Hearing on H.R. 4292, the "Born Alive Infant Protection Act of 2000"
July 20, 2000
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 ½ 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 dead patients are taken.
Other co-workers have told me many upsetting stories about live aborted babies whom they have cared for. I was told about an aborted baby who was supposed to have Spina bifida but was delivered with an intact spine. Another nurse is haunted by the memory of an aborted baby who came out weighing much more than expected ~ almost two pounds. She is haunted because she doesn't know if she made a mistake by not getting that baby medical help. A Support Associate told me about a live aborted baby who was left to die on the counter of the Soiled Utility Room wrapped in a disposable towel. This baby was accidentally thrown into 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.
I was recently told about a situation by a nurse who said, "I can't stop thinking about it." She had a patient who was 23+ weeks pregnant, and it did not look as if her baby would be able to continue to live inside of her. The baby was healthy and had up to a 39% chance of survival, according to national statistics. But the patient chose to abort. The baby was born alive. If the mother had wanted everything done for her baby, there would have been a neonatologist, pediatric resident, neonatal nurse, and respiratory therapist present for the delivery, and the baby would have been taken to our Neonatal Intensive Care Unit for specialized care. Instead, the only personnel present for this delivery were an obstetrical resident and my co-worker. After delivery the baby, who showed early signs of thriving, was merely wrapped in a blanket and kept in the Labor & Delivery Department until she died 2-1/2 hours later.
Something is very wrong with a legal system that says doctors are mandated to pronounce babies dead but are not mandated to assess babies for life and chances of survival. In other words, our laws currently say that babies have no rights to medical oversight until they are dead. We look the other way and pretend that these babies aren't human while they're alive but human only after they are dead. We issue these babies both birth and death certificates, but it is really only the death certificate that matters. No other children in America are medically abandoned like this.
Abortion is a cancer that is literally killing America. It is killing our children while it is killing our consciences. It began when we took God out of our decision-making and proclaimed that the little beings growing inside of women were "products of conception" and not little girls and little boys. Who should be surprised that we keep pushing the envelope so that now we are aborting these "products of conception" alive? I even work at a hospital named "Christ" that does this very thing! It is beyond me to comprehend that we're doing what we're doing now, and so I can't even imagine what horrible ways we will think of next to torture our children. Please help put an end to this by proclaiming infants as American human being homo sapiens with the same legal and medical rights that you and I big people have. Thank you.
I am not talking about a leak, I am talking about a true rupture. I have never seen a real rupture seal and go to term. I have seen some women hold out to 23-24 weeks, and I would not want a 24 weeker to be treated agressively if it were my child. Have you seen what we do to those kids? I accept that some parents choose full treatment, and I honor their wishes, but I would never want that for my child and I don't think that's the same as abortion or murder. It just means I am not willing to put my child through that kind of pain when the odds aren't even close to good. Does that make any sense to you?
I checked out the link. I don't know if it was good or bad. Most of those with PPROM, did not make it to 24 weeks. Some of the few that made it past that point, still lost their babies. I only read the ones on the first page, but it didn't seem like PPROM results in a healthy baby very often. And according to most of the docs in these stories, babies don't survive PPROM and fluid doesn't reaccumulate.
when i read this i cried. i had generally been pro choice, but this partial birth abortion stuff has gone way TOO far. what has the world come to? For these folks who use abortion as their personal birth control(ive seen it) shame on them. its just too hard to take a pill or whatever, apparently. so they have 4,5,or even 6 abortions??.selfish. sometimes situations arise, like a child who would be born with many defects, or some of the conditions described in other posts. i suppose it could be a painful decision, either way, but despite disliking abortion more each day, i could understand the reasons for maybe choosing to do so. On the other hand, many women lie about how far along they are just to get kill a probably healthy baby. they dont care if its only 15 weeks left and then they could give uo that child for adoption. what were they thinking about for 4,5,or 6 months while carrying this baby, feeling it kick etc..?? Parial birth abortion on normal, healthy fetuses is evil. its all for convenience. The lonely, sad way these babies are treated is a discrace to all. come on, would they even treat a dog that way?? most people would not. Pro choice say this new bill has no provisions for safety of mom etc.. then they put it in there. Many of these partial birth abortions are done on healthy women and healthy fetuses. That is a big part of the problem. Its a darn shame that some of the human race isnt even human at all!
Like I said in an earlier posting.....in my area they advertise for abortions to 28 weeks, we are at that point way past viability....we have to use the NIPS scale for assessing an infants pain, so we as a medical community have agreed that infants feel pain. SOOO when does that start...only at 40 weeks...38....28....please!!!!! Do you not think that a baby feels pain as it has the back of its head punctured with metz..and its brains sucked out.
And I will agree that the number of women that choose to have a late term abortion is probably very small but considering what is involved I think even 1 is too many. Just my thoughts....
What is the Metz test your talking about? And when is a fetus's nervous system developed? Well I just went into the internet and found an article on it...so here it is.........
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Summary of a presentation given by Dr. Paul Ranalli on "Pain, Fetal Development, and Partial-birth abortion" on June 27, 1997. (I personally attended this presentation). Related links are included below.
The fetus can feel pain at 20 weeks. This is probably a conservatively late estimate, but it is scientifically solid. Elements of the pain-conveying system (spino-thalamic system) begin to be assembled at 7 weeks; enough development has occurred by 12-14 weeks that some pain perception is likely, and continues to build through the second trimester. By 20 weeks, the spino- thalamic system is fully established and connected.
There are three different indicators providing evidence that the fetus feels pain.
Anatomical
- pain receptors spread over the body in stages: 8-16 weeks
- pain impulse connections in the spinal cord link up and reach the thalamus (the brain's reception center): 7-20 weeks (summarized by Anand, K.J.S., Atlanta)
Physiological/Hormonal
- fetuses withdraw from painful stimulation
- two types of stress hormones, normally released by adults subjected to pain, are released by adults subjected to pain, are releases in massive amounts by the fetus subjected to a needle puncture to draw a blood sample:
(a) from 19 weeks onward (N. Fisk; London, England)
(b) from 16 weeks onward (J. Partch; Kiel, Germany)
Behavioral
- withdraw from pain
- change in vital signs
A 20-30 week old fetus actually will feel more pain than an adult. The period between 20-30 weeks is a uniquely vulnerable time, since the pain system is fully established, yet the higher level pain-modifying system has barely begun to develop.
Below is a graphical represenation depicting this mis-match in pain detection and pain modification
Dr. Paul Ranalli is a neurologist at the University of Toronto and acting president of the de Veber Institute for Bioethics and Social Research. He is also Vice-President of Canadian Physicians For Life
Additional Information
Unborn Pain
Franics X. Rocca @ The American Spectator
Babies may feel pain of abortion Roger Highfield @ Electronic Telegraph
Pain and It's Effects In the Human Neonate and Fetus - from the New England Journal of Medicine. Vol. 317 No 21 (19 Nov. 1987): Pages 1321-1329.
Foetus 'may feel pain as early as six week old'
Abortion doctors may give foetuses painkiller
In testimony before the House Constitution Subcommittee, Professor Robert White confirmed that the 'fetus within this time frame of gestation, 20 weeks and beyond, is fully capable of experiencing pain.... Without question, all of this is a dreadfully painful experience for any infant subjected to such a surgical procedure."
This Ms. Stanek spoke at my husband's church this past weekend and her talk just made you want to lay down and bawl. Basically the docs at Christ Hospital wouldn't do quote "normal" abortions, they just induced labor and went home. The women were quite frequently birthing alive, normal, albeit VERY premature babies, who were then left on sink tops to die. THAT is what she was so upset about.
She didn't like abortions to begin with, but the fact that the babies were born alive, suffering and left to die alone is what got her on her soapbox. Some mothers saw the babies alive and awake and freaked out. Some parents/grandparents became hysterical. It was a very very sad thing. Evidently the mothers were not informed that there was a possibility of the babies being born alive.
I have to say I couldn't stand it either if I was working at such a place. She said the aborting docs induced the labor and left the nurses and residents there to "finish things up."
Yes it was heartbreaking. Then she talked about her grandson who was born quite prematurely during her stand against the hospital, and how he was not much bigger than some of the little aborted babies who died after "birth". He is now a healthy toddler and it just underscored the travesty at Christ Hospital.
tamrnmomof4
71 Posts
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