Saturday, November 19, 2005

Baby Claire, Abortion Survivor

Big sister Carissa with Baby Claire



From The Survivors

Little Baby Claire is also missing her right arm. Like Ana Rosa Rodriguez, she lost the arm when an abortionist twisted it off trying to abort her. Her Korean mother was unmarried and considered abortion to be the only solution to her problem. Claire, considered unplaceable in Korea, was adopted and brought to the United States by an American couple whose family already included four biological children and a severely disabled, adopted daughter from Taiwan named Carissa.

Claire was one year old when she came to America. She had hip surgery when she was two years old. For six weeks the energetic two-year-old was immobilized in a body cast. As her adopted grandmother, Dr. Jean Garton, says, it could have been a 42-day-long "Maalox moment" for the whole family. But that's when sister Carissa came to the rescue. Carissa was born with severe head deformities: She has a severe cleft palate, and no lower jaw, making speech difficult, and difficult to understand. But there's nothing wrong with her loving heart. With infinite patience, she took care of her little cast-bound sister. "What could have brought chaos to the family turned into something wonderful," Dr. Garton relates. "Carissa became Claire's missing hand and Claire became Carissa's voice." When others in the family can't understand what Carissa is saying, Claire pipes up with the translation.

Read Dr. Garton's own words about Claire and Clarissa here

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

hey survivor is my name!!!

Anonymous said...

Twisted her arm off when trying to abort her? That is impossible! There is no possible way that an arm could be twisted off a fetus that is developed enough to live outside the uterus. And if the cervix is dialated, the amniotic sac is punctured, and an abortion is begun, there is no possible way to reverse it. Perhaps her arm was injured during birth and had to be amputated, but there is no way that someone could twist the arm off a fetus! There is something wrong with the facts here.

Christina Dunigan said...

au contraire, anon. Check the case of Ana Rosa Rodriguez in New York. It was all over the news back in 1992. She was even on Phil Donohue. Ripped off the arm, realized the baby was still alive, sent the mom back home figuring baby would bleed to death overnight and he'd finish the job the next day. But mom went into labor, went to hospital, delivered maimed baby.

Maybe he had a hard time getting it off and finished the job with decapitation shears, but it's possible to take the arm off a 32-week baby in-utero. Abu Hatat made headlines for doing it.