Left for dead. That’s the only accurate way to describe the fate of the baby who survived a botched abortion in Italy only to be abandoned until being discovered by a priest the following day.
The UK Telegraph reports:
A baby boy abandoned by doctors to die after a botched abortion was found alive nearly two days later.
The 22-week infant later died in intensive care at a hospital in the mother’s home town of Rossano in southern Italy.
The mother, pregnant for the first time, had opted for an abortion after prenatal scans suggested that her baby was disabled.
However the infant survived the procedure, carried out on Saturday in the Rossano Calabria hospital, and was left by doctors to die.
He was discovered alive the following day – some 20 hours after the operation – by Father Antonio Martello, the hospital chaplain, who had gone to pray beside his body.
He found that the baby, wrapped in a sheet with his umbilical cord still attached, was moving and breathing.
The priest raised the alarm and doctors immediately arranged for the infant to be taken to a specialist neonatal unit at a neighbouring hospital where he died on Monday morning.
Until our culture decides every life is sacred we will continue spiraling into this hedonistic madness.
The newspaper said that police are investigating it as a homicide as doctors are obligated to try to preserve the life of a child if the child survives the abortion. Can you just for one second ponder the madness of that. Doctors can try every which way to kill the baby but if that same baby comes out of the womb then those same doctors are legally obligated to do everything in their power to save the baby. What inhuman madness reigns in our culture?
April 29, 2010 at 6:24 am
While I respect and sympathize with your experience, I still I'm somewhat surprised that one would believe that an abortion would be casually chosen simply to live a guilt- and care-free life. I think it's interesting that these broad analyses of lifestyles, mindsets and feelings are continuously projected onto people whose lives and situations we will never experience. That will be all from me here. Have a lovely week, everyone. 🙂
April 29, 2010 at 1:26 pm
Uh, Laura, you have no clue. You really do not. I have known plenty of women who "casually choose abortion simply to live a guilt and care free life." Having a baby is hard work. One must give up the bars, the beauty salons, the fast-life. For many, that is the ONLY reason they murder their babies. You are a FOOL to think women are murdering their babies because of some serious condition. Why in God's name do you think these women cry when they see their babies on the ultrasound? Because THEY KNOW! You see, it's fine to murder you baby for a guilt and care free life if it's only a blob of tissue or has no arms and legs or a heartbeat. But not so easy to do when YOU KNOW and SEE that it is a REAL LIVING PERSON!!!!! Grow up Laura–women murder their babies because they can't stand the pain–the pain of having to give up their career, the pain of having to bear their guilt of adultery in the open, the pain of having to sacrifice their pleasure, peace filled lives, the pain of having to live without new clothes and new cars, the pain of actually having to take responsibility for their actions.
April 29, 2010 at 2:39 pm
Agree with Mathew, and Mathew and OWBT: Unless someone here can state that Mr. Archibald was speaking ONLY of the abortionist's behavior and not making a general comment about abortion, then hedonism fits.
Hedonism is the opposite of charity. When seeking one's own pleasure first it is at the expense of sacrificing love for another. In that way, Hedonism is also a purity of selfishness. When one puts their own (even Maslowian) needs ahead of a person's LIFE they are certainly putting their own pleasures (such as simply living and breathing) ahead of another. Perhaps some find this term distasteful because it is more "romantic" to picture every broke and desperate woman struggling mightily with the decision and then conceding to it only in utter despair. They only choose it to “save” their own lives, huh? No pleasure there?
To think so, one must believe that there is no pleasure in being alive. Perhaps only the chronically depressed, then, might not get the hedonism link. For me, every bad day is a joy and a gift. To have that rough day is better than to not, because I can not give glory to God for it, if have not even been born.
Sherri Shepard's comments from "The View" are only one public example of the attitude that many women have. (She causally said that she's had "more abortions than I want to count".) Planned Parenthood's own statistics show that MOST women who have abortions have more than one and that many see it as "birth control". So the vast majority of abortions are not taking place for any reason other than utter selfishness.
(BTW, "Very bad" might not be the right term either. How about EVIL? Wrong word, too. How about ABOMINATION? Wrong. How about HORRIFIC? Also wrong. NONE of these words is strong enough.)
Lastly – why even get wrapped up in this language in the first place? To do so, I think, shows a lack of comprehension or empathy. At least it surely misses the point of this awful story.
April 29, 2010 at 5:19 pm
Thank you Jimbo
God bless and forgive all of us.
April 29, 2010 at 5:41 pm
Please tell me the priest BAPTIZED THE BABY!
April 29, 2010 at 6:12 pm
While I respect and sympathize with your experience, I still I'm somewhat surprised that one would believe that an abortion would be casually chosen simply to live a guilt- and care-free life.
Your surprise is sadly misdirected. There is a significant percentage of people who get abortions for precisely that reason: to not be a "Costco Mom" as one writer so infamously put it. (She was having triplets and selectively aborted two of the children – one baby was enough for her lifestyle!) And they are not particularly silent about such things, either.
Sadly, Doug Stein is also correct, it's a small small step to openly advocating infanticide as a logical extension of this thought process, a step that college professor Peter Singer has readily taken.
Dr. Singer teaches ethics at Princeton. The joke is that he was going to go to Boston College, but could not be in the same room as Peter Kreeft, as the resulting matter/anti-matter explosion would have destroyed most of New England.
April 30, 2010 at 2:54 am
Do check out the wikipedia entry for Peter Singer. When my daughter was in college her ethics book featured articles by Singer. Truly appalling.
May 1, 2010 at 9:33 am
This is heatbreaking I pray the Lord have mercy on all those involved. Ms Lan
May 2, 2010 at 2:27 am
UPDATE: Apparently the baby was aborted because of a cleft lip. Can you believe it?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/7652889/Baby-that-survived-botched-abortion-was-rejected-for-cleft-lip-and-palate.html
May 3, 2010 at 3:10 pm
Thank you for the update.
My daughter was born deaf and with a cleft lip and palate – ALL of which were corrected – and she is now a totally and completely normal and beautiful little girl. How outrageous. How outrageous!
Imagine… as the receivers of the gift of life, if this makes us seethe, how much more angry must God be, as the creator of life?!
Lord have mercy!