Abortion Providers Admit To Not Saving Baby That Survives An Abortion

A third shocking undercover video has been released showing abortion clinic staffers saying they will not revive babies who are born alive after failed abortions. The videos show embattled abortion practitioner Kermit Gosnell was not an anomaly.
The new video comes on the heels of abortion doctor Cesare Santangelo of Washington, D.C, who was exposed on a recent undercover video telling a 24-week pregnant woman that in the unlikely event that an abortion resulted in a live birth, “we would not help it.”  Before that, the pro-life group released a video showing an abortion facility staff member saying an unborn child born alive after a botched abortion should just be flushed down the toilet.

Now, Live Action released a third undercover video exposing Phoenix, Arizona-based late-term abortion doctor Laura Mercer and an abortion center counselor who would leave a newborn, struggling for life after a failed abortion, to die.

This is the third in a series of undercover videos, found at www.liveaction.org/inhuman, involving the illegal and inhuman practices of late-term abortion centers, as well as describing in horrific detail what happens to the mother and baby in a late-term abortion.

When asked by the undercover investigator what would happen if the baby were to survive the abortion, Linda, an abortion center counselor, admits they would not help the baby:
Sometimes they are [alive], yeah. But it doesn’t–it doesn’t necessarily mean that it will come out whole. ‘Cause they use suction, plus they use instruments so sometimes the fetuses don’t come out–you know, it’s not complete…
Investigator: But if it does come out whole…I mean, are–will they resuscitate it? Like, will I have to take care of it?
Linda: Uh-uh… No…They do not resuscitate.
Doctor Mercer tells an undercover Live Action investigator who is 24 weeks pregnant:
We do the injection, which is a quick poke through your belly, um, and that stops the fetal heart, so that makes it so, if you were to deliver, there shouldn’t be movement. There shouldn’t be any of those things… Yes we induce a demise–an intrauterine demise… Um, death.
Then Live Action investigator asks whether an ambulance should be called if the mother goes into labor during the two-day procedure. Dr. Mercer instructs the investigator not to call:
No, call us first…if you showed up in an average emergency room with an emergency room physician who’s not a gynecologist, probably has never seen or done a termination, they will treat you as though you are somebody with a desired pregnancy…
Investigator: So they would basically like try to take care of it.
Dr. Mercer: Right they would intervene and do all kinds of crazy things that you don’t need to have done to you…
“This video is just the latest evidence of a disturbing and horrifying trend occurring inside America’s abortion industry,” said Lila Rose of Lila Action.

She told LifeNews in a statement: “The horrors of the Kermit Gosnell trial are a widespread problem in this industry.    Dismembering and destroying innocent children, leaving born babies to die, injecting poison into the chest of a tiny child so that he slowly dies in his own mother’s womb – this is all standard operating procedure in the abortion industry.  But these children are human beings. They have the same basic human rights and deserve the same protections all of us enjoy.”
Rose condemned the “barbaric, inhuman, and deeply disturbing” practices espoused by Dr. Mercer and the late-term abortion center staff at Family Planning Associates Medical Group.
“The testimony we’ve documented in this abortion facility strongly suggests that staff there are committing infanticide,” said Rose.  “The Family Planning Associates Medical Group needs to be investigated immediately, and delicensed.  Women are at risk during these brutal procedures, and this is a matter of life and death for these children.”
Rose is calling for Attorney General Eric Holder and the U.S. Attorney’s office to investigate and prosecute Dr. Mercer and the Family Planning Associates Medical Group, who admit they violate federal law. Rose also called on local health and law enforcement officials to investigate Dr. Mercer and Family Planning Associates Medical Group and put an end to illegal and inhuman practices.
From the letter to Attorney General Holder: “We urge you, as the U.S. Attorney General, to speak out against this injustice, and to see to it that Dr. Mercer and the Family Planning Associates Medical Group are duly investigated and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. … I hope that you will do everything in your power to speak out for victims of infanticide – both the children and the women – and to protect the human rights of our weakest citizens.”
(life site news)

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Late Term Abortion Doctor Admits To Allowing Babies Who Survived A Abortion To Die

"Dr". Cesare Santangelo (Washington DC.) on if a baby survives an abortion
“Technically – you know, legally we would be obligated to help it, you know, to survive.  But, you know, it probably wouldn’t.  It’s all in how vigorously you do things to help a fetus survive at this point.  Let’s say you went into labor, the membranes ruptured, and you delivered before we got to the termination part of the procedure here, you know?  Then we would do things – we would – we would not help it.  We wouldn’t intubate.  

This comes shortly after the Alisa LaPolt Snow, the lobbyist representing the Florida Alliance of Planned Parenthood Affiliates, testified that her organization believes the decision to kill an infant who survives a failed abortion should be left up to the woman seeking an abortion and her abortion doctor.


here's a article from the (Washington Post)
WASHINGTON — An anti-abortion group that mounted a six-month undercover investigation has released videos this week that raise questions about what might happen to a baby as a result of an unsuccessful abortion.

One edited video features a Washington, D.C., doctor, Cesare Santangelo, who said that in the unlikely event that an abortion results in a live birth, “we would not help it.” Santangelo was answering repeated questions from an undercover operative about what would happen, hypothetically, if she gave birth after an unsuccessful abortion.

“I mean, technically, you know, legally, we would be obligated to help it, you know, to survive, but . . . it probably wouldn’t,” Santangelo is shown telling the woman, who was 24 weeks pregnant. “It’s all in how vigorously you do things to help a fetus survive at this point.”

In an interview with The Washington Post, Santangelo said he was trying to reassure the woman, who turned out to be an undercover operative of the group, Live Action. In reality, he said, he would call 9-1-1. But he said he stands by what he said on tape.

“What I said is, basically I wouldn’t do anything extraordinary,” he said Saturday. “We would call EMS. We would call 9-1-1. But I wouldn’t do intubation or anything. . . . You let nature take its course.”

The videos do not depict Santangelo doing anything illegal. Live Action provided an advance copy of the video, and other extended footage of the D.C. clinic encounter, to The Post on the condition that it not be published before Monday. Also on the extended tape is a nurse saying unequivocally that the clinic would take any live birth to a hospital. Under D.C. law, it is generally permissible for one party to a conversation to record it without consent.

Live Action plans to release more videos as part of a campaign targeting clinics that perform abortions late in pregnancy, also known as “late-term” abortions. It claims the videos show that abortion doctors are willing to kill babies in violation of the federal Born-Alive Infants Protection Act of 2002, which requires them to try to save a child born during a failed abortion using the same measures used in miscarriages or preterm births at the same stage of pregnancy.

No authorities have accused Santangelo of violating the law. His attorney, Alfred Belcuore, said the doctor practices medicine in full compliance with laws in the District of Columbia. In a statement, he criticized the recording of “a private exchange between a physician and his patient” and their release as an “outrageous intrusion upon the doctor-patient relationship.”

Live Action president Lila Rose said the group’s videos expose “truly gruesome, illegal and inhuman practices.” She defended the tactics, saying undercover investigations are a powerful method to expose abuses.

Another video released Sunday shows an unidentified worker in the New York City borough of the Bronx, saying the clinic would put the baby in a jar of “solution” that would cause it to stop breathing.
Marjana Banzil, director of the Bronx clinic, said Friday she had not viewed the video but that any employee who would say such a thing was misinformed.

“I have never had any fetus that was born alive,” she said. “If my staff member or somebody had mentioned something [like that], it was something they didn’t understand.” Live Action is calling for investigations of the Washington Surgi-Clinic and Dr. Emily Woman’s Health Center in the Bronx.

Experts say it is exceedingly rare for a live birth to result from an abortion attempt. Santangelo and other doctors said they have never witnessed it. But interest in the subject has been rekindled during the trial of Philadelphia doctor Kermit Gosnell, who is accused of snipping the spines of living babies after they were removed from their mothers’ bodies.

The group outfitted three women between 23 and 26 weeks pregnant with tiny cameras and sent them to 18 clinics pretending to seek abortions. They were unable to gain access to other clinics because of scheduling conflicts and because they were too far along in their pregnancies. Rose said the women were recruited and paid between $1,000 and $2,500.

The videos come at a time of particular upheaval over abortion. Several states have passed laws severely restricting access to the procedure, which abortion rights groups have challenged or intend to in court. Many of those laws target early-stage pregnancy, but in recent years, late-term abortions have been more controversial. Most states have some restrictions on late abortions, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit reproductive health research center.

More than 88 percent of the 1.2 million abortions performed each year in the United States are done in the first trimester, and most doctors will not perform them beyond 24 weeks because of moral qualms, legal concerns or lack of experience. Barely 1 percent of procedures — perhaps about 15,000 each year — are done after 21 weeks. At 37 weeks, a baby is generally considered full-term. No group has statistics on how many fetuses survive an abortion, experts said.

But it can happen when doctors use suppositories to help open a woman’s cervix days before the abortion. The suppositories can, in rare instances, trigger labor.

Bonnie Hope Arzuaga, a Chicago neonatologist who co-wrote a 2011 study in the journal Pediatrics that looked at the limits of viability, said the lack of clarity in the federal Born-Alive law often leaves the decision up to the states and the individual doctor.

“You have to use your professional judgment, you have to use ethical principles, and a lot of times law and ethics don’t agree,” she said. “People don’t realize that physical intervention to resuscitate a 23-week-old infant can cause major damage to its lungs and brain.”

When patients with wanted pregnancies deliver prematurely at 23 to 26 weeks, she gives the woman or parents a choice, laying out what may be in the best interest of the baby and its quality of life. “Do they want us to ‘do everything,’ or do they want us to provide comfort care, wrap the baby in a blanket and let them hold it until it passes away?”

Live Action was founded by Rose, a former associate of conservative activist James O’Keefe, whose controversial stings contributed to the demise of the liberal group ACORN. She has used similar techniques in her campaign against Planned Parenthood, employing actors to pose as prostitutes and pimps in an effort to provoke clinic workers into condoning child sex trafficking or sex-selective abortions.

Santangelo, 56, said he’s been a practicing obstetrician-gynecologist in the District since 1987. He said he keeps a low profile, partly because he worries that the controversial nature of abortions could make him a target for violence, but also because he prefers to stay out of the politics. He said he sometimes refuses late-term abortions if he feels women have been coerced or are in extramarital affairs, are seeking to terminate because of the sex of the child, or if they seem unsure that they want the procedure.

He said he views what he does as a service because some are victims of rape and incest. The majority are women with wanted but abnormal pregnancies.

When a patient is seeking a late-term abortion, he said, he will insert a suppository to open her cervix. Two days later, he said, he completes the procedure by cutting the umbilical cord until the cord stops pulsing. Then he removes the fetus. He said he has never had a live birth during an abortion.

He said he was “tripped up” by a hypothetical at a moment when he was trying to reassure a client. “Once the baby is born, it’s out of everybody’s hands, and the baby has rights, too,” he said. “I understand that and I support that.”

He said he has not watched the video because “I don’t like to feed into these people. I really consider them terrorists.”

Planned Parenthood Rep. Says Mother And Doctor Should Be Allowed To let A Baby That Survives A Botched Abortion Die

Florida legislators considering a bill to require abortionists to provide medical care to an infant who survives an abortion were shocked during a committee hearing this week when a Planned Parenthood official endorsed a right to post-birth abortion.

Alisa LaPolt Snow, the lobbyist representing the Florida Alliance of Planned Parenthood Affiliates, testified that her organization believes the decision to kill an infant who survives a failed abortion should be left up to the woman seeking an abortion and her abortion doctor.

"So, um, it is just really hard for me to even ask you this question because I’m almost in disbelief," said Rep. Jim Boyd. "If a baby is born on a table as a result of a botched abortion, what would Planned Parenthood want to have happen to that child that is struggling for life?”

"We believe that any decision that's made should be left up to the woman, her family, and the physician," said Planned Parenthood lobbyist Snow.

Rep. Daniel Davis then asked Snow, "What happens in a situation where a baby is alive, breathing on a table, moving. What do your physicians do at that point?”

"I do not have that information," Snow replied. "I am not a physician, I am not an abortion provider. So I do not have that information.”

Rep. Jose Oliva followed up, asking the Planned Parenthood official, "You stated that a baby born alive on a table as a result of a botched abortion that that decision should be left to the doctor and the family. Is that what you’re saying?”

Again, Snow replied, “That decision should be between the patient and the health care provider.”

“I think that at that point the patient would be the child struggling on the table, wouldn’t you agree?” asked Oliva.
"That’s a very good question. I really don’t know how to answer that," Snow said. "I would be glad to have some more conversations with you about this.”

Later another representative asked Snow, “What objection could you possibly have to obligate a doctor to transport a child born alive to a hospital where it seems to me they would be most likely to be able to survive?”

Snow said Planned Parenthood was concerned about "those situations where it is in a rural health care setting, the hospital is 45 minutes or an hour away, that’s the closest trauma center or emergency room. You know there’s just some logistical issues involved that we have some concerns about.”
(Weeklystandard)