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Source: Focus on the Family Family News in Focus, 3-22-01
"IL Lawmaker Fights 'Live-Birth Abortion'" by Stuart Shepard
(http://www.family.org/cforum/fnif/news/A0015369.html)

An Illinois state senator is trying to put an end to "live-birth abortion" —
a move made necessary by the actions of a hospital in his own district.
Illinois state Sen. Patrick O'Malley is bringing three bills to the state
Legislature to sharply limit abortion. Specifically, he wants to end the
practice of delivering babies alive, only to let them die without care. "I
work at a hospital that's in Senator O'Malley's own district that aborts
babies alive, and if they're born alive, they leave them to die if the intent
was abortion," said Jill Stanek, a labor and delivery nurse who blew the
whistle on what was happening at her hospital in suburban Chicago. Stanek
said she thought there was a law to protect these tiny infants, but
ultimately discovered there was not. "Hospitals like Christ Hospital finagle
through cracks in the law and at this point it is, sadly, legal in Illinois,"
she said. Penny Pullen, who heads Life Advocacy Resource Project and is a
former Illinois state legislator, said doctors who are intending to perform
abortions generally consider this kind of thing an unpleasant complication.
"Because when the baby comes out alive, what do they do now?" Pullen said.
"How do they explain to the mother that the baby is living? And so they're
letting them die." She hopes nurses in other states will come forward as
well. "This is probably going to be discovered to be a loophole in every
state," Pullen said. Both hope that the Illinois bills will become a template
for other states to use.

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