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Fall 1999
Illinois Right to Life Committee News

Christ Hospital nurse testifies
by Jill L. Stanek

When I came to work that night and heard that a patient was receiving a "therapeutic" abortion for a baby with Down's syndrome, I was appalled. I had been a nurse at Christ Hospital in Oak Lawn for three years then, the last year in the Labor & Delivery unit, and I had never known that we did such a thing.

But I came to find out that we did such a thing somewhere between 10 to 25 times a year, and that we did such a thing almost exclusively to rid ourselves of babies with physical or mental handicaps. These handicaps could range from being fatal in nature such as having no brain or severe heart abnormalities to being non-fatal but "marked by substantial uncertainty or variability" such as spina bifida or Down syndrome.

What to do? Well, I found out that pro-life nurses like me did not have to actively take one of these aborting patients as our own, but the relief I got from that knowledge was short-lived. If my fellow nurse was away from the desk and the call-light went on from "that room," I had to answer the light. I had to go into "that room" and give the patient a bedpan or a cup of ice, and I had to do it with no tone of judgment about me. I did it, but I felt guilty and involved.

One method that Christ Hospital uses to commit its abortions is now being called the "live birth abortion" method. The procedure is to insert a pill called Cytotec into the vagina. This medication irritates the cervix, the opening at the bottom of the uterus. Normally, the cervix remains tightly closed until it nears time for delivery, when it opens to deliver the baby.  But Cyotec causes the cervix to open early. Christ Hospital will abort second-trimester babies whose ages range from 17 to 24 weeks, so they are fully formed but very small. When the cervix opens prematurely, what essentially happens is that the baby drops out of the uterus. That is how it happens that sometimes the baby is born alive.

I found out about the live birth abortion method as accidentally as I'd found out that we even committed abortions in the first place. I found out when on my shift a Down's syndrome baby was born alive. He was somewhere between 21 and 22 weeks and weighed about 1/2 pound. The baby was on his way to being taken to our Soiled Utility Room when I stepped in and asked to hold him. This I did for the 45 minutes it took for him to pass from this life.  It was horrifying.

A year or two passed from the time that I learned about out "therapeutic" abortions. It took that long to become convinced that I should attempt to do something. It was either that or quit, and I decided that if I quit to go somewhere else where I was more comfortable that I would leave behind babies to die.

It has been six months since I decided to take action. What began with my writing a letter to the powers that be at my hospital has steadily mushroomed to nationwide public knowledge of this atrocity and federal and state investigations. As I write this, I do not know the end of the story.  Christ Hospital and its parent company Advocate Health Care Systems appear to be set on defending and continuing their abortion practice. I wish they'd realize against Whom they are fighting, because if they did I believe they would see that they are fighting in vain. Their fight or even the pro-life or Christian Person their hospital is named after, Christ Himself.

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