Sep 14, 2004 / 22:00 pm
Two Catholic hospital systems, Loyola Health System in Chicago, and Providence Health System on the west coast and Alaska, commit late term abortions on handicapped babies, by the procedure of induced labor, claimed Jill Stanek of the Illinois Leader, in her September 14 column.
Stanek, tipped by reporter Tom Szyszkiewicz of Our Sunday Visitor and the National Catholic Register, suggested the likelihood that the 10 largest Catholic health systems in the U.S. – Providence is the tenth largest – are doing the same.
According to Szyszkiewicz, writes Stanek, the hospitals perform live birth abortions; they wait “until babies were 23 to 26 weeks gestation before aborting them, i.e., until they were of viable age, so they could say these weren’t abortions at all but simply labor inductions and, thus, sanctioned by the Catholic Church.”
Stanek writes that “the Catholic hospitals’ abortion strategy seemed even more risky when taking the Born Alive Infants Protection Act into account. It states that live born babies, no matter what their gestational age or circumstances of birth, are “persons.” According to the 14th Amendment, “persons” born in the U.S. are automatic citizens who cannot be “deprive[d]… of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor den[ied[… equal protection of the laws.””