Nurse: I Witnessed the Infanticide Ralph Northam Defended

On Tuesday, nurse Jill Stanek described her experience in caring for a baby who survived an attempted abortion. Doctors in that case followed exactly the kind of infanticide practice Gov. Ralph Northam (D-Va.) so infamously described in a radio interview this past January.

“When I heard Virginia Governor Ralph Northam, a pediatric neurologist, describe during an interview the process by which doctors determine to shelve unwanted newborns to die, it hit painfully home to me,” Stanek testified before Congress on Tuesday.

She quoted Northam: “If a mother is in labor, I can tell you exactly what would happen, the infant would be delivered. The infant would be kept comfortable. The infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired, and then a discussion would ensue between the physicians & mother.”

“Governor Northam was right. That is exactly what happens. I know because I cared for a dying baby who was on the other side of that decision,” Stanek said.

She joined three other women to testify in support of H.R. 962, the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act. Republicans in the House of Representatives have asked Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) —no less than 80 times! — to bring the bill to a vote, but she has stubbornly refused. Democrats claim the bill is unnecessary.

After Northam’s comments, a spokeswoman accused conservatives of twisting them out of context. She insisted that “no woman seeks a third-trimester abortion except in the case of tragic or difficult circumstances, such as a nonviable pregnancy or in the event of severe fetal abnormalities, and the governor’s comments were limited to the actions physicians would take in the event that a woman in those circumstances went into labor.”

But OBGYN Kathi Aultman, a former medical director at a Planned Parenthood abortion clinic, testified that nurse Julie Wilkinson — who assisted an abortionist with late-term abortions — told her “that the vast majority of abortions that they performed were done for convenience, not for fetal anomalies or maternal health problems.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that at least 143 survivors of abortion were left to die after being born between 2003 and 2014. The CDC also said this is likely an underestimate.

“Northam’s comments show just how urgent this issue is,” Jessica Anderson, vice president of Heritage Action for America, told PJ Media. “High-powered politicians think that powerless infants who survive abortions don’t deserve medical care or admittance to a hospital.”

“Politicians in states like Virginia and New York are fighting for greater access to late-term abortions, increasing the likelihood that babies will be born alive during a botched abortion,” Anderson continued. “Today’s testimonies from abortion survivors shows that this is a real problem and legislation is necessary. Saving lives should never be a partisan issue – it’s simply the right thing to do.”

Stanek, the nurse who witnessed the infanticide, recounted her story.

“I was a registered nurse at Christ Hospital in Illinois, when I learned it committed abortions into the second and third trimesters. The procedure, called induced labor abortion, sometimes resulted in babies being aborted alive,” she said. “In the event a baby was aborted alive, he or she received no medical assessments or care but was only given what my hospital called ‘comfort care’ – made comfortable, as Governor Northam indicated.”

“One night, a nursing co-worker was transporting a baby who had been aborted because he had Down syndrome to our soiled utility room to die – because that’s where survivors were taken. I could not bear the thought of this suffering child dying alone, so I rocked him for the 45 minutes that he lived. He was 21 to 22 weeks old, weighed about 1/2 pound, and was about the size of my hand,” Stanek testified. “He was too weak to move very much, expending all his energy attempting to breathe. Toward the end he was so quiet 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, I folded his little arms across his chest, wrapped him in a tiny shroud, and carried him to the hospital morgue where we took all our dead patients,” she added. “Christ Hospital readily admitted babies there survived abortions. A spokesman told the Chicago Sun-Times (article submitted with testimony) ‘between 10 percent and 20 percent’ of aborted babies ‘survive for short periods.'”

Stanek testified that aborted babies would often live for an hour or two after their birth. One survived for as long as eight hours. They perished because they did not receive the care that could have saved their lives.

The nurse also recalled Christ Hospital’s “comfort room,” unveiled in December 2000. Rather than taking live aborted babies (an oxymoron term to avoid the truth of infanticide) to the soiled utility room to die, the nurses would take the babies to the comfort room.

“This was a small, nicely decorated room complete with a First Foto machine in case parents wanted pictures of their aborted babies, baptismal supplies if parents wanted their aborted babies baptized, and a foot printer and baby bracelets if parents wanted keepsakes of their aborted babies. There was also a wooden rocker to rock these babies to death,” Stanek testified. She submitted photos of the comfort room with her testimony.

“That’s why the word ‘comfortable,’ which Governor Northam used, was particularly grating. How far will doctors go to comfort themselves for letting abortion survivors die? Pretty far,” the nurse added, bitterly. “Clearly, little abortion survivors desperately need Congress to pass the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, to provide them with legal medical protections and not leave open the decision whether they live or die.”

Tragically, some media outlets still carry water for Northam’s infanticide comments.

On Monday, President Donald Trump held a rally in Fayetteville, N.C. At that rally, the president again attacked Northam for saying that “after the baby was born the doctor will talk to the mother and make a decision about whether the baby lives.”

PolitiFact attacked this statement, sharing a fact-check of the president’s earlier claim that Northam defended “executing” babies after birth. While Trump’s statement might have been hyperbolic, the heartless decision not to care for a baby who survived an attempted abortion can be considered a form of execution.

Yet PolitiFact had rated Trump’s execution claim “false,” and its tweet on Monday suggested that Trump’s more recent statement was also false.

Trump says VA gov Ralph Northam talked about “after the baby was born the Dr will talk to the mother and make a decision about whether the baby lives.” We rated his similar claim about abortion False. https://t.co/Z0um1PLY1j pic.twitter.com/GkBFqEHxX4

— PolitiFact (@PolitiFact) September 10, 2019

PolitiFact and others can try to cover up for Northam on this issue, but Americans like Jill Stanek know the truth. Americans need to hear her terrifying testimony.

Watch the video below.

Follow Tyler O’Neil, the author of this article, on Twitter at @Tyler2ONeil.