Illinois hospital left infants to die in a 'soiled utility room' after they survived abortion during second or third trimesters, says nurse
Jill Stanek, a registered nurse, told a House committee how she cared for an infant with Down syndrome after he had survived an abortion and was left to die in a "soiled utility room" at the Christ Hospital in Illinois.
Stanek, now national campaign chair at the pro-life Susan B. Anthony List, recounted an incident from 20 years ago in her prepared testimony on the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, Breitbart reports.
She said she became aware of a procedure known as induced labor abortion after Christ Hospital “committed abortions into the second and third trimesters.” The procedure sometimes resulted in aborted babies born alive.
“In the event a baby was aborted alive, he or she received no medical assessments or care but was only given what my hospital called ‘comfort care,’” Stanek said.
In her testimony, Stanek called attention to the fact that babies do survive abortions. She recalled one night when a nursing co-worker was moving a baby to the Soiled Utility Room after he had been aborted as he had Down syndrome.
"I could not bear the thought of this suffering child dying alone, so I rocked him for the 45 minutes that he lived," she recalled. "He was 21 to 22 weeks old, weighed about 1/2 pound, and was about the size of my hand. He was too weak to move very much, expending all his energy attempting to breathe. Toward the end he was so quiet 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."
The baby was pronounced dead shortly after, and Stanek subsequently "folded his little arms across his chest, wrapped him in a tiny shroud, and carried him to the hospital morgue where we took all our dead patients."
A spokesman for the Susan B. Anthony List told Chicago Sun-Times that “between 10 percent and 20 percent” of aborted babies “survive for short periods outside the womb.”
“From what I observed, it was not uncommon for a live aborted baby to linger for an hour or two or even longer,” Stanek explained in her testimony. “One abortion survivor I was aware of lived for almost eight hours.”
According to her, of the 16 babies aborted by Christ Hospital in the year 2000, four were aborted alive, and each of them lived between 1-1/2 and 3 hours.
Stanek then referred to the words of Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam (D), who said in a January interview that a new abortion bill introduced in his state’s House of Delegates would allow an "infant" to be "delivered" and "resuscitated, if that’s what the mother and the family desired" after discussing with their physicians.
“When I heard Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam, a pediatric neurologist, describe during an interview the process by which doctors determine to shelve unwanted newborns to die, it hit painfully home to me,” Stanek told the hearing. “He said, quoting, ‘If a mother is in labor, I can tell you exactly what would happen. The infant would be delivered. The infant would be kept comfortable. The infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired.’”
“Gov. Northam was right,” she emphasized. “That is exactly what happens.”
The hearing on the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act was announced by House Republican Whip Steve Scalise (LA) and his colleagues Reps. Ann Wagner (MO) and pro-life caucus chair Chris Smith (NJ).
The legislation, which is designed to protect babies from infanticide after they are born alive following abortion, has been blocked by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and other Democrat leaders more than 80 times.