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Jill Stanek was working the night shift in the labor and delivery ward at Christ Hospital in Oak Lawn, Illinois, when she happened upon another nurse hurrying to the ward's soiled utility room. The nurse was carrying a tiny, preterm baby boy diagnosed with Down syndrome. The boy had just been aborted during a not uncommon procedure known as "induced-labor abortion," or "live-birth abortion," in which labor is induced and a prematurely born baby is left to die. According to Stanek, the infant was about 22 weeks old, 10 inches long, and weighed only half a pound.

According to hospital policy, infants who survive abortions are supposed to receive the "comfort care" of being wrapped in a blanket and either held or placed in a warmer for the remainder of their short lives.

In this case, however, the parents did not want to hold the child, and the nurse told Stanek she was too busy to care for him.

Unable to bear the thought of the baby dying alone in the utility room alongside dirty instruments, trash, and soiled laundry, Stanek held the child and rocked him until he died 45 minutes later.

According to Stanek, such live-birth abortions, which the hospital refers to as "medically indicated pregnancy terminations," are most often used when a developing baby has been diagnosed with lethal abnormalities or a nonfatal but debilitating condition such as Down syndrome or spina bifida. During the procedure, a drug is used to dilate a pregnant woman's cervix, leading to the delivery of a preterm baby.

Stanek says her boss told her the hospital uses this method of abortion because it is "more humane" than other midterm abortion procedures, which involve dismembering the fetus.

But because the majority of the babies born during live-birth abortions do not possess sufficiently developed lungs, most suffocate, on occasion clinging to life for hours, she says.

Such cases have led to a bill before Congress designed to protect infants who are born alive or who survive abortion. Proponents say the legislation is necessary in light of court decisions this year that have taken a woman's right to abortion dangerously close to infanticide.

Stanek's story is not an isolated case. During a hearing held by the House Judiciary's Constitution subcommittee on July 20, Allison Baker, one of Stanek's coworkers, told of entering a utility room and finding a tiny infant lying naked on a metal counter. The 22-week-old preterm baby was "ex posed and breathing, moving [his] arms and legs." According to Baker's testimony, the baby was "visibly alive, and was gasping for breath."

After seeking out the baby's nurse, who told Baker she did not have time to care for the infant, Baker wrapped the baby and put him in a warmer, where he maintained a heartbeat for two and a half hours before he died.

Stanek tells of another member of the hospital's staff who found the body of a newborn in a garbage can inside a utility room. Also a victim of an induced-labor abortion, the infant had been wrapped in a paper towel and accidentally discarded. The tiny corpse fell out of the towel and onto the floor when hospital personnel were going through the trash.

Stanek and Baker were among those who testified in support of the Born Alive Infants Protection Act (hr4292), which would establish that an infant "who is born alive at any stage of development" is a person for purposes of federal law.

The bill, passed by the House on September 26, defines "born alive" to mean that the baby has been completely expelled or extracted from the mother and shows such signs of life as breathing, a beating heart, and voluntary movement.

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November 13 2000, Vol. 44, No. 13