Rowan was not as fortunate as the fictitious Hannah, or the real-life Gianna Jessen and Ana Rosa Rodriguez. Clinic workers ignored his mother's pleas for help for her baby.
The mother, who is using the name "Angele" when dealing with this situation, was in a very stressful situation that I'm not at liberty to discuss. She sought "Christian" counseling, and ended up, sadly, with a counselor who informed her that the best way to deal with the the stresses of the situation and the pregnancy would be to seek an abortion. With a heavy heart, Angele finally did so.
Angele could have had an abortion in or near her home state, but those facilities used the D&E dismemberment technique that uses forceps to dismember the baby while he is still alive. Though the counselor had convinced Angele that it was necessary for her baby to die before birth, Angele couldn't bear to think of him being torn limb from limb. She found out about the EPOC clinic of Orlando Women's Center. There, they used a method similar to the way animals are put down. A chemical is injected into the baby's heart to cause a quick death. The woman then goes into labor and delivers her dead baby. This method struck Angele as much less terrible than the dismemberment abortion. So off to Florida she went.
Angele even asked the "counselor" at the clinic again about the injection. She wanted to make sure that it was a quick injection that would stop the baby's heart right away, and not the saline injection that she knew caused a long, slow, agonizing death.
But for some reason, the staff at EPOC put the laminaria into Angele's cervix to dilate it for labor, but they didn't inject the digoxin into Rowan's heart. Angele was concerned that she still felt the baby moving after leaving the facility on Day 1. But she told herself that she must have just misunderstood how this worked. She took the labor-inducing drugs as instructed, and early the next morning she was in labor.
She arrived at the facility at 9 a.m., before it opened, and knocked and knocked at the door. About fifteen minutes later, somebody let her in.
I was directed to "the room." I had been there for a moment the day before and thought it to be a waiting room for family or driving companions. It had a leather sofa and a fabric sofa, both with a white blanket stretched across the seat cushions, a small television and a few magazines.
However, noted Angele, "It was not a waiting area; it was the 'delivery room.' It was, of course, very cold." She was given a wet blanket and a heating pad and told that the doctor wouldn't be there until 2 p.m.
Angele's contractions became strong and frequent, and she was in a lot of pain. But the staff member told Angele that medication would just slow her labor. Violene, the clinic staffer, left the room, and Angele started to bleed.
I came back to the sofa, (they both really smelled awful), wrapped up in the wet and sour-smelling blanket, then decided it was better without it. I rocked back and forth on my hands and knees, trying to hold the heating pad to my stomach to both relieve the pain and try to stay warm. I was looking down and saw little smears and spots of dried blood on the floor and an old cotton ball with blood on it by the fabric-covered sofa across from me. Noticing how dirty it was and how no one was in the room or even nearby in the hallway began to make me nervous and uncomfortable. I went right back to the powder room and began to try to push a lot. I thought it might help since I was told I was not nearly ready to deliver.
In one agonizing push, I felt and heard something come out. Then immediately another push. I was weak. I just held my head in my hands for a moment. Then I decided to stand up. I looked. There was my baby, the whitish cord and what I thought surely must be the placenta.
I started sobbing and lay down in the floor. I stared and stared at my son. I was horrified that I had just had him in a commode.
His right leg moved. He curled up a bit like he was cold; I screamed for Violene! No one came. I managed to get to the doorway, pants down, blood everywhere and yelled again. I went back to my baby. I heard her say she'd be right there.
I showed her Rowan, told her he was alive and moving and to call 911! She took a quick look, said he's not moving now and she'd be back to take care of things while walking out. I called her again. I was touching Rowan softly and he moved again. I called her back. Rowan jumped, I think startled by the loud sound of my calling for help. I showed her that he was moving and alive. I begged her to hurry and call 911, now!
She said for me to lie down and she would get her supervisor. No one came.
I continued to try to caress and comfort my son by rubbing his back, tummy and chest. I stroked his precious little head and kept telling him I loved him and we would be OK. I was afraid to move him because I did not want to do anything that might end up hurting him. I pushed my pinky into his little hand and his fingers curled around me. Still no one was coming. I was terrified but trying not to let him know I was scared. I kept telling him what a beautiful son he was and that we were going to be safe soon.
Staff told Angele not to call 911, so she decided to call her friend.
I left Rowan for two seconds, grabbed the phone, jumped back into the bathroom to be with him, calling my girlfriend 'Sharon' at the same time. I told her Rowan was alive and no one was helping us to please call an ambulance to the clinic immediately and hung up.
Angele's friend did call 911. You can read the transcript of the 911 calls here.
I stayed beside Rowan talking to him, telling him how strong he was being and how proud I was of him. I told him God must really want us to be together for him to make it through everything he had just been through and that Mommy was so sorry but so happy to have a chance to love him. I told him he was a strong little miracle and that I couldn't wait for him to meet his brother and sister. I just kept touching him, trying to warm him with my hands and talking to him so he would not feel any more afraid than he already must.
Then Rowan stopped moving.
Angele described her son:
He was perfect, slightly pale and a little translucent. His eyebrows were pale but wide and well-defined. You could see little hairs on his face and head. He had the tiniest little fingernails and toenails. I noticed they already had a little bit of growth. His mouth was lovely. He was this perfectly formed one pound, one ounce human being. He was beautiful. He had been so strong.
I wrapped him in [a] blue pad instead of one of the wet blankets. I just kept kissing him and telling him I loved him so much. I told him I was sorry I couldn't get anyone to help us and I was so sorry for ever coming here.
You can see photos of Rowan here.
A staff member came into the bathroom and demanded that Angele give her the baby. Angele refused.
Though Angele's friend had asked for rescue for the baby, Angele didn't see any ambulance staff at the clinic, only police. Angele told the police that she didn't want to give her baby to the clinic staff, that she wanted to take him to the funeral home for the funeral she had planned prior to the abortion.
Even though staff had originally told Angele that she would have to stay until after she'd been examined by the doctor, once Rowan had died they told her to leave, and she was discharged without being examined.
Here is A Message from Baby Rowan's Mother:
I wish that I had such a network and support before, I would still be pregnant. It is my hope that many things will transpire as a result of coming forward with my experience.
I hope that women will see my humiliation and remorse and seek forgiveness if they are post abortive.
I want to do everything in my power to see that this does not happen to other babies or mothers.
I want women in crisis pregnancies to see that whether they are of 6 weeks or 28 weeks gestation, that abortion will haunt them for the rest of their lives. I would like for them to know that no matter how little you want the pregnancy itself, you will want, love and cherish your child. Those 9 months of crisis are the toughest. If you make it through that, the rewards come 1000 fold!
If they choose not to keep their child; that adoption is easier than abortion, although that is not what most post abortive women thought before they terminated.
Finally I hope that women who remain pro choice will fight for these clinics to be more strictly regulated. As feminists, they should demand and expect it!
I think that even women who are pro choice, would not want to come face to face with what I have been through on any level. I also think they would agree, that having an infant born alive and left to die or literally murdered in some cases, is legally and morally wrong.
It is very shameful to step forward and admit publicly that I have been so wrong as to "choose" to take the life of my child. On the other hand if it will accomplish any or all of the above, then it is my duty, isn't it? That is so long as I protect the children I have here first and foremost. I know God wants me to put them first, just as I should have with Rowan.
Points I'd like to raise regarding this incident:
- Clearly, pre-abortion counseling is woefully inadequate at this "clinic." If a woman changes her mind in an instant like that, it's hard to argue that she really "needed" the abortion, or that she'd been prepared for the full ramifications of what she was signing up for.
- Supposedly abortion clinics exist to support women's choices. Where was their respect for Angele's choice to call an ambulance for her son?
A lot of prolifers cast stones at Angele, not understanding at all how she could have made the decision to have an abortion while wanting to have the procedure be quick and painless for a baby she'd named and planned a funeral for. What they don't seem to understand is that first of all, people in a crisis make terrible decisions; this is part of why bereaved people are usually told not to make major life decisions for a year, to let their decision-making abilities come back to normal. Second of all, you can't live in an atmosphere of poison and not be damaged by it. Angele lived, as we all do, in a society that says over and over again that abortion is moral, not merely harmless but palliative and merciful, etc. In a moment of duress Angele recognized that her own decision making abilities were impaired and she trusted the professionals around her -- the "Christian" counselor she was seeing for months, and the "counselors" at the clinic. She was adrift on a sea of despair and confusion and latched onto the wrong planks. She's painfully aware of this. Now. When it's too late. She realized she'd placed her trust in the wrong people as soon as she saw her son in the toilet. Hindsight is 20/20. She's trying to make it right now. Stop throwing stones. Or would you prefer she'd hardened her heart and become a convert to the abortion cause? That she put her efforts into seeing that her own nightmare is lived by even more women? She repented the moment she saw her son. Her sin is cast away, as far as the east is from the west, the Bible says. Let it go already.
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