Late abortion and infanticide: the testimony of a midwife

By Grégor Puppinck, Ph.D | December 3, 2014

When a child is born very prematurely, everything is done to save him. If this is not possible, he received comfort care and is surrounded until his death. Neonatal palliative care is well developed in many hospitals. The situation of those who are born alive after an abortion is different. Every year, children are born alive at the time of the abortion procedure after the 20th week of pregnancy in Europe. They are, most often, abandoned to die without care, struggling to breathe, sometimes for several hours, or they are killed by the lethal injection or suffocation, then thrown away with organic waste.

To denounce and to put an end to these practices, the ECLJ launched a petition to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE). More than 90.000 people signed it already.

The facts are attested by the official data and testimonies of midwives. One study published in the British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology has concluded that at 23 weeks of pregnancy, the level of children surviving abortion is at 10%.

This is also a problem for the medical personnel. Here is a testimony we received from a Swedish midwife:

« Hello. I have worked 36 years as a midwife in maternity and obstetric care. Now there is a reorganization at the women’s clinic, which means that the late term abortions after week 12 will be performed at the maternity ward. I have during my professional career worked with both gynecology and maternity care.

Therefore, I have horrible memories from my time at the gynecology ward where I participated in late term abortions, most around week 16 where the fetus struggled and tried to breathe for 5-15 minutes.

Because there are no rules or regulations on what one should do with a fetus that is struggling for life, you leave the fetus to die by itself in a round bowl or a basin. Horribly inhumane, I think. And this is not an unusual event. Approximately 25% in week 16-17 live a shorter or longer time.

Now I am reintroduces to this. I had decided to never ever concern myself with this chore. I am now forced to stop working as a midwife? How should I act? And if I’m forced to continue bring myself to do this again, what do I do with the fetus when it is alive?

I read in the Animal Welfare Act how to kill kittens, puppies or other small animals, and there are clear rules for how the killing should be done in a way that does not cause anxiety or pain to the animal…

 

To leave some of them to die without treatment, or killing them, simply because they are not wanted is inhuman and contrary to fundamental rights. However, on the 19th of November, the Commissioner for Human Rights for the Council of Europe let it be known that he thought this practice of infanticide was out of his Commissioner competence, and that he would refuse to meet with NGOs seeking to inform him on these practices and to give him a report on how children born alive are left to die after an abortion. Last July, the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe has not succeeded in reaching an agreement on this very topic, some Governments refusing to recognize the rights of premature children.

However, according to European law, all human beings born alive have the same right to live, to physical integrity and to necessary treatment and care, without discrimination based on the circumstances of their birth.

To tackle this deny of humanity, the ECLJ calls on seizing the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, according its official petition procedure and invites anyone to associate themselves with this petition on the following page. This procedure allows each citizen to request the President and the Bureau of the PACE to insert an item in the Agenda.

In order to give weight to this request before the Assembly, the ECLJ invites anyone to associate themselves with this petition because it is urgent to denounce and to put an end to these infanticides.

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