President Obama, infanticide happens; Update: Physician license suspended

posted at 8:32 am on February 6, 2009 by Ed Morrissey
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President Barack Obama in 2003 insisted that abortion clinics don’t commit infanticide because … well, because they’re doctors:

[T]he only plausible rationale, to my mind, for this legislation would be if you had a suspicion that a doctor, the attending physician, who has made the assessment that this is a nonviable fetus and that, let’s say for the purposes of the mother’s health, is being — that — that labor is being induced, that that physician (a) is going to make the wrong assessment and (b) if the physician discovered, after the labor had been induced, that, in fact, he made an error, and in fact this was not a nonviable fetus but, in fact, a live child, that the physician, of his own accord or her own accord, would not try to exercise the sort of medical procedures and practices that would be involved in saving that child.

Now, if — if you think that there are possibilities that doctors would not do that, then maybe this bill makes sense, but I — I suspect and my impression is, is that the Medical Society suspects that doctors feel that they would already be under that obligation[.]

Reality:

Eighteen and pregnant, Sycloria Williams went to an abortion clinic outside Miami and paid $1,200 for Dr. Pierre Jean-Jacque Renelique to terminate her 23-week pregnancy.

Three days later, she sat in a reclining chair, medicated to dilate her cervix and otherwise get her ready for the procedure.

Only Renelique didn’t arrive in time. According to Williams and the Florida Department of Health, she went into labor and delivered a live baby girl.

What Williams and the Health Department say happened next has shocked people on both sides of the abortion debate: One of the clinic’s owners, who has no medical license, cut the infant’s umbilical cord. Williams says the woman placed the baby in a plastic biohazard bag and threw it out.

Police recovered the decomposing remains in a cardboard box a week later after getting anonymous tips.

Obama tried denying that this practice occurs in order to suck up to the abortion industry and help them avoid responsibility for killing live infants.  Jill Stanek had already testified that she personally had witnessed this practice as a nurse at Christ Hospital in Chicago, which was affiliated with Obama’s own church, Trinity United Church of Christ.  The Illinois legislature heard further testimony that as many as 40% of late-term abortions resulted in a live birth, whom staff would abandon until death rather than provide the necessary medical care to save the infants’ lives.

But Obama, in thrall of Planned Parenthood and Big Abortion, continued to deny it.

The story actually gets a little worse:

The complaint says one of the clinic owners, Belkis Gonzalez came in and cut the umbilical cord with scissors, then placed the baby in a plastic bag, and the bag in a trash can.

Williams’ lawsuit offers a cruder account: She says Gonzalez knocked the baby off the recliner chair where she had given birth, onto the floor. The baby’s umbilical cord was not clamped, allowing her to bleed out. Gonzalez scooped the baby, placenta and afterbirth into a red plastic biohazard bag and threw it out.

Apparently this was preferable to “punishing” Williams with a child.  At least that’s what Barack Obama thought in 2001-3, when he had an opportunity to defend innocent life and stop this practice.

Update: Jill Stanek notes that the physician’s license to practice has been suspended as a result of the investigation:

The Florida Board of Medicine has revoked the license of a doctor following a badly botched abortion the doctor never showed up to. …

The Board of Medicine revoked [his] license to practice medicine, at a hearing in Tampa. Neither Renelique nor his attorney would answer questions from ABC Action News.com.

Jill also catches an interesting quote from another link, which appears to be down:

Renelique’s attorney, Joseph Harrison, told the medical board, “His record of a lifetime of practicing medicine does not warrant revocation.”

The patient, Harrison said, “came in for an abortion. This patient came in to have the fetus rendered and terminated.”

The defense of this action is that “the patient wanted a baby killed, and that’s what she got”?  Either that, or “What’s a little infanticide between colleagues”?  Got it.

Also, the original Buffalo News report appears to have been cleansed.  The Kid from Brooklyn send the link from the Boston Herald, which remains in its original form.

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