BARCELONA, May 30, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Barcelona’s Sant Pau Hospital, which is co-administered by the Catholic Archdiocese of Barcelona, killed an unborn child earlier this month in a pre-scheduled abortion based on the “suspicion” of deformities that normally do not pose a medical danger to the mother, according to internal hospital documents obtained by LifeSiteNews.com.
The documents contradict repeated and vehement denials by Barcelona’s Cardinal Archbishop Lluis Martinez Sistach, who has dismissed numerous reports published in the Spanish media and abroad regarding the killing of the unborn at the facility since they first began to be published in 2010.
The documents, written in Catalonian and Spanish, include copied text in Word format apparently taken from hospital computer records, as well as two screen shots of hospital computers. They indicate that a woman entered the hospital on May 13 at 10 a.m. “for a medical interruption of pregnancy because of a suspicion of fetal osteochondrodysplasia with thoracic hypoplasia.”
According to standard medical references, osteochondrodysplasia is a disorder that causes stunted bone growth and is often associated with dwarfism. Thoracic hypoplasia is a lack of complete growth in the chest area.
Neither condition is necessarily life-threatening, and neither is necessarily associated with heightened medical risk for the mother during pregnancy.
The instrument of death for the unborn child was the abortifacient drug misoprostol, which is highly effective in causing a woman’s body to miscarry and prematurely expel the fetus – in this case a baby girl at 18 weeks gestation.
“The process of uterine evacuation with misoprostol was initiated at 10:30 a.m. Misoprostol 800mcg vaginally administered and then 400mcg/3h orally,” the record states, adding that the woman suffered “maternal fever during the procedure, for which she was administered 1g paracetamol.” For her pain during the contractions, the woman was also given an epidural.
The patient finally “expelled the fetus, which was female, in a state of cardiorespiratory arrest,” according to the chronology, and “expelled the placenta at 10 p.m.” An ultrasound indicates that “ovular remains” had been retained by the patient, who was taken to a child birthing section of the hospital for further treatment.
The medical chronology shows the results of a series of tests performed on the child’s body, apparently in an attempt to verify congenital defects, but all tests are negative or “normal.”
Although one attending physician on the hospital’s chronology claims that the child’s body type or “phenotype” was “highly compatible with the diagnostic orientation,” implying that the body was deformed, at least one witness whose testimony has been obtained by LifeSiteNews.com affirms the opposite, stating “the fetus was perfect!”
“It was a fetus of 17 weeks and three days!!! A scheduled abortion! I am speechless,” the witness writes in an e-mail obtained by LifeSiteNews.com. “It was considered a risky pregnancy. The analyses came out negative, the caryotype [a test for Down Syndrome and other genetic defects] was negative, the amniocentesis also, but for some reason there was a suspicion of a congenital ‘dwarfism…’”
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In dismay, the witness writes: “We are an extermination camp!”
The message also states the hospital's X-rays of the fetus can no longer be found in the hospital, leading the witness to wonder if they have been removed to hide the evidence of the error in the hospital’s diagnosis.
Archbishop of Barcelona continues to deny abortions are occurring at hospital
The archbishop of Barcelona, Cardinal Lluis Martinez Sistach, has stonewalled pro-life groups for years regarding numerous reports of abortions at the hospital, which began appearing in the media in 2010, when the Spanish newspaper ABC revealed government records indicating that several Church-affiliated hospitals in the Catalonia region had been performing abortions for years.
In 2011, the Cardinal began to publicly deny the reports, claiming that abortions do not occur at Sant Pau, adding that an order had been given not to perform abortions.
However, the evidence of the killing of unborn children at Sant Pau has continued to pile up.
Recent revelations include an April 2012 report by ACI Prensa and other Spanish media sources of a woman who was offered an abortion twice by the hospital, an article in the Spanish medical review Rol in September of last year, documenting a eugenic abortion at the facility, and a hidden camera video taken of personnel discussing the hospital’s policy of doing dangerous amniocentesis tests for the purpose of killing unborn children, also in September of 2012.
Other reports have documented evidence of abortions in the hospital – as well as other hospitals affiliated with the Catholic Church in the Catalonia region – going back at least a decade.
In a June, 2012 interview with La Stampa’s Vatican Insider, Cardinal Martínez Sistach brushed off the ongoing reports of abortions at the hospital, claiming that the institution “acts in accordance with the norms of Christian morality,” and complaining that the news reports were harming the “good reputation” of Sant Pau.
“The hospital has never asked for accreditation to carry out abortions in accordance with civil legislation, following its ideology which is in favor of life and against abortion,” Martínez Sistach told La Stampa. “Those responsible for the administration have told me that abortions are not done.”
Related documents:
Hospital report (in Catalonian and Spanish)
Please note that the original Word document received by this reporter has been converted into a PDF after blotting out all information that could identify the patient, but is otherwise untouched.
According to one witness, these records are now missing. The name and id number of the patient have been blotted out.
Contact:
Gerhard Ludwig Müller, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith
Piazza del S. Uffizio, 11, 00193 Roma, Italy
phone: (011) 39-06-6988-3357
phone: (011) 39-06-6988-3413
Fax: (011) 39-06-6988-3409
E-mail: [email protected]
Marc Cardinal Ouellet, Prefect of the Congregation for Bishops
Palazzo della Congregazioni,
00193 Roma,
Piazza Pio XII, 10
Phone: (011) 39-06-6988-4217
Fax: (011) 39-06-6988-5303
Archdiocese of Barcelona
Sergi Gordo Rodríguez (General Secretary and Chancellor)
Calle del Obispo 5
Barcelona, Spain 08002
Tel: (34) 93.270.10.10
Fax: (34)93.270.13.03
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For a Spanish language version of this article, read it on the LifeSiteNews Spanish language website.