Archives

October 5, 1999
Southwest Courier
'Health Officials Review Policy of Christ Hospital'

Illinois public health officials are reviewing records at Christ Hospital and Medical Center, 4400 W. 95th St., in Oak Lawn, to see if state laws were violated in their handling of some induced or therapeutic abortions performed there.

State's Attorney General Jim Ryan asked the Department of Public Health to conduct the review after a nurse at the hospital notified his office about the care aborted fetuses received, according to published reports. Questions were raised about the condition in which some of the children, who continued to live for varying lengths of time outside the uterus, were cared for.

The hospital has denied the account that in one instance a recently removed fetus was placed in a supply closet.

Though it has been available for many years, the practice of inducing labor so that birth occurs with the expectation that the child will not survive is seldom used, though the hospital maintains its legality.

Parents may choose a therapeutic abortion, though, when medical tests discover a serious abnormality, like the absence of critical organs such as the brain, making survival outside the womb impossible. It is seen as an alternative to a miscarriage or the natural delivery of a child who will not survive, both expensive and heart-wrenching decisions.

The procedure again raises the issue of fetal rights and the rights of an infant. Once a fetus is living outside the womb, it becomes a child, deserving of the protections under law provided to all living people, authorities said.

Christ Hospital officials have said induced labor abortions are used only when physicians determine that a fetus has problems so severe it is unlikely they will survive outside the uterus. Aborting a viable fetus within set time lines is against the law in most states except in cases to protect the mother's health.

At Christ Hospital, nurses perform "comfort care" tending for the child after they are outside the womb though survival is impossible. Information about the sanitary conditions in the ward where the children in question were placed and the quality of care provided before they died has been collected by the state, reports said.

The issue of induced labor abortions has attracted the attention of right-to-life groups, many of whom have held prayer services near the hospital during the last few weeks to draw attention to the practice.

The nurse who notified Ryan's office about the practice is a right-to-life proponent, according to published reports.

Media Coverage 
St. George Pro-Life | Parkview Christian Church