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Stanek Recounds Battle Over 'Born-Alive Abortions

When Jill Stanek graduated from nursing school in 1993, she applied at only one institution, Christ Hospital, on the southwest side of Chicago.

Her acceptance and subsequent employment there led to an explosive showdown on abortion heard across the nation.

About a year after she had been hired, Stanek, a devout Christian who was working as a labor and delivery nurse, was appalled to discover that the hospital did abortions.

“One night I heard in report that we were aborting a second trimester baby with Down’s syndrome,” she told her audience at the Delaware Pro-Life Coalition Convention on April 2.

Jill discovered that the hospital did abortions of babies with serious mental and physical handicaps, but also for the all-inclusive “life or health of the mother.”

Their method was to induce premature labor, which would sometimes result in the baby being born alive.

“If they were, they were shelved until they died,” she said.

In the state of Illinois, where every person must have a birth and death certificate, the cause of death would be listed as “extreme prematurity.”

“And all these abortions were taking place in a hospital named after my Lord and Savior,” Jill said ruefully.

The young nurse’s moment of truth came one night when a nurse was taking a 22-week-old aborted baby to the Soiled Utility Room to be left to die because the parents didn’t want to hold him, and the nurse didn’t have time.

Jill decided to hold and rock him for what was left of his short existence – about 45 minutes.

“He was 10 inches long and weighed about 8 ounces,” she recalled.  “He didn’t move much, because he was using all his energy to breathe.”

After he was pronounced dead, “We folded his little arms across his chest and tied them with a string.  Then we wrapped him in a tiny shroud and carried him to the hospital morgue.”

After this shattering experience, Jill felt she had only two choices:  leave the hospital, or stay and fight.  She sought counsel from her pastor, and in prayer.

Proverbs 24:  11-12 instructed:  “Rescue those who are unjustly sentenced to death; don’t stand back and let them die.  

“Don’t try to disclaim responsibility by saying you didn’t know about it.  For God, who knows all hearts, knows yours, and He knows you know!  And He will reward everyone according to his deeds.”

Deciding that those were her “marching orders,” she wrote a letter to the religious leaders of the hospital, “because I couldn’t believe they knew what was going on – but they did.”

She was called to a meeting with the two superiors, who told her that premature induced labor was the most compassionate way to do abortions, because it allowed the baby to be held while he died, rather than to be suctioned or dismembered.

They also suggested that she might be happier at another hospital.

Undaunted, Stanek and her pastor asked some influential people, including former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop and Francis Cardinal George, to contact the hospital, “but these appeals had no effect,” she said.

So in July of 1999 her pastor wrote to some seventy pro-life organizations, letting them know what was going on at Christ Hospital.

“That’s how the story got in the news,” said Stanek.

Stories appeared, not only in religious publications, but in the New York Times, Newsweek, and U.S. News & World Report.  Jill was interviewed on O’Reilly Factor, Hannity and Colmes and EWTN.

Stanek discovered that induced labor abortions were not that rare:  according to the Center for Disease Control, in 1999 over 3,700 babies were aborted by that method alone.

“And it’s not just in Protestant hospitals; two Catholic hospital systems admitted doing them,” she said.

When Congress was considering the Born Alive Infants Protection Act, Stanek was called to testify on several occasions.

Despite hate mail and other forms of harassment, she continued to work at Christ Hospital for two years after she “went public,” feeling it was her God-given duty to stay and fight, rather than cut and run.

During that time, she learned of many heartbreaking incidents.

One woman who underwent an induced labor abortion became hysterical when the baby was born alive; she hadn’t been told that that might happen.  Moreover, she saw that the baby didn’t have the defects she had been told it would have.  

She screamed for someone to help her baby, and a neurologist was rushed in, but he had to tell her there was nothing he could do for the baby, because it was born too soon.

She had to be tranquilized.

Another case involved a husband and wife who were both doctors:  they had also agreed to an induced labor abortion because of their unborn child’s supposed birth defects.

Coming to the Soiled Utility Room for a first and last look at his dying son, the father discovered that he was perfectly formed.

After a long, helpless look, “He turned around and left the room without a word,” said Jill.

She was sure that the doctor never told his wife what he had seen, but shouldered by himself the burden of knowing that they had killed their perfectly healthy son.

In 2000, Christ Hospital unveiled its Comfort Room.  Aborted babies would no longer be taken to the Soiled Utility Room to die.  Now, parents could utilize a First Foto machine for pictures of their aborted baby.

There were foot printing equipment and baby bracelets for mementos, baptismal supplies, and a rocking chair.

Stanek took pictures of the rocking chair and gave them to Priests for Life Director Fr. Frank Pavone, who blew up one of the photos for a full-page ad in USA Today, captioned, “Rock-a-bye, baby, until you die.”

On August 31, 2001, reporting for her night shift, Jill walked through the main doors of the hospital, over which were written the hospital’s mission statement, which says in part, “All people are created in the image of God.”

“I became sick to my stomach; I said, ‘Oh, God, how much longer are you going to make me do this?’  His answer was, ‘Not too long!’”

Jill was met by her boss, who told her she was fired.  She was escorted out of the building by two security guards.

“People have come up to me and said, ‘I don’t think I could do what you did,’” said Jill.  “That makes me sad, because I don’t want to stand out.

“How effective of a witness can we Christians be if we go through life not wanting people not to like us, not wanting to make waves or be considered extremists?” she reflected.

And God will always vindicate us, she said.

“God vindicated me on August 5, 2002.  I got a call from the White House.  

“They said, ‘President George Bush is going to sign the Born Alive Infants Protection Act.  Would you like to be present at the signing?’  I said, ‘Of course!’”

Stanek thinks the corner has been turned on abortion.

“But we must fight on,” she urged.  “And every one of us is critical to the battle.”