Still waiting for a plausible explanation

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Tribune

For hours, a medicated Sycloria Williams lay ignored and feeling ill on a women's clinic table until she suddenly felt a sharp pain and expelled her 23-week-old fetus onto the floor, alive. Williams said she watched as a clinic worker scooped up the still-breathing infant, dropped her in a biomedical waste bag and tossed her in the garbage. From there, the infant, bag and all, allegedly traveled to the clinic roof to boil in the hot Florida sun, then back down into a cardboard box in a closet where police finally discovered it a week later, decomposing. An anonymous caller had alerted police to the killing, and it took police, search warrant in hand, three visits to the Florida clinic to find the hidden corpse. No telling exactly when the baby died, but an autopsy found she had taken air into her lungs, meaning that she had lived through at least a part of this savagery.

A doctor was supposed to have been present, but he didn't show up until an hour later. It was left to the clinic owner, who held no health-care license, to cut the umbilical cord. No one called 911, no one alerted a neonatologist to see what could be done to keep the infant alive.

Did I mention that all this occurred at an abortion clinic? Some people might say, "Oh, well, the fetus was supposed to die anyway, so what's the big deal?" Such crassness only makes the whole episode that much more appalling. Williams had sought an elective abortion after she discovered her pregnancy when she was treated for a fall. She had arrived at the clinic for a 9:30 a.m. appointment, and finding no one qualified there to do the abortion, returned to her parked car to wait. An hour later, she went back in, and a clinic worker gave her two pills. Then she returned to her car. About 11:45 a.m., she was back inside because she began to feel sick; she was told to lie down in a patient room. The clinic doctor who was scheduled to do the abortion now told staff he would arrive about noon. At 1:30 p.m., according to a later Florida health department report, she still was waiting and "feeling worse by the minute." About 2 p.m., she gave birth to her daughter; the doctor arrived at 3 p.m. This "incident" occurred in 2006, but it took until Friday for Florida to yank the license of Pierre Jean-Jacque Renelique, the clinic doctor. Local authorities still are weighing whether to charge Renelique with a crime (although it seems negligent homicide would be a lay down). And Williams is suing for physical and emotional damage.

Even some pro-choice groups have found this example of a "live-birth abortion" appalling. "It really disturbed me," said Joanne Sterner, president of the Broward County chapter of the National Organization for Women. "I know that there are clinics out there like this. And I hope that we can keep [women] from going to these types of clinics." Well said, but cleverly deceptive. If there are "clinics out there like this," as Sterner said, why is that? Is society's job only to steer women away from such clinics, or is it also society's job to shut them down? Most pro-choice folks are liberals, and liberals are big on demanding more government regulation. Except when it comes to abortion clinics; every attempt to more strictly regulate abortions—even to protect women—is stoutly opposed by outfits like NOW and the abortion industry as an "intrusion on a woman's right to choose [abortion.]" Failure to require detailed reporting to and aggressive follow-up by regulators of live-birth abortions, as well as other tougher regulations, casts doubt on any claims that Williams' case is extraordinarily rare.

We could debate all day what laws should be passed to prevent such outrages, and not get anywhere. Witness President Barack Obama's vote, twice, in the Illinois Senate against a Born-Alive Infant Protection Act, and his defenders' endless determination to minimize the vote. But we won't get nearer to resolving this issue until the Obamas of the world acknowledge that a baby born alive is a person with all the rights the rest of us claim. Until the pro-choice crowd becomes as passionate about born-alive infants as they are about their pantheon of other victims. Until they finally show some humanity.