Phoenix, Arizona police are investigating allegations that a human fetus aborted at the Family Planning Associates abortion facility lived briefly outside the womb before dying.
Authorities originally responded to a medical call from the building housing the facility on Friday. It is confirmed that an elective abortion had been performed that day, and that a baby without heart tones was taken to Banner Medical Center. “Someone present there believed there was movement, or might have been movement,” police Sergeant Trent Crump said. Some reports said that the baby, who was at 21 weeks gestation, was breathing just after being removed from the mother.
However, the police say investigators cannot confirm whether the child was in fact alive after the abortion. An autopsy will not be performed, and it is unknown whether any charges will be filed in connection with the incident.
Rumors about a born-alive baby began to swirl on Friday, leading over 45 pro-life activists to gather for a prayer vigil outside Banner-University Medical Center Phoenix, where they believed the baby had been taken.
Federal law requires that babies born alive after attempted abortions receive medical care. But last fall, abortion defenders in Congress voted against requiring abortionists to immediately get such babies to a hospital. Planned Parenthood has been accused of allowing infants to die following abortions based on footage from the Center for Medical Progress undercover investigation of the abortion giant.
Live Action investigators previously visited this very same abortion clinic in December 2012, and found that Family Planning Associates engages in a variety of abhorrent behavior.
In addition to purposely changing the ultrasound age of a baby so that an abortion could be performed, Family Planning Associates outright lied to women and admitted that they would not resuscitate any baby who survived an abortion. From Live Action’s investigative report:
A woman considering abortion should be able to trust Dr. Mercer to give her all the accurate information she needs to make an informed decision. But instead, Dr. Mercer lied to her patient. She said the baby’s heart doesn’t start to beat until 8 weeks; in fact, the heart beats at about 21 days.In a shameful attempt to dehumanize her patient’s baby [who was at least 23 weeks] Dr. Mercer declared, “It’s not fully developed… it doesn’t even look like a baby yet.” As any mother of a very premature baby could tell us, at this stage, 23 weeks, he certainly did “look like a baby.” The baby had had every organ, fingerprint, and facial feature for the past three months.
Finally, and most shockingly, both Dr. Mercer and “Linda,” the clinic counselor, assured our investigator that “they will not resuscitate” if her baby was born alive. In fact, Dr. Mercer told her not to go to the hospital if she started to deliver a live baby because “emergency room physicians would treat you as though you were someone with a desired pregnancy… they would intervene.” The abortion clinic, however, would “absolutely not” try to save the baby.Linda admitted that babies had been born alive after abortions at this clinic. Our investigator then asked, “so you would just let it die on it own if it was whole and breathing?” “Mm-hm, mm-hm. They will not resuscitate.”
