Thursday, July 20, 2000
10:00 a.m.; 2237 Rayburn House Office Building
WITNESS LIST
Panel I
Hadley Arkes, Edward Ney Professor of Jurisprudence and American
Institutions, Amherst College
Allison Baker, Charlottesville, Virginia
Jill L. Stanek, Mokena, Illinois
Matthew G. Hile, Ph.D., St. Louis, Missouri
Gianna Jessen, Franklin, Tennessee
Panel II
Honorable Stephanie Tubbs Jones (D-OH)
Panel III
Kenneth Thomas, Legislative Attorney, American Law Division,
Congressional Research Service,
The Library of Congress
Gerard V. Bradley, Professor of Law, Notre Dame Law School
F. Sessions Cole, M.D., Professor of Pediatrics and Cell Biology and
Physiology, Washington
University School of Medicine, St. Louis, Missouri
Watson A. Bowes, Jr., M.D., Professor Emeritus, Department of Obstetrics and
Gynecology,
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine
Robert P. George, McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence, Department of
Politics, Princeton
University
Testimony of Jill L. Stanek, RN
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 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 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.
Added to second-to-last paragraph of Jill's oral testimony:
"I am also very uncomfortable with the fact that the very doctors who may be
miscalculating due dates and fetal birth weights, or misdiagnosing fetal
handicaps, are the same ones deciding that these babies should not be assessed
after delivery. Shouldn't these babies be given the simple opportunity for
second opinion, just like you and I?"
Statement of Allison Baker, RN, BSN
Hearing on H.R. 4292, The Born-Alive Infants Protection Act
Subcommittee on the Constitution
July 20, 2000
In August of 1998 I began working in a high risk labor and delivery unit at
Christ Hospital and Medical Center in Oak Lawn, Illinois. When I was hired, I
was informed of a procedure called "therapeutic abortion" which was performed in
the unit. This procedure was reserved for babies with particular conditions such
as Down's Syndrome, Spina Bifida, Potter's Syndrome and many others. It was
explained to me that in these cases, the mother would have an induced labor to
expel the fetus in order to discontinue growth and life. This was an elective
procedure and the patient was to be informed of all the details it involved.
Between August of 1998 and August of 1999, I witnessed three particular cases
of therapeutic abortions at Christ Hospital first hand. The first occurred on a
day shift. I happened to walk into a "soiled utility room" and saw, lying on the
metal counter, a fetus, naked, exposed and breathing, moving its arms and legs.
The fetus was visibly alive, and was gasping for breath. I left to find the
nurse who was caring for the patient and this fetus. When I asked her about the
fetus, she said that she was so busy with the mother that she didn't have time
to wrap and place the fetus in the warmer, and she asked if I would do that for
her. Later I found out that the fetus was 22 weeks old, and had undergone a
therapeutic abortion because it had been diagnosed with Down's Syndrome. I did
wrap the fetus and place him in a warmer and for 2-1/2 hours he maintained a
heartbeat, and then finally expired.
The second case involved a couple who had requested a therapeutic abortion
for their 20 week fetus with Spina Bifida. My shift started at 11:00 PM, and the
patient delivered her fetus about 10 minutes before I took her as a patient.
During the time the fetus was alive, the patient kept asking me when the fetus
would die. For an hour and 45 minutes the fetus maintained a heartbeat. The
parents were frustrated, and obviously not prepared for this long period of
time. Since I was the nurse of both the mother and fetus, I held the fetus in my
arms until it finally expired.
The third case occurred when a nurse with whom I was working was taking care
of a mother waiting to deliver her 16 week Down's Syndrome fetus. Again, I
walked into the soiled utility room and the fetus was fully exposed, lying on
the baby scale. I went to find the nurse who was caring for this mother and
fetus, and she asked if I could help her by measuring and weighing the fetus for
the charting and death certificate. When I went back into the soiled utility
room, the fetus was moving its arms and legs. I then listened for a heartbeat,
and found that the fetus still was alive. I wrapped the fetus and in 45 minutes
the fetus finally expired.
