Christ
Hospital Update
January,
2013 interview with Jill Stanek, the former nurse at Christ Hospital who discovered
babies being born alive after failed abortions
Status of Abortion at Christ Hospital in 2008
Outside pressures and/or internal changes seem to have made a difference
at Christ Hospital. While the practice called live birth abortion may still occur
there, the number of cases has been reported to have drastically fallen. Indications
have been made about introduction of perinatal hospice services at Christ Hospital, but
these services have not yet been noted at www.perinatalhospice.org.
Born Alive Infants Protection Act (Illinois)
Illinois Born Alive
Infant Act Signed Into Law (August 15, 2005)
Born Alive Infants Protection Act Sails Out of Illinois House, 116-0 (April 13,
2005)
Jill
Stanek - Links to Barack Obama's votes on IL's Born Alive
Change coming at Christ Hospital?
Jill Stanek reported on January 3, 2003 that Christ Hospital has not
renewed the contracts of the doctors who have been responsible for the live birth
abortions there. Jill observed, “I can't speculate as to what this means regarding
abortion at Christ Hospital. This group (of doctors) is being replaced by another
perinatal high-risk group. But for whatever reason, this is a profound event.”
Born Alive Infants Protection Act (Federal)
On August 5, 2002, President George W. Bush signed the Born Alive Infants
Protection Act into law. It recognizes that babies born after failed abortions are
citizens and have all rights provided under our Constitution and laws. Jill Stanek
was invited and was present at the signing ceremony in Pittsburg, PA. The U.S.
Senate passed this bill
by unanimous consent on July 18, 2002. The U.S. House of Representatives passed the
bill in March, 2002. It is still unclear how Christ Hospital will respond to the new
law.
In 2002, Senator Patrick O'Malley introduced Born Alive Infants Protection
legislation. Two of three bills were passed by the Illinois Senate, but these bills
were killed in the Illinois House Health Care Committee. Even though many strong
abortion supporters in the U.S. Senate approved of this legislation, it was denied a vote
in the Illinois House.
In 2001, the Born Alive Infants Protection legislation introduced by
Senator Patrick O'Malley was passed by the Illiinois Senate, but all three bills were
rejected by the Illinois House Judiciary Committee so the bills never got to a vote by the
entire House.
Jill Stanek was fired by Christ Hospital on August 31, 2001. Since
that time she has continued speaking about the live birth abortion procedures used at
Christ Hospital. She ran for state legislator in the March, 2002 primary, but lost
to the incumbent.
Jill
Stanek Conversation with
Jill Stanek
Nurse's Testimony shocks Illinois Senate Judiciary Committee
SPRINGFIELD, IL, March 27, 2001 (RFM NEWS) EXCLUSIVE RFM News has exclusively
obtained a written transcript of Nurse Jill Stanek's written testimony before the Illinois
Senate Judiciary Committee's hearing on the Born Alive Infants Protection Act.
Stanek, a labor and delivery nurse at Christ Hospital and Medical Center in Oak Lawn,
Illinois, was first to expose an abortion procedure which many are calling
"live-birth abortion."
Stanek will appear in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday afternoon in
Springfield. Following is a transcript of Mrs. Stanek's testimony.
*****
I am a Registered Nurse who has worked in the Labor & Delivery Department at Christ
Hospital in Oak Lawn, Illinois, for the past 5-1/2 years. Christ Hospital performs
abortions during the second and even third trimesters of pregnancy.
The abortion method being called into question that Christ Hospital and other Illinois
hospitals practice is called “induced labor abortion." This abortion technique
sometimes results in infants being aborted alive. In the event that an infant is aborted
alive at Christ Hospital, she or he is given no medical assessments or care whatsoever,
but is left to die.
The induced labor abortion procedure can be performed using a couple different
medications, but the goal always is to cause a pregnant woman's cervix to open so that she
will deliver a premature baby who dies during the birth process or soon afterward. At
Christ Hospital the physician inserts a medication called Cytotec into the mother's birth
canal next to the cervix. The cervix is the opening at the bottom of the uterus that
normally stays closed until a mother is about 40 weeks pregnant and ready to deliver. But
Cytotec irritates the cervix and stimulates it to open early. When this happens, the
pre-term baby drops out of the uterus, sometimes alive.
In the event that a baby is aborted alive at Christ Hospital, he or she is not given any
medical care, but is rather given what my hospital calls “comfort care."
“Comfort care” is defined as keeping the baby warm in a blanket until the baby
dies, although until recently even this was not always done. The baby is then offered to
the parents to hold until he or she dies.
If the parents do not want to hold their dying aborted baby, as is most
often the case, it is left to nursing staff or support staff on the floor to hold the baby
until he or she dies. And, until this past December, when staff did not have time or
the desire to hold the baby, the baby was taken to our Soiled Utility Room and left there
alone to die. Christ Hospital's comfort care policy, #WHS492, only requires that
live aborted babies be checked for signs of life once an hour, or “as needed in order
to verify time of death.”
It is not uncommon for a live aborted babies to linger for an hour or two or even longer.
At Christ Hospital, one of these babies once lived for almost an entire eight-hour
shift. Last year alone, of the 13 babies that I am aware of who were aborted at
Christ Hospital, at least four lived between 1-1/2 to 3 hours, two boys and two girls.
Christ Hospital says that it compassionately aborts babies with very serious mental or
physical handicaps. But Christ Hospital will also abort for life or health of the
mother. So at least two of the second-trimester babies who were aborted last year,
for instance, were completely healthy.
One night, a nursing coworker 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 coworkers have told me about incidences of live aborted babies whom they have cared
for. A Support Associate told me about a live 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 nursing coworker told
me about an incident she was involved in last spring that she said “I just can't stop
thinking about." She participated in the abortion of a healthy 23-1/7 week baby who
was given no medical assessments or care after delivery, but was allowed to languish for
2-1/2 hours until she died, even though she showed early signs of thriving.
Just three weeks after this baby was aborted, another mother came to the
hospital under similar circumstances, carrying an identically aged baby, and she was
offered the same options. But she said that she wanted her baby. And so
present at her delivery – because Christ Hospital is a Level III mother/baby care
hospital -- was a neonatologist, a pediatric resident, a pediatric nurse, and a
respiratory therapist – all assigned specifically to take care of that little girl at
delivery. And for the two days that I tracked her, that little girl lived. Christ
Hospital is one of only 11 hospitals that the State of Illinois has designated as a level
III perinatal institution -- its highest ranking -- which means that Christ Hospital is
considered to have both the best equipment and the most highly trained medical personnel
care for the sickest of the sick mothers and babies.
Another nurse friend told me about the patient she was caring for who had chosen to abort
her second trimester baby, having been told that the boy had gross internal and external
fetal anomalies. When her baby was aborted alive, however, he looked fine. The
mother became hysterical and screamed for someone to help her baby. A neonatologist was
called over, but told the family that the baby had been born too early to help. The
mother was so traumatized that she had to be tranquilized, and it was left to the
grandparents to hold the little baby boy the ½ hour that he lived.
Last July, I was asked to testify before the U. S. House Judiciary Subcommittee on the
Constitution regarding the babies I knew about who were aborted alive and left to die at
Christ Hospital. Another nurse who worked at the hospital, but who has since moved
to Virginia, Allison Baker, also agreed to testify. Allison described walking into
the Soiled Utility Room on two separate occasions to find 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 aborted baby might be born alive, and after he was taken to the
Soiled Utility Room she kept asking, “Is he dead yet? Is he dead yet?”
Allison and I were called to testify in Washington in regard to a bill called the Born
Alive Infants Protection Act. This bill simply clarifies an apparently confusing tenet --
that any baby born alive, completely separated from his or her mother, whether through
abortion or not, has the same rights as American citizen human beings that you and I have.
This would include the right to medical assessments and care -- and not just
“comfort care” when a baby is not wanted.
The Born Alive Infants Protection Act flew through the Judiciary Subcommittee, which had
some well-known pro-choice congresspersons on it such as Jerry Nadler and Maxine Waters.
It then passed in the House by a large vote of 380-15. Almost everyone on both sides
of the abortion debate clearly saw that what was being discussed was infanticide. It was
still confounding that 15 Congresspersons could vote against this bill in favor of
infanticide, but they did. World Magazine listed these people and called them
“the Fanatical Fifteen." The congressional session did end before this bill
could be introduced in the Senate last autumn and still stands to be reintroduced in the
House very soon.
Meanwhile, here in Illinois, life and death go on. Four months ago, Christ Hospital
unveiled its “Comfort Room.” So now I can no longer say that live aborted
babies are left in our Soiled Utility Room to die. We now have this prettily
wallpapered room complete with a First Foto machine, baptismal gowns, a footprinter, and
baby bracelets, so that we can offer keepsakes to parents of their aborted babies. There
is even a nice
wooden rocker in the room to rock live aborted babies to death.
It is wrong that current Illinois law mandates a doctor to pronounce a born-alive aborted
baby dead but does not mandate the doctor to assess that baby for life and chances of
survival. It is wrong that Illinois law mandates both birth and death certificates be
issued – admitting that these aborted babies are indeed human – but does not
give these babies any rights whatsoever to medical care. No other children in Illinois or
America are treated this way. It is just not right that a baby should be left to die
simply because her mother does not want her. It is not right that the very doctors who may
be miscalculating due dates and fetal birth weights or misdiagnosing fetal handicaps are
the same ones deciding that these babies should not be assessed after delivery. They're
being allowed to destroy the very evidence that might make them liable for lawsuits if
they have been wrong.
What is the difference between a teen-age girl at her prom putting her unwanted baby in
the garbage to die and the medical staff at a hospital putting an unwanted baby in a
Comfort Room to die? There is no difference.
*****
The Senate Judiciary Committee begins hearing testimony Tuesday, March 27, 2001 over
Senate Bills 1093, 1094 and 1095, sponsored by Senator Patrick O'Malley (R-18-Palos Park),
which would give equal protection under the law to all premature babies born
alive--regardless of their age or whether their mother wants them or not; would require
medical evaluation of all live births; defines "human being" in Illinois
statutes; and sets up legal groundwork for civil liability.
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