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Perinatal Hospice is an alternative to abortion for those who have been told their children won’t survive after birth. For more information or to find out about developing a perinatal hospice contact CMC at 800-879-7451.
Dr. George Tiller, specializes in late term abortions in Wichita, Kansas. His clinic is referred to as a compound with a gated entrance manned by a full time security guard. His website and phone book ads promote his clinic as the place to go for help with second and third trimester abortions for babies malformed or suffering from fatal illnesses. He says he offers compassion, but the look on the faces of the women entering and leaving say something else.
Across the street is a homey looking place with a sign “Choices Medical Clinic.” You can enter without going through gates or passing guards and inside is a non-profit clinic/ministry/pregnancy care center staffed by a registered nurse and a family physician. This clinic is special because it invites the women who have been told that their babies will die – the same women at whom Tiller’s ads are aimed – and encourages them to carry their children to term, if only so they can hold them and perhaps even nurse them for the minute or the hour or the day their child breathes. It’s called a perinatal hospice, and there’s nothing quite like it anywhere else in America.
Perinatal Hospice is an alternative to abortion for those who have been told their children won’t survive after birth. CMC was created to help these mothers and fathers, because most doctors don’t recognize the intense grief parents experience when they abort a child with fatal anomalies. Mothers are torn by opposing emotions: the desire to end a troubled pregnancy they regard as a personal failure, and the dread of cutting short their infant’s future, no matter how brief or bittersweet. Delivering their babies alive, conversely, was an ‘overwhelmingly positive’ experience for all but one of the couples helped by CMC.
Tammy Schafer, the clinic’s registered nurse comes along side the parents, preparing them for delivery and inevitable death, she has even attended some of the births. There is also a neonatalogist available to the parents and she acts as an advocate for the baby’s needs. This support team encourages the parents and family members to hold the baby, name him or her, take pictures, bond with the baby, and then have a memorial service. Something as simple as putting a knit cap on the head of an anencephalic baby so the mother’s first memory of her child is not the sight of an exposed brain can really help parents deal with their tragedy.
Choices Medical Clinic also offers all the regular services of most crisis pregnancy centers, but they decided that in order to keep up with the Jones or Tillers next door, they had to get creative! Perinatal Hospice is that and much more.
For more information or to find out about developing a perinatal hospice contact CMC at 800-879-7451.
Citizen, April 2001
