Miami -- or Beijing? (Insider Report).

On orders from Probate Judge Arthur Rothenberg, medical personnel at Miami's Jackson Memorial Hospital aborted an unborn child who came to be known as "Baby Doe." The child, killed on May 29th at 24 weeks gestational age, was apparently conceived by rape. The adult mother, referred to as "ZM," suffered from bacterial meningitis as a child, and had the mental development of a four-year-old.

Attorneys Dean DiBartolomeo and John Stemberger offered to act as Guardians ad Litem for Baby Doe. In hearings before Judge Rothenberg, physicians specializing in high-risk pregnancies testified that the unborn child was developing normally, and that there was no medical reason for an abortion. However, Judge Rothenberg claimed to have heard ZM mutter, "My baby no more," which he took as a definitive statement of the retarded woman's intent to have an abortion.

But Rothenberg also read into that ambiguous statement a desire for sterilization. Accordingly, with the approval of ZM's biological mother (who lives in Maryland and was not her daughter's legal guardian), Rothenberg ordered that the child be aborted and ZM undergo a tubal ligation.

In appealing Rothenberg's decision, the pro-life legal activist group Liberty Counsel (LC) pointed out that Florida law "requires that prior to an abortion on a person considered mentally incompetent, (1) the guardian must consent and (2) two physicians must certify that the abortion is necessary to save the life or preserve the health of the mother." Neither of these conditions were met in the Baby Doe case.

Additionally, the mode of abortion chosen in this case, a hysterotomy, "is the same procedure as a C-section," noted LC in a case summary. "The term hysterotomy is used when the intent is to deliver a dead baby. The term is used - is to deliver a live baby. In a hysterotomy, the baby must first be killed (sometimes by injecting a high dose of saline into the uterus) prior to the lateral incision in the mother's lower abdomen."

On May 28th, Judge Rothenberg apparently changed his mind and ordered Jackson Memorial to perform a live birth. Within 24 hours, however, Rothenberg reversed himself again. He noted that ZM's mother (who, recall, had relinquished all legal rights to her retarded child) "objected strongly to a C-section, which would have been required to attempt a live birth." The biological mother had objected that delivering the baby alive would be "invasive' but that course would have been no more invasive than performing the abortion and sterilizing the mother.

Accordingly, Baby Doe was allowed to drown to death in utero. A physician made an incision in ZM's abdomen, and placed a clamp on the umbilical cord, cutting off the infant's oxygen supply; this forced the child to breathe amniotic fluid through his nose.

Shortly after Baby Doe's death, the Population Research Institute made public the testimony of a former Chinese official now residing in the U.S., describing common practices used in carrying out Communist China's population control policy. According to this official, "unauthorized" children born in provincial hospitals are often delivered alive and then killed: Typically, the nurse would "take the baby as soon as the baby came out, alive or dead, and place her hand over the baby's mouth [and then] place the baby into a garbage can filled with water, to drown the baby."

Judge Rothenberg and the so-called physicians who murdered Baby Doe would be at home working for Beijing's population ministry.