Last week,  Representative Trent Franks (R.-Ariz.) introduced  legislation in the United States House of Representatives that would ban abortions after twenty weeks of pregnancy. The bill, HR 1797, is based on research establishing that unborn children can feel pain by at least twenty weeks of gestation, and very likely at an earlier age.  As originally introduced, the bill would control abortions within the District of Columbia alone, but based on the evidence of horrific abuses at late term abortion facilities throughout the nation, the bill has been expanded to a nation-wide ban.

Jill Stanek, a preeminent pro-life writer, will be one of the people testifying at tomorrow’s Congressional hearing  in support of the bill. Stanek lends her professional expertise on the bill to protect babies from excruciating pain they feel during abortions. Stanek, formally a registered nurse in the Labor and Delivery Department at Christ Hospital in Oak Lawn, Ill., who exposed the fact that babies who survived abortion at the hospital were left to die without medical care. Read Ms. Stanek’s testimony.

Stanek and her family have faced harassment by the Federal Bureau of Investigation because of their pro-life activities. Life Legal Defense Foundation will continue to work with the Stanek family to ensure that their personal freedoms will not be violated, and that they do not face additional harassment because of Ms. Stanek’s testimony in support of the unborn.

“We are watching these proceedings and any follow up actions closely,” explained Dana Cody, Executive Director of Life Legal Defense Foundation.  “It has been necessary for us to intervene on behalf of Jill and her family in the past. And we stand ready to do so again should she or those close to her be targeted.”

The testimony Stanek wil provided before Congress emphasizes the following facts:

• There is a plethora of evidence countering claims that late term abortions are “rare.”

• The techniques being used to perform abortions are monstrous, as are the techniques used to murder those babies who beat the odds and survive the violent procedures intended to kill them.

• Life-saving prenatal surgery is becoming commonplace, even “mid-pregnancy” and is performed with anesthesia for the preborn babies to ease the pain they experience.

• Premature babies, born at the same age as babies violently aborted, are routinely given pain relief for procedures as simple as pinpricks to the heel.

• Kermit Gosnell’s clinic is illustrative of multiple cases that prove the lines between illegal infanticide and legal feticide have become blurred.

Stanek has testified twice before the Judiciary Constitution Subcommittee of the U.S. House of Representatives and in several state legislatures. Her testimony has been presented in key U.S. Congressional debates on the Partial Birth Abortion Ban and Born Alive Infants Protection Act.

“Jill is an acknowledged expert in the field,” explained Cody, “She has paid a price for that. That price should not extend to governmental interrogation, or the threat of deportation the FBI brought against her son-in-law last year because of the family’s pro-life work. LLDF applauds Jill for her courage in testifying on this important legislation.”

Action Item: Contact your member of congress and urge them to support HR 1797, the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act.

 

Testimony of Jill L. Stanek, RN

HR 1797, Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act

U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary

Subcommittee on the Constitution and Civil Justice

May 23, 2013

When I testified before this committee in 2000 and 2001, it was to tell of my experience as a registered nurse in the Labor and Delivery Department at Christ Hospital in Oak Lawn, Illinois, where I discovered babies were being aborted alive and shelved to die in the department’s soiled utility closet.

Among other familiar faces I see today is Congressman Nadler, who was a member of the committee then. He said he was “appalled” by the incidents I described and found them “heart-wrenching.”

Indeed, I was traumatized and changed forever by my experience of holding a little abortion survivor for 45 minutes until he died, a 21/22-week-old baby who had been aborted because he had Down syndrome.

Since then, other appalling stories of abortion survivors being either abandoned or killed have trickled out.

In 2005, a mother delivered her 23-week-old baby in the toilet at EPOC Clinic in Orlando, Florida, and was shocked to see him move. Abortion staff not only refused to help but turned away paramedics, who her friend had notified by calling 911. Angele could do no more than helplessly sit on the floor rocking and singing to her baby for 11 minutes until he died.

In 2006, Sycloria Williams delivered her 23-week-old baby boy on a recliner at A Gyn Diagnostic Center in Hialeah, Florida. When he began breathing and moving, abortion clinic owner Belkis Gonzalez cut the umbilical cord and zipped him into a biohazard bag, still alive.

The Kermit Gosnell case provides further evidence that the lines between illegal infanticide and legal feticide, both via abortion, have become blurred. This abortionist was convicted only last week of three counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of three born babies whose spinal cords were “snipped.”

Also last week came the revelation and photos from three former employees who allege that abortionist Douglas Karpen in Houston, Texas, routinely kills babies after they are born by puncturing the fontanel (the soft spot at the top of the head), or impaling the stomach with a sharp instrument, twisting the head off, or puncturing the throat with his finger.

It is easy to be horrified by heart-wrenching stories such as these, and to imagine the torture abortion survivors endure as they are being killed.

But it is somehow not so easy for some to envision preborn babies the same age being tortured as they are killed by similar methods.

Today, premature babies are routinely given pain relief who are born at the same age as babies who are torn limb from limb or injected in the heart during abortions. The World Health Organization goes so far as to recommend analgesia for preemies getting simple heel pricks for a couple drops of blood.

Likewise, prenatal surgery is becoming commonplace, and along with it anesthesia for babies being operated on, even in the “middle of pregnancy”. Meanwhile, babies of an identical age are torn apart during abortions with no pain relief.

It must be that some people inexplicably think the uterus provides a firewall against fetal pain, or that babies marked for abortion are somehow numb, while their wanted counterparts aren’t.

This thinking is better suited for the Middle Ages than for modern medicine.

Yet, while NARAL Pro-Choice America eventually expressed neutrality on the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act, which provides legal protection to born babies no matter what their gestational age or circumstance of birth, NARAL opposes legislation protecting babies of the same age from barbaric abortions after the point they are known to feel pain.

Abortion proponents attempt to portray abortionists who commit abortions past 20 weeks as rare.  This is a myth. The National Right to Life Committee analyzed data published in 2008 by the Guttmacher Institute, which is an arm of the abortion industry, and found there were “at least 300 abortion providers who will perform abortions after 20 weeks LMP (last menstrual period),” and that of these, ”at least 140 abortion providers willing to abort pain-capable unborn children at 22 weeks LMP (20 weeks post-fertilization).”

As for the number of late abortions committed in this country, no one knows. There are no standardized nationwide mandatory abortion-reporting requirements, and some of the most liberal jurisdictions, such as California, Maryland, and Washington, D.C., don’t. Beyond that, it is questionable how many late abortionists comply with these requirements, and how much enforcement there is of these laws.

For instance, when the Elkton, Maryland, office of abortionist Stephen Brigham was raided in 2010, investigators found 35 fetuses in his freezer, but there were no medical records documenting 33 of those abortions, much less state reporting.

The Gosnell Grand Jury Report states that from 2000 to 2010 Gosnell reported a total of one second-trimester abortion to the state.  Yet he may have performed thousands during that decade.

No one knows how many abortions are committed after 20 weeks, so it is false for anyone to assert they are “rare.”

It is also a myth that late abortions are mostly committed on babies with handicaps, although being handicapped is certainly no excuse for torture.

Dr. LeRoy Carhart, who commits late abortions at Germantown Reproductive Health Services only 30 miles from here, was just caught on tape by Live Action stating he routinely commits elective abortions at 26 weeks: “Saw four this week,” Carhart quipped to Live Action’s pregnant investigator, also joking that he uses a “pickaxe” and “drill bit” to kill older babies.

Only two blocks from the White House, late-term abortionist Cesare Santangelo told a pregnant Live Action investigator he would kill her healthy 24-week-old preborn baby by snipping the umbilical cord, which is akin to cutting the hose of a scuba diver, causing death by slow asphyxiation.  The website for his Washington Surgi-Clinic openly advertises dilatation and evacuation abortions up to 26 weeks.

Having actually held a little abortion survivor, I cannot imagine standing there in the soiled utility room and tearing him apart to kill him. I expect the thought horrifies all of you as well.

But this is what is done to others like him on a daily basis, their excruciating fate determined simply by geography.

Our nation makes progress when we put an end to senselessly disparate treatment of anyone, and certainly of the most vulnerable in our midst.  It is time we apply this standard to babies on the threshold of life as well.

 

 

 

 

 

Imagine that you are a healthcare professional who is convinced that life begins at conception. Imagine that your employer insists that you offer women counseling regarding abortion options and requires you to prescribe contraceptive drugs–whether or not they have an abortifacient effect. Imagine that you are being forced to dishonor your faith or give up your profession and your livelihood. Now stop imagining and realize that this scenario is actually being played out every day in the United States as people are forced to violate their sincere beliefs out of fear of losing their employment and jeopardizing their careers.
Freedom of conscience and religious beliefs lies at the very heart of our Constitution. Yet this core freedom—the ability to hold personal religious beliefs and to live in accordance with those beliefs—is being threatened as never before.
Medical professionals are facing increased pressure to provide abortions, contraceptives and other forms of so-called health care, even when this would violate their consciences. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has been tasked with accepting complaints from employees forced to participate in abortion (if their employer is a recipient of specific federal funding). Waiting for action from this federal agency has hardly proved an adequate safeguard of religious freedom.
Ironically, it is this very same Department of Health and Human Services that has eviscerated rights of conscience for so many employers through the Contraceptive Mandate. In the name of “preventative health care,” insurers are required to provide coverage without co-pay for contraceptives, abortifacient drugs, and sterilization. Faced with violating their consciences or paying crippling fines, many employers have filed suit to block application of the mandate. LLDF has been active in these cases, submitting amicus briefs to argue that forced funding of contraceptives, far from promoting women’s health, will have a deleterious impact on women’s health.
The attacks on religious liberty have spurred some in Congress to action. In the House, Representatives Black and Fortenberry have  introduced H.R. 940, the Health Care Conscience Rights Act. The Act would affirm a commitment to religious liberty by amending specific provisions of Obamacare “to protect rights of conscience with regard to requirements for coverage of specific items and services,” and would provide a private right of action for employees who are wrongfully forced to participate in abortion, among other things.
Action Item: For this important bill to pass, more support is needed. Your representative needs to hear how much you value your religious freedom. Contact your Member of Congress and urge him or her to stand up for religious freedom by becoming a co-sponsor of H.R. 940. Post your message in support of religious freedom on your social media page and urge your friends to join you in standing up for our first freedom. (Twitter users: join the Twitter campaign with the hash tags #ConscienceProtection #ReligiousFreedom.)