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Chicago Sun-Times, September 8, 2001
Amended abortion policy is cold comfort
BY THOMAS ROESER
http://www.suntimes.com/output/roeser/cst-edt-roes08.html

I talked with Jill Stanek, a registered nurse, the other day after she was fired. She worked in the labor and delivery rooms at Christ Hospital and Medical Center in Oak Lawn. Two and a half years ago, a nurse colleague told Stanek an astounding thing: A live aborted baby was on its way to the soiled laundry room to die.

Yes, Stanek knew the hospital performed abortions in selective cases, which she opposed. But now she was discovering that the hospital was performing abortions where babies were not expected to be normal--abortions on babies expected to be born deformed or retarded. She had never heard of that before.

What's more, now, unconscionably, this baby--weighing a half-pound, 10 inches long--was being moved out of sight to die with not a human being to soothe it. Stanek intercepted the baby and cradled it in her arms for 45 minutes while it struggled for breath. She could see its heart beating through the translucent skin. The experience turned Stanek from someone who just opposed abortion into an activist.

''It was abhorrent," Stanek told me. She prepared the baby for burial, as she had done with adults countless times. She tied its tiny arms with slender string, put it in a blanket, affixed a shroud and gently walked it to the hospital morgue, a walk-in refrigerator. She decried the fact that this procedure, equal to the abortion procedure itself, was performed at a hospital named for Jesus Christ. ''The name of the hospital really got to me,'' Stanek said. ''That such things could go on here. . . .''

And so she began calling attention to the procedure, rallying people to demonstrate, working with state Sen. Pat O'Malley (R-Palos Park) on legislation the Senate passed to ban the live-birth procedure (The measure was stalled in the House). The hospital rebuked her, and officials denounced her, but Stanek fought to stay on as a nurse where she could lead the fight. The hospital then turned to public relations devices, setting aside a comfort room where parents could mourn the children they had willed to death. ''Yes, a comfort room,'' says Stanek. ''They outfitted it last December, which takes the place of the soiled utility room. There they have facilities to take pictures of the aborted babies and baptismal supplies."

It was after Stanek denounced the abortion procedures and took pictures of the comfort room and distributed them that she was terminated. You see, the people who run Christ Hospital and its parent, Advocate Health Care, don't mind if you have a different view of abortion than they do, but they do mind if you publicize it as a protest while you work there.

Remember the great stories of whistleblowers who denounce their employers, testify before legislative committees, are subjects of TV interviews? Movies and special TV documentaries are made about them. Definitely not the case with Jill Stanek. Hollywood and New York producers won't cover her story unless they make her the heavy. That's because abortion is favored by many people, with the grisly details swept from the public view. Especially the comfort room, where dead babies and their parents are made comfortable while they wait for death.

So my question to you, friends, is this: What do you think of whistleblowers: pesky nuts or courageous people? People who protest the bombing of a Puerto Rican island, who fearlessly tell the media about the pollution practices of giant corporations? Now, what do you think of a person who leaks the story of how babies are left to die? In my book, Jill Stanek is a heroine.

It's important to give the other side of the story. Christ Hospital has trimmed the number of abortions on the expected-to-be-less-than-perfect children. They do have the comfort room. And the hospital typically performs only 15 to 20 labor-induced abortions out of more than 4,000 deliveries each year. Of the 15 to 20, only possibly four or five babies are born alive. Too bad. But they do have a comfort room.

The practice is also being done at hospitals throughout the country, says a Christ Hospital spokesman. Are you comfortable with that? Should any of us be?

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