Testimony of Jill L. Stanek, RN
U. S. House of Representatives Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution
Hearing
"Born Alive Infants Protection Act of 2001"
July 12, 2001

I am a Registered Nurse who has worked in the Labor & Delivery Department at
Christ Hospital in Oak Lawn, Illinois, for the past six years. In the year
that has elapsed since I testified before your committee regarding the same
bill under discussion today, I have continued to work at the same hospital in
the same position.


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 abortion technique that Christ Hospital and other
hospitals use, called "induced labor abortion," sometimes results in infants
being aborted alive, because throughout this particular abortion procedure
the fetus is not killed in the uterus. The focus of this method is to
forcibly dilate a woman's cervix so that she will prematurely deliver a baby
who dies during the birth process or soon afterward.


The cervix is the opening at the bottom of the uterus that normally stays
closed until a woman is about 40 weeks pregnant and goes into labor. There
are a few ways to cause the cervix to open early. At Christ Hospital the most
common way this is done is by the physician inserting a medication called
Cytotec into the birth canal close to the cervix. Cytotec irritates the
cervix. The FDA does not approve Cytotec for this use. It is a drug that is
supposed to be taken by mouth to help control ulcers. The manufacturer of
Cytotec issued a public letter in August 2000 warning that this drug may be
harmful to women if used to induce labor, up to and including causing the
uterus to rupture and causing death. But Christ Hospital continues to use
Cytotec for pregnancy terminations.


After the cervix is prematurely dilated, the small, preterm baby drops out of
the uterus, sometimes alive. In the event that a baby is aborted alive, he or
she is given what my hospital calls "comfort care." "Comfort care" involves
wrapping the baby in a blanket and offering him or her to the parents to hold
until the baby dies. If parents do not want to hold their baby, as I have
observed is most often the case, it is left to staff to care for the baby. Up
until recently, staff options were to hold the baby until death or put the
baby in our Soiled Utility Room if we got busy or if the baby lingered too
long. Indeed, it is not uncommon for one of these babies to live for an hour
or two or even longer. Last year alone, of the 16 babies that Christ Hospital
states were aborted, I am aware of four who were born alive. Each of these
babies - two boys and two girls - lived between 1-1/2 and 3 hours. At Christ
Hospital one of these babies once lived for almost an entire eight-hour
shift. At least two of the second-trimester babies who were aborted last year
at Christ Hospital were completely healthy.


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 ½ 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 about incidences of live aborted babies whom
they have cared for. A Support Associate told me about an 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. A nurse coworker told me about an
abortion she was involved in where the baby was supposed to have spina bifida
but was born with an intact spine. She said that what actually happened was
that there was an incompletely formed twin who appeared as a mass on his
brother's back during an ultrasound. The nurse told me that the father came
into the Soiled Utility Room to see his son, took one look and saw that he
had been involved in aborting his completely healthy baby, and turned and
left the room without saying a word. I was recently told about a situation by
a nursing coworker who said, "I can't stop thinking about it." She had a
patient who was just over 23 weeks pregnant, and she was not going to be able
to complete her pregnancy to term. 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 coworker. 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. Just three
weeks after this baby was aborted, another mother came to the hospital under
similar circumstances, carrying an identically aged baby and was offered the
same options. But she said that she wanted her baby. And so present at her
delivery were the aforementioned NICU team, and for the two days that I
tracked her, that little girl lived.


When I testified before you last July, another nurse who worked at Christ
Hospital, Allison Baker, also testified. Allison was not asked back today due
to the new limit on the number of witnesses allowed. But last year Allison
described walking into the Soiled Utility Room on two separate occasions to
find live aborted babies left naked on a scale and the metal counter. She
told about the patient that she herself had who didn't know that her baby
might be aborted alive and who did not then want to hold him. After he was
taken to the Soiled Utility Room she kept asking, "Is he dead yet? Is he dead
yet?" (This testimony is being entered today into the Congressional Record.)


Lest you think that Christ Hospital's live birth abortion practice is
uncommon, I am entering into Congressional Record today literature from a
March 30, 2001, symposium sponsored by Waukesha Memorial Hospital in
Wisconsin that was "reviewed and is acceptable" by the American Academy of
Family Physicians, wherein Dr. Washington Hill writes that a "complication"
of a mid-trimester labor induction is a "live birth." The American College of
Obstetricians and gynecologists also gave credit hours to physicians for
taking this course.


After I testified last year, Christ Hospital stopped putting aborted babies
to die in the Soiled Utility Room. This past December it unveiled its
"Comfort Room." This is a small, nicely decorated room complete with a First
Foto machine in case parents want pictures of their aborted babies, baptismal
supplies if parents would like their aborted babies baptized, and a foot
printer and baby bracelets if parents would like keepsakes of their aborted
babies. There is also a wooden rocker to rock these babies to death.
(Pictures entered into Congressional Record.)


When Christ Hospital opened its Comfort Room, I was honestly galled. It
became clearer to me than ever that a law must be enacted that specifies that
all babies born alive are indeed humans and American citizens with civil
rights to equal protection. This is a point that is obviously not clear to
extremists in our great country who believe that the right to obtain an
abortion must be extended to include the right to commit infanticide. If a
hospital named "Christ" does not willingly stop committing infanticide but
handles public and legal scrutiny by merely trying to make those whose lives
they're snuffing out more "comfortable," I have grave concerns about children
whose lives are being ended at abortion clinics and hospitals where there is
no spotlight of attention.


Once a fetus is aborted, the pregnancy has been terminated. But when what
emerges on the other of the vaginal vault is alive, "it" by medical
definition is no longer a fetus but is now a "neonate" or "baby," with rights
as human beings and American citizens that must be zealously protected. If we
all cannot at least agree that civil rights begin at birth, then we will have
to initiate the debate as to when after delivery a living person does begin
to have rights, and a Pandora's Box will have been opened, the depths of
which none of can possibly ascertain today.


The Department of Health & Human Services wrote me that, "civil rights laws
do not cover abortion procedures or the rights of newborns." The Illinois
Attorney General determined that "there is no basis for legal action by this
office against the Hospital… at this time" in regard to Christ Hospital's
labor induction abortion practices. (Both letters entered into Congressional
Record.) Alan Keyes recently observed, "If we reflect for a moment upon the
example of the Declaration of Independence, we will remember that sometimes
even self-evident truths need to be declared." I think it is obvious that
this is one of those times.