stanek testified, mothers are given labor-inducing drugs, and the babies are delivered without being killed in utero, according to the Chicago Tribune. Most of these babies are stillborn, but some survive and live for several minutes to a few hours. The following is her July 20, 2000, testimony before the Constitution Subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee. Stanek was subsequently fired from her position.

I am a Registered Nurse who has worked in the Labor & Delivery Department at Christ Hospital in Oak Lawn, Illinois, for the past five years. Christ Hospital performs abortions on women in their second or even third trimesters of pregnancy. Sometimes the babies being aborted are healthy, and sometimes they are not.

The method of abortion that Christ Hospital uses is called "induced labor abortion," also now known as "live-birth abortion." This type of abortion can be performed different ways, but the goal always is to cause a pregnant woman's cervix to open so that she will deliver a premature baby who dies during the birth process or soon afterward. The way that induced abortion is most often executed at my hospital is by the physician inserting a medication called Cytotec into the birth canal close to the cervix. Cytotec irritates the cervix and stimulates it to open. When this occurs, the small, preterm baby drops out of the uterus, oftentimes alive. It is not uncommon for one of these live aborted babies to linger for an hour or two or even longer. One of them once lived for almost eight hours.

In the event that a baby is aborted alive, he or she receives no medical assessments or care but is only given what my hospital calls "comfort care." "Comfort care" is defined as keeping the baby warm in a blanket until he or she dies, although even this minimal compassion is not always provided. It is not required that these babies be held during their short lives.

One night, a nursing co-worker was taking an aborted Down's Syndrome baby who was born alive to our Soiled Utility Room because his parents did not want to hold him, and she did not have time to hold him. I could not bear the thought of this suffering child dying alone in a Soiled Utility Room, so I cradled and rocked him for the 45 minutes that he lived. He was 21 to 22 weeks old, weighed about 1/2 pound, and was about 10 inches long.

He was too weak to move very much, expending any energy he had trying to breathe. Toward the end he was so quiet that I couldn't tell if he was still alive unless I held him up to the light to see if his heart was still beating through his chest wall. After he was pronounced dead, we folded his little arms across his chest, wrapped him in a tiny shroud, and carried him to the hospital morgue where all of our ...