The Birth of Hope
By Penny Lawrence
Rightgrrl Contributor
PLAWREN@osu-tulsa.okstate.edu
May 3, 1999
On April 6, 1999 a baby girl named Hope was born. She was 22 weeks old. She lived for three hours, then, after being rocked and sang to, she quietly passed away.
This by any measure is a tragedy and breaks this mother's heart to think of the loss. But Hope was not your typical pregnancy and delivery.
Hope wasn't a premature delivery but rather a "complication" of a partial birth abortion. Her mother wasn't the one who lovingly held her as she died; it was instead a caring emergency room technician. Her parents weren't the ones traumatized by the loss of this child; it was the doctors, nurses and staff at Bethesda North Hospital in Cincinnati, Ohio, who were forced to witness this most cruel procedure gone wrong.
Baby Hope's (named by the medical staff at Bethesda) mother was undergoing a three-day abortion process at the Dayton Women's Health Center, Inc., an abortion facility that, according to its own publication, only performs abortions to 20 weeks, performing ultrasounds to determine gestation before undertaking any procedures.
However, something went wrong on this late term abortion and on the second day the mother began experiencing abdominal pains. She was rushed to Bethesda North and it was there that Baby Hope was born. In a final act of rejection, the child was turned over to the nursing staff to be cared for as she died. The physicians determined at her birth that her lungs were too underdeveloped for her to survive.
There have been no other reports of any medical abnormalities on Baby Hope. Her cause of death was being prematurely born. Also, there are no reports of her mother suffering any type of condition that would have prevented her from carrying this pregnancy to full term.
This, my friends, is not an abortion. This is infanticide. This was a living, breathing, thinking human being with feelings and emotions. She felt the pains of premature birth, and she felt the struggle for life that she could not hold on to. Her name was Hope and she deserved better than this.
Editor's Note: Penny chose to entitle her piece the Birth of Hope rather than the Death of Hope. We hope you all understand why...
Related links
This article copyright © 1999 by Penny Lawrence and may not be reproduced in any form without the express written consent of its author. All rights reserved.