She held him up to the light and peered through his translucent skin to see if his heart was still beating.

She tied his tiny arms across his chest 45 minutes later when he died and took him to the hospital morgue, just like the adult patients.

For Stanek, a nurse at Christ Hospital in Oak Lawn, details of how this nameless baby died two years ago come easily. She no longer gets emotional over the particulars.

But some of her listeners do.

The tiny creature, conceived just 21 weeks earlier, was an under-developed baby aborted because he had Down syndrome. The doctor used a procedure in which a woman's labor is induced to trigger an abortion. Occasionally, babies show signs of life when they emerge.

The baby Stanek cared for sustained 45 minutes of laborious breathing before his heart stopped. He was 10 inches long and fully developed but not yet ready to breathe on his own, she said.

The parents didn't want to hold him, and the nursing staff was too busy. Stanek scooped him up from the counter in a utility room where he had been set aside.

His brief existence compelled her to speak out against her employer, against abortion, against what she considers infanticide.

For her, the anonymous baby became the catalyst of a life-changing experience. His last breath, exhaled from a lung no larger than a teaspoon, breathed purpose into her. She was no longer the pro-life nurse who refused to participate in abortions. She became the pro-life nurse who spoke out against the hospital that employed her, leaked internal documents to the press, organized prayer vigils at the hospital, testified before Congress and fought to keep her job in labor and delivery where she still works today.

The hospital has disputed some of Stanek's claims during the two years since she made her story public. However, it has changed its policy on abortions to more strictly limit the circumstances under which they are allowed. Today, a fetus with Down syndrome could not be aborted at Christ, according to hospital officials.

If a baby shows signs of life following an abortion, the parents are allowed to hold and cuddle the baby. Sometimes, the infants are placed in the nursery with other babies. They usually die within a few hours of birth.

The induced-labor abortions are performed out of mercy for the parents and the child when a severe defect likely would cause the baby to die outside the womb, according to hospital officials. Each case is carefully screened. The hospital oversaw 4,020 healthy births last year and performed 16 induced-labor abortions, according to the Rev. Larry Easterling. Of the 16, five survived the delivery.

Thrust under national scrutiny by Stanek's testimony, Christ Hospital has waged a careful public relations campaign to remind the public the induced-labor procedure is widely accepted among doctors and performed nationwide.

Hospital officials approach Stanek cautiously. While they acknowledge her right to free speech, they are frustrated with a public perception that they are uncaring.

"In fact, compassionate care is afforded to everyone here," Easterling said. "In every (abortion) last year, the mothers did hold the babies. They sometimes named the children. These were wanted babies."

Groups that support abortion rights raise doubts about Stanek's credibility.

"I find it disturbing that she would violate patients' privacy by discussing what takes place in operating rooms in the hospital," said Betty V. Holcomb, co-president of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice-Illinois. "I have not seen a physician corroborate her stories. When she states that something is alive, what does she mean by 'alive?' What is her definition of 'baby?' "

But Stanek's story has been backed up by a fellow Christ Hospital nurse who also testified before Congress when it voted on an abortion bill last year. The hospital has not disputed their testimony.

Stanek continues to crusade against the hospital's practice, leaning heavily on the Bible and the First Amendment in protecting her job. Any abortion is unacceptable to her, yet she cannot bring herself to quit.

"I'm not a nut, so I hope this doesn't come off sounding nutty," she says. "The fact is, I never felt like I've been given permission to leave. I never felt like I've done enough yet. There's a scripture that says, 'I am here with the children you gave me to watch.' If I leave, what's going to happen that I may be stopping, just by my very presence?"

Family values

Raised in a Christian family, Stanek grew up in a small northwest Indiana town. Her mom was a church secretary, and her dad was a preacher and Sunday school teacher who encouraged her to stand up for her values.

If she misbehaved just to fit in with her friends, her dad would say, "If I told you to stick your head in the toilet, would you?"

When she was about 3 years old, he marched her back into a grocery store after finding a candy bar hidden in her hand. He made her "own up to what she had done," recalled Stanek's mother, Mylene Hollar.

They lived on a resort in Cedar Lake, Ind., where Stanek's grandfather bought land. It was a vacation spot where families came to swim, camp and fish.

She was an outspoken, somewhat fearless child. She learned to sail as a teenager and wasn't afraid when, on her first outing, the wind carried her precariously across the lake. Her parents had to come get her in the boat.

But she was not an easy teenager, her mother said. An outspoken nature carries its drawbacks.

And Stanek is the first to admit she was not a model young adult. While she lives by the Bible today, she doesn't flaunt her religious beliefs with a holier-than-thou attitude.

"I can safely say I've done a lot of bad things," she says. "I don't look down on anyone. I just know there is a better way."

She married young after just a year at a Christian college and had a son, Michael, at age 19. She came home to Indiana; the marriage fell apart; and she started working in Chicago as a single mom.

A new life

As a young mother, Stanek was a secretary at a consulting firm downtown. She fell in love and married her boss, Rich, when she was 25. They had two children together: Tim, 19, and Daena, 15.

Today, they live in Mokena in a Victorian-style home seemingly plucked from a field in Georgia.

Stanek started nursing school full time when Daena was in first grade. Stanek knew she wanted to be in the medical profession after stumbling upon a horrific car accident in Indiana when Michael was still a baby. She was the first one to come upon the wreck, and she helplessly tried to comfort two dazed parents whose baby was killed in the crash.

"I didn't know what to do, and I never wanted to feel that helpless again," she said. "What I really remember was getting back in my car, taking Michael out of his car seat, hugging him and crying."

While still in nursing school, Stanek started working at Christ Hospital. In 1995, after graduation, she transferred to labor and delivery. It never occurred to her the hospital might perform abortions, and it wasn't until she worked there a year that she learned doctors performed them for unhealthy babies or when the mother's life was at risk.

"It was very uncomfortable, and I knew I'd have to deal with it eventually, but the fact that I was only working about 20 hours per week and they didn't do them that often allowed me to procrastinate," she said.

That day came in May 1999, when the anonymous boy aborted during the fifth month of pregnancy was delivered and set aside in the utility room.

"That's what we had to do. If the parents don't want to hold them, and most of the time they don't, there was no where else for the baby go but the soiled utility room," Stanek said.

Hospital officials do not dispute Stanek's account of that night. They say the abortion policy was in flux at that time. If infants were being placed in utility rooms, it was not the "ideal situation," Easterling said.

Stanek wrote a letter to hospital officials, believing they were unaware of what was taking place. She also began talking to her pastor at Parkview Christian Church, Tim Harlow, and organizing prayer vigils outside the hospital.

At the time, the hospital offered abortions on a case-by-case basis. There was no clear policy, Stanek said.

Elective abortions of healthy babies never were offered. But according to an internal document Stanek made public in the summer of 1999, the hospital was considering a policy that would have allowed abortions for mild to moderate retardation, spina bifida, HIV infection and a host of other non-life threatening abnormalities.

After the publicity, the hospital tightened its policy and said it would not perform abortions for non-lethal abnormalities. Abortions would only be performed when the health of the mother was at stake, in cases of rape or incest, or when the fetus showed signs of fatal anomalies.

Around the same time, Stanek faced a disciplinary complaint from the hospital for giving the draft policy to the press. Stanek felt compelled to release it, she said, to refute claims the hospital made to the public that those types of abortions were not taking place.

She also refused to sign a required confidentiality agreement vowing not to discuss hospital or patient issues. The hospital eliminated its confidentiality policy but also put Stanek on a one-year probation.

Since that time, she has continued to criticize the hospital, appearing on national television and radio shows. She has testified in Springfield and Washington, D.C.

Her colleagues at work have given her mild support, but most do not actively support her cause.

"People are more worried about what people think than what God thinks," she said.

The utility room is now called the "work room," and the hospital set up a "comfort room" for parents or nurses who wish to comfort babies, take photos or baptize infants who live through the abortion procedure.

Stanek recently faced another disciplinary complaint from her employer after helping publicize a picket at a doctor's home. She faces the possibility every day of being fired.

"I didn't ask for any of this," she says. "They blindsided me with this information, and they want me to just walk away from it, and I can't. If you believe abortion is murder, and you truly do, how can you walk away from it morally?"

Two years ago, she confronted the boundaries of her own morality in a half-pound, under-developed infant. She held him in her palm.

She cannot put him down.

Kristen McQueary may be reached at [email protected] or (708) 633-5972.