{"id":309757,"date":"2024-04-05T14:43:17","date_gmt":"2024-04-05T19:43:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=309757"},"modified":"2024-04-09T15:43:12","modified_gmt":"2024-04-09T20:43:12","slug":"nurse-warns-diy-abortions-survivor-gasping","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/nurse-warns-diy-abortions-survivor-gasping\/","title":{"rendered":"Nurse traumatized by gasping abortion survivor was met with callousness: ‘You didn’t see that’"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A nurse from the United Kingdom is pleading with legislators to not allow the abortion pill to continue to be dispensed through the mail, recalling how she was traumatized when she saw a baby survive an abortion.<\/p>\n

In an op-ed for the Daily Mail, Nadine Dorries explained<\/a> that her time working on the gynecological ward as a nurse was happy and rewarding, until she was ordered to help with an abortion at 27 weeks.<\/p>\n

The baby was born alive:<\/p>\n

The expectant mother, who was only 16, had been injected in her uterine cavity with the hormone prostaglandin. Several excruciating hours later, the foetus \u2014 a little boy \u2014 was delivered.<\/em><\/p>\n

He was dropped in a bedpan, and the ward sister handed him to me, saying: \u2018Take this into the sluice room and leave it there until I come. Stay with it.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n

As I closed the sluice-room door, I removed the paper covering from the bedpan. I have never forgotten what I saw. There lay a tiny baby boy, blinking, covered in mucus, blood and amniotic fluid, gasping for breath, his little arms and legs twitching.<\/em><\/p>\n

I was shocked to my core. Weeping, I rocked the bedpan in my arms. I wanted to pick him up but he was so small, I didn\u2019t know how to. After a minute or so, I couldn\u2019t bear it any longer, and I was about to run for help when I heard the ward sister\u2019s unmistakable footsteps approaching.<\/em><\/p>\n

As she took the bedpan from me, he stopped breathing. I checked my fob watch: a little boy had been born, lived and died in the space of seven minutes. Mine was the only face he saw, my sobs the only sounds he heard.<\/em><\/p>\n

Distressed, I turned to the ward sister and said: \u2018He was breathing.\u2019 Through her dark-rimmed glasses she glared at me, saying: \u2018No he wasn\u2019t. You didn\u2019t see that.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n

Though Dorries still expresses support for “safe and legal” abortion, the event scarred her for life. But the move to allow women to receive abortion pills in the mail, no matter how far along they are, is a step too far for her.<\/p>\n