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October 18, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The baby whose body was found in the bag of a 17-year-old girl stopped by a security guard at a Victoria's Secret store in Manhattan for suspected shoplifting was born alive and likely asphyxiated, police said Friday

This means that Tiona Rodriguez of Brooklyn will likely face homicide charges, in addition to shoplifting charges.

The girl was stopped yesterday while allegedly shoplifting lingerie at the store. When police arrived to handcuff her, they detected a strong odor coming from her bag, and discovered the body of her baby boy.

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According to reports, Rodriguez originally told police that she was only five or six months pregnant, and that she had had a miscarriage on Wednesday, but didn't know what to do with the body of her baby. 

However, police said that an autopsy has  found that in fact the baby was in fact full term, and was born alive and likely asphyxiated later, the New York Post reports. At the same time, the medical examiner's office has said that the tests were inconclusive, and more tests are needed, according to the Associated Press.

Most media that had reported on the case had referred to the baby as a “fetus.” 

The episode is the latest in a series of bizarre and disturbing incidents in recent months in which newly born or miscarried babies have been flushed down toilets, abandoned in dumpsters, or thrown into trash cans.

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Just last month, a baby was found, bleeding but alive, with part of his umbilical cord attached, on the concrete in the back yard of a house in Queens, New York. In that case the story had a rare happy ending, with the baby surviving the abandonment.  

Last month, a prominent Catholic deacon said that the rash of such incidents signals the return of the ancient pagan practice of “exposure,” in which parents would simply leave their unwanted newborn babies on a rock or in the wild to die.   

“It was the Christians who saved [these babies] and transformed those cultures from cultures of death into cultures of life,” wrote Deacon Keith Fournier. 

However, he said, the rise of the abortion culture seems to be bringing the custom back in an unofficial form, with numerous gruesome stories emerging in recent months of parents unceremoniously discarding their newborn children.  

“These contemporary examples substitute a trash can or a dumpster for the rock,” Fournier wrote.

But he said this trend isn't surprising, since “babies are treated as trash” in abortion clinics across the country.

See related reports:

Security guard finds body of baby in bag of teen suspected of shoplifting at Victoria's Secret

That Victoria’s Secret baby is just the tip of a disturbing trend