A Teen Had An Abortion Eight Months Into Her Pregnancy, But The Baby Survived

A teenager walked into a hospital scared, confused, and unsure that she was making the right choice. Her mother, a nurse, had pushed her to have an abortion rather than deliver the baby growing inside of her. Doctors performed an initial procedure, then waited five days for the teen to deliver her stillborn baby.

Her mother, the nurse, oversaw the delivery and demanded that the baby’s body be properly disposed of. The other nurses subsequently followed her directions, but suddenly everything about the procedure changed.

As the medical team finished cleaning up the delivery room and the body left behind by the procedure, two nurses heard an unmistakable, feeble noise – crying. And the source of the sound came as a shock to everyone. It was August of 1977 when a nineteen-year-old college student made her way to a hospital in Sioux City, Iowa.

The unwed teen sought to terminate an unwanted pregnancy, despite the fact that she was almost eight months along. Her mother, a nurse, forced her into making the decision. In today’s US, however, this type of procedure would be extremely hard to come by.

Susan Wasik, a nurse practitioner and board member of the American Sexual Health Association, explained why to Women’s Health in August 2017. “In most cases, a woman can only have a late-term abortion if her health is in danger or if she finds out that there is a serious abnormality with the fetus,” Misaki said.

But there’s no evidence that the teen who sought to have her pregnancy terminated in 1977 was anything but healthy. Doctors nonetheless injected saline, a toxic salt solution, into the fluid surrounding her baby in order to end its life. They then left the teen’s unborn baby soaked in the toxic fluid for five days. At that point, the girl returned to the hospital, where doctors induced the baby’s arrival. Unlike the scenes of unbridled joy they typically experienced in the delivery room, though, they prepared to deliver a dead child.

At first, they believed that their efforts to terminate the pregnancy had been successful. The teenager’s mother, the nurse who pressured her daughter into undergoing the procedure, delivered the lifeless baby – her grandchild. She quickly realized, however, that the newborn was clinging to life. But of course, that was not the intended outcome, especially not for the woman who’d forced her daughter into making the decision to terminate her pregnancy. So she demanded that the baby be left to die.

Even after discovering that it was alive, her orders would not be followed through. Somehow, two other nurses happened to hear the baby making noises, struggling to breathe, feebly attempting to cry. And in contrast, these nurses refused to stand idly by and watch a child die.

The two nurses, along with the rest of the medical team, decided that they had to save the child. They consequently rushed the baby – a girl – to the hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit.

She would not have an easy road to recovery, though. She weighed less than three pounds, in fact, and suffered from seizures, jaundice, and respiratory problems. Even if she did make it through, however, doctors suspected that the child would never lead a normal, healthy life.

They instead foresaw her suffering from multiple lifelong disabilities. In the meantime, though, her birth parents still drew up an adoption plan just in case their daughter survived.

And while the baby fought for her life in intensive care, a pair of potential adoptive parents came to see her. Doctors forewarned them of all that she’d be up against in life if she survived. Yet despite this, they peered into the incubator where she slept and instantly fell in love with her.

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With the support of her new family surrounding her, the baby’s prognosis began to slowly improve. She eventually went home without any of the disabilities that the doctors had been concerned she would have.