Kick the Anthill

I feel sick.  Dizzy.  Lightheaded.  It’s like the wind has been knocked out of me.  I just can’t believe there are people this… evil. 

I know it’s late.  I’ve just finished feeding the baby his midnight meal.  While I finish watching last week’s Monk, I thought I’d browse some of my favorite sites.  And when I ran across this article at HotAir, I just…  I couldn’t go on without saying something.

Sure, there is the obvious wrongness of the practice that Christ Hospital was doing here, and I’ll get to that in a second.  But first, I want to talk about other aspects of this situation.

Now, before anyone goes off on me about abortion, let me abundantly clear about my stance on it:  I am pro-life through and through.  However, I refuse to stand in a woman’s way if she absolutely, positively wants to have an abortion.  I know at least three women who have all had them, and I know how it affects them even now, many years later.  I empathize with their depression, and, in one case, self-loathing.  I understand what they feel whenever they wonder “What if…?” as I also ponder that same question if my wife and I had been able to have children of our own.  But, having said all that, a woman should never ask me my opinion on it, because my opinion is probably unique when compared to a lot of others.  It pains me to think that there are people out there who can pop children out right and left–yet refuse to carry their pregnancies to term because of the “inconvenience” of it–and there are so many couples out there who would give everything they have–money, possessions, body parts, their souls–to have the chance to be a parent to just one child.

It reminds me of a song about asking God several questions, and one of them is asking why is there a baby lying unwanted and crying when there’s so many childless couples out there who desperately want a child to love.

I did a quick check about infertile couples in the US.  According to the New York Times, in 1996, there were 4.9 million infertile couples in the United States alone.  I know that we were (and still are) one of them, and I also know several other couples who are among that group as well.  It’s not fun.

According to photolisting.adoption.com, right now, there are in the neighborhood of 100,000 children in foster care that are available for adoption.  While I know for a fact that that number is way, way, waaayyy too low, that website serves as a conduit for people who are looking for adoption.  Foster workers can upload information about children in their caseloads that are ready for adoption, and potential parents can look to see who might be the best fit for their family.  So, for now, you can find out about roughly 100,000 children that are available right now for adoption.

I say all that to say this:  there comes a point whenever I can’t just sit there and allow someone to have an abortion any longer.  And with what they were practicing at Christ Hospital?  Well, that’s my limit.

Fortunately, whistle-blowing nurse Jill Stanek had the guts to stand up to these people.   You can read all about what she told the Illinois State Board here.

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.”

I cannot being to tell you how this tears me up inside.  I cannot begin to tell you how I want to take these abortion performers’ medical licenses away, and then put them on trial for crimes against humanity.

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.

I cannot tell you how much I loathe these people right now.  They are no better than those women who literally throw their babies into the garbage–and when we find their babies, we put the mothers on trial for murder.  I cannot get the image of a baby falling out of the garbage can out of my mind right now.  As I sit here, holding this precious little boy, I can’t even imagine what might have happened if his mother had gone to that evil hospital in Oak Lawn, Illinois.  “Christ Hospital” my eye.  They certainly don’t know how to answer the question “What Would Jesus Do?”  And their hospital is named after Him!

I thought that the hippocratic (hypocratic) oath was to first, do no harm.  In fact, if you read it here, you’ll see that the actual phrase is:

Never to do deliberate harm to anyone for anyone else’s interest.

This kind of abortion is a prime example of a violation of that directive if ever there was one.

If a baby is aborted at such a late date that it’s entirely possible for that baby to live, then are these “doctors” any better than Dr. Kevorkian?  And didn’t we put him on trial for euthanasia?  Which one’s worse?  Helping someone end their lives in a relatively painless way, or withholding medical care of an unwanted, aborted, still fighting to stay alive baby to the point that said baby dies?  And then throw its body into the trashcan!

Let’s look at this another way for a minute, shall we?

What if we were at war.  Yes, I know we are, but just go with me for a minute.  Let’s say that we were at war, and that a group of ten soldiers went out to fight in a skirmish.  Out of the ten, four of them were seriously wounded.  “To the point they couldn’t care for themselves” kind of wounded.  The other six were basically fine–maybe one of them got a cut from falling on a rock or something along those lines.

Let’s say the medic had all the tools he needed to save the wounded four lives, but instead, ignored them to tend to the soldier with the cut.  Oh, he’d go out every hour or so to check on them, but he didn’t make a move to help them.  Eventually, they died.  Some may have taken an hour, some might have taken longer than that.  One of them probably suffocated, because he was so weak from exhaustion, he could barely breathe.  And even after one has died, the medic just wraps him up in some paper towels, and tosses him in the garbage heap.

What would you do to this medic?  Revoke his license?  Put him on trial for any number of reasons?  Put him in front of a firing squad?

Now let’s say that the President during this war stated that this was to be the common practice.  Let’s say that he supported this practice of leaving our troops on the battlefield to die.  That he supported the idea of throwing the dead soldier into the trash.

What would you do to the President?  Impeach him?  Put him on trial for crimes against humanity?  Worse?

And Obama supported what Christ Hospital was doing when he was in the position to stop them.  And then lied about it, too. 

I audaciously hope that this “person” does not become our next president.

I audaciously hope that this “person” can be brought up on charges.

And he thinks he’s “fit” to lead.  That’s so sad it’s not even snort worthy.