PRO-LIFE NEWS IN BRIEF.(four news stories from around the world about abortion and murders of babies and children)

Mother of Abandoned Baby Charged with Murder

A tiny baby boy, abandoned in the back seat of a car after an attempted abortion, died in a South African hospital March 11. His mother and a medical clinic worker have been charged with murder for inducing labor at 25-28 weeks of pregnancy, delivering the baby, and then wrapping him in newspaper, putting him in a plastic bag, and leaving him to die.

The baby lived for three days after the attempted abortion. Doctors at Pretoria Academic Hospital told the Johannesburg Star he died of septicemia (an infection in the blood stream) due to the way he was delivered and treated after birth by his mother, Pinky Phaahla, 34, and clinic worker Elizabeth Molomo, 40.

Workers in a business located next to a clinic in Marabastad watched as a woman put a black plastic bag in a car early in the morning of March 8, according to the Star. When they investigated, they discovered the bag held a baby.

"When we arrived, the man from the panelbeating [auto repair] shop dumped the bag on the ground in front of us," police inspector Riann Klopper told the Star. "It was only after I had stared at the bloody sight in disbelief for a few moments that I saw the child move."

The baby weighed 1.1 kilograms (less than two and a half pounds) when he was taken to the hospital. According to South African law, only babies weighing more than 1 kilogram can be resuscitated. If the baby weighed just 100 grams less, he would not have been given treatment, the Star reported.

Despite the best efforts of the medical staff, however, the baby did not survive. "Doctors had tried everything but the baby did not make it," Dr. Ernest Kenoshi of Pretoria Academic Hospital told the South African Press Association.