Babies Were Born Alive After Botched Abortions, Denied Medical Care and Tossed Into Buckets
From the earliest days of legalized abortion in America, babies have been accidentally born alive during abortion procedures.
Several states legalized abortion before the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision in 1973. New York was one of them. It legalized abortion in 1970.
A 1972 pro-life book called Respectable Killing: The New Abortion Imperative documented cases in which babies were born alive during abortions in New York and elsewhere. Most of these live births happened as a result of saline and prostaglandin abortions.
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Old, Dangerous Abortion Techniques
Saline abortions are carried out by injecting a caustic saline solution into a woman’s uterus. The saline solution burns the skin and lungs of the child, slowly poisoning him or her.
Then the woman goes through labor to deliver a dead (or dying) child. Saline abortions caused so many live births and were so dangerous to women that most abortionists stopped doing them several years ago.
Prostaglandin abortions are also done by inducing labor, in this case with prostaglandin drugs, and countless babies survived the procedure.
It was generally believed that these gruesome abortion methods were relics of the past. But a 2021 Live Action News article by Carole Novielli documents that these abortions have been reported as recently as 2020.
Research shows that 121 saline abortions and 68 prostaglandin abortions were committed in New York in 2018.
In 2019, four saline or prostaglandin abortions were done in Missouri and three in Pennsylvania. And in 2020, two saline or prostaglandin abortions were done in Michigan.
Quotes from Eyewitnesses
In 1970, many late-term abortions were carried out in hospitals. In a November 1970 article in Washington Catholic Standard, a nurse at one of these hospitals who assisted in saline abortions wrote that:
Throwing away perfectly formed fetuses [is] revolting… No matter what anyone tells you and no matter what your religious beliefs, it’s a physically grotesque thing to work at for eight hours a day.1
Another nurse claimed that babies were being born alive during abortion procedures. She said:
I couldn’t possibly go on ignoring the live fetuses or even putting the dead ones in buckets to be sent to the lab.2
She was ordered to ignore the born-alive babies, but in one case, she insisted the child be given medical care. She explained:
One day, when I came on duty, the nurse going off duty pointed to the table on the other side of the room where the fetuses were placed. It was easy to detect all the way across the room a visibly strong heartbeat.
The other nurse was timid, and she asked me to speak to the doctor. When I pointed it out to him, he said, “For all intents and purposes, it’s dead. Leave it there.”
I told him I couldn’t do it. He could have my job on the line, but I wouldn’t do it. This time I was going to take it to the nursery. I knew the fetus would probably die, but I had to give it a chance…3
The book Respectable Killing, which shared excerpts from the Washington Catholic Standard, didn’t say whether the child survived, and I was unable to get my hands on the original article.
But it is clear from the nurse’s testimony that babies were regularly surviving abortions at this hospital.
The same article described how nurses put aborted babies into buckets of formalin solution and sent them to the lab.
The lab wasn’t open on weekends, so the bodies piled up until Monday morning.
One nurse was quoted as saying:
You could populate a whole village with the fetuses in cartons lined up on the table on Monday morning.4
Despite the use of the scientific (and dehumanizing) term “fetuses,” these were tiny babies who had been killed midway through pregnancy.
How Many Babies Were Born Alive?
Respectable Killing cited a December 18, 1970, article in The Chicago Tribune that revealed 26 babies had been born alive after abortions in New York City. Only one of the 26 babies, a girl, survived long-term. She found a home with adoptive parents.
A National Catholic Reporter article quoted OB/GYN Dr. Robert R Onorato saying he believed the actual number of babies aborted alive was “in the hundreds” since the true figure goes unreported.5
Still other sources, according to the book, put the number of babies aborted alive in New York by the end of 1970 at 62.
The Oregon Right to Life Committee documented 33 cases of live births after abortions in the state of Oregon by 1972.
Oregon had only legalized abortions under certain circumstances, but according to author KD Whitehead, abortionists violated the law in many cases without being prosecuted. An article published March 14, 1972, in the Oregon Journal had the tagline, “Officials Wink at Laws.”
Documented Cases
In an April 29, 1971, article, the Washington Catholic Standard reported a live birth at the Washington Hospital Center, which at that time was committing 100 abortions a week. Reportedly, the living baby was placed in a refrigerator and expected to die, but was found later by another employee, still alive.
The same abortionist delivered a second living baby after an abortion. Only then were the doctor’s hospital privileges revoked.
Because D&E abortion (where the baby is dismembered with forceps) is now the most common method of second-trimester abortions instead of saline or other induction methods, live births may be less common today than they were in the 1970s and 80s.
But we don’t really know, because most cases are never reported.
There have been many attempts to pass laws protecting babies born alive after abortions and requiring them to receive medical care. They have all been defeated by pro-abortion politicians, usually Democrats.
Tragically, the party that has fought so devotedly to provide help to the poor and disabled, advocating for lifesaving healthcare and SNAP benefits, has a long history of enabling the killing of people who are even more vulnerable – the preborn.
LifeNews Note: Sarah Terzo covered the abortion issue for over 13 years as a professional journalist. In this capacity, she has written nearly a thousand articles about abortion and read over 850 books on the topic. She has been researching and writing about abortion since attending The College of New Jersey (class of 1997) where she minored in Women’s Studies. This article originally appeared on Sarah Terzo’s Substack. You can read more of her articles here. File photo.
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