{"id":180199,"date":"2018-03-11T10:43:45","date_gmt":"2018-03-11T14:43:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=180199"},"modified":"2018-03-12T16:18:47","modified_gmt":"2018-03-12T20:18:47","slug":"nurse-survive-abortion-heart-beating","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/nurse-survive-abortion-heart-beating\/","title":{"rendered":"Nurse stunned as baby survived abortion: His ‘heart was beating strongly’"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Rita was a young, student nurse working in a London hospital in the 1970s. She describes herself as an \u201cIrish country girl\u201d who did not know what she would be expected to do in her training. When she was required to care for a woman undergoing an abortion<\/a>, she was confused and unprepared.\u00a0Rita describes<\/a> vividly the first time she witnessed an abortion:<\/p>\n

One case which is indelible in my mind was that of a married woman, who was admitted for a termination of pregnancy. She had two healthy children and was now pregnant with baby number three. She did not want any more children. I was asked to do the medicine round that morning and I gave her the prostaglandin tabs prescribed.<\/p>\n

Hours later she requested a bed pan and then passed a live foetus approximately the size of the palm of my hand. It certainly was a human being. It had limbs, a head, eyes and a heart that was beating strongly and visibly. The mother saw the contents of the bed pan as did I. The image of that little baby has never left my mind.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Decades later, Rita is sharing her story as part of the #MyAbortionStory<\/a> campaign in Ireland. As Ireland prepares to vote on a referendum that would pave the way to legalizing abortion on-demand through all nine months of pregnancy, Rita and other medical professionals are speaking out about what legal abortion means for people who work in health care. Despite abortion activists\u2019 claims of conscience protections for pro-life medical professionals if abortion is legalized, the reality of legal abortion is that doctors and nurses are thrust into situations in which a child\u2019s life is ended violently and they cannot intervene to care for the child.<\/p>\n

Reflecting on the first time she cared for a woman during an abortion, Rita says<\/a>, \u201cInstantly my inadequacies became very real\u2026 what to say, what to do with this little human being to be disposed of in the bed pan. My short training did not prepare me for this.\u201d\u00a0Rita is far from alone in her experience, which prompted the pro-life group Save the 8th<\/a> to launch the #MyAbortionStory campaign, featuring the stories of medical professionals who, like Rita, witnessed or were coerced to participate in abortions.<\/p>\n

Caren N\u00ed hAllach\u00e1in\u2019s story has been one of the most shocking stories publicized by the campaign thus far. Caren is a nurse who witnessed a baby who survived an abortion<\/a> and was left to die. Save the 8th released a video<\/a> of Caren\u2019s story that has received attention on social media.<\/p>\n