Approximately four blocks west of the White House, in the midst of academic buildings and dormitories of The George Washington University, abortionist Cesare Santangelo operates his abortion business, known as Washington Surgi-Clinic. It was from here that the remains of five fully developed unborn babies were reportedly recovered. Even though their deaths are suspected to be the result of partial-birth abortions, infanticide, or a violation of the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act of 2002, the D.C. medical examiner has refused to do an autopsy.
In Washington, D.C., abortion is legal throughout the entirety of pregnancy. However, federal law prohibits abortionists from committing partial-birth abortions, and babies born alive are considered full persons under the law. Unfortunately, because congressional Democrats refuse to pass the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, it is not currently required that babies born alive after an abortion attempt receive medical attention.
Legal late-term abortions are conducted through a multi-day process in which a baby is killed prior to delivery. Partial-birth abortions deviate from a typical late-term abortion by partially delivering a baby so that the abortionist can kill the child before full delivery. Because this method is illegal, many abortionists inject the child with a feticide (digoxin) to kill them while they are still in the womb.
The physicians who evaluated the remains of the five aborted babies recovered from Santangelo’s clinic have speculated that there may be evidence of the abortionist committing illegal partial-birth abortions or possibly even killing babies that were delivered alive.
The completely intact nature of some of the babies is suspicious because the cause of death cannot be determined. One of the children displayed head wounds consistent with those of a partial-birth abortion. One of the children was delivered in the amniotic sac, pointing to the possibility that he or she was born alive and then left to die.
An autopsy must be conducted on these babies to confirm whether illegal abortion activity occurred. But illegal or not, Santangelo’s actions are morally wrong.
The finding of the remains of these five unborn victims has flooded the news, but this is hardly the first time Cesare Santangelo has been under scrutiny.
A complaint was filed by a department head at George Washington University Hospital voicing concerns about several of Santangelo’s “bad outcomes related to abortion” in 2013. However, the review panel was reluctant to discipline Santangelo, pointing out “he’s the ‘go to’ for high-risk cases.”
In the “Additional Items Discussed,” the D.C. Department of Health Board of Medicine wrote that the panel made a few “recommendations” that Dr. Santangelo should consider adopting in his practice: “1. Consider conducting terminations with ultrasound guidance to reduce risk of uterine perforation; 2. Improve provider-referring hospital communication; and 3. Ensure that pre-consent and consent-to-surgery forms are uniform and do not have any differences, thereby preventing miscommunication.” The fact that these are merely recommendations shows the disregard the pro-abortion lobby has for both mothers and their babies and the influence it wields on government bodies.
A year prior, in 2012, Live Action conducted an undercover filming of Santangelo wherein he talked about allowing babies born alive to die without receiving medical attention.
When asked, “Would you make sure that it doesn’t survive?” Santangelo responded, “We would not help it. We wouldn’t intubate. We wouldn’t do anything extra to help it survive. It would be a terminal person in a hospital…It’s like a do not resituate order…”
Except that it’s nothing like a “do not resuscitate order” or having a “terminal person in a hospital.” It is having the power to help a person live and callously tossing that person aside to die.
There is more proof that Santangelo has no regard for human life. A medical malpractice/wrongful death lawsuit was filed against Santangelo by the family of a woman who received a dilation and evacuation (D&E) procedure at his business to remove her naturally-miscarried child.
Santangelo, who had no hospital admitting privileges at the time, failed to call an ambulance for 13 minutes after the woman’s oxygen levels fell, and she turned blue. Santangelo—who is accused of waiting too long to call for emergency help—never attempted appropriate resuscitation efforts. Once at the hospital, the woman was declared dead. An autopsy revealed that Santangelo botched the procedure, leaving her with a perforated or lacerated uterus and pieces of her preborn baby in her bloodstream and lungs.
Over the past week, Cesare Santangelo’s blatant disregard for life has been on display. Join us in demanding that autopsies and a full investigation be done into the deaths of the five infants whose bodies were recovered from Washington Surgi-Clinic. There must be justice for these precious babies.