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Jill Stanek says she was fired Aug. 31 from Christ Hospital, Oak Lawn, Ill., for speaking out against the hospital's live-birth abortions.
Before being fired, she was put on final warning twice and suspended once.
"They didn't like what I was doing. They didn't like that I was talking about what was going on," Stanek, 45, said Wednesday during a telephone interview.
Stanek will speak at the Kosciusko County Right to Life's 2001 Banquet Thursday at 6 p.m. in Rodeheaver Auditorium, Winona Lake.
While her attorney has told her not to discuss the five reasons the hospital cited for her firing, she said the reasons were solely related to her speaking out.
"It was a wrongful termination," she said.
Now considered a national figure in the effort to protect both "born and pre-born infants," Stanek has testified before the Judiciary Constitution Subcommittee of the U.S. House of Representatives and has spoken to various media outlets on the issue.
"I've always been pro-life," she said, "but it was never a part of my life."
Never, that is, until she began working at Christ Hospital in 1993.
At first, she worked at the hospital in the heart unit. In 1995, she transferred to the labor and delivery unit. A year after beginning in that unit, she said, she found out that the hospital aborted babies live.
In live-birth abortions, Stanek said the babies are sometimes taking out of the womb and allowed to die. Most abortions, she said, the child is aborted inside the womb or partially inside the womb.
She considers live-birth abortions infantcide.
"I didn't know what to do until I held a live aborted baby," she said. She held the baby, which had Down syndrome, for 45 minutes until he died.
She knew it would be easier for her to just leave the hospital and not look back. But if she just did that, more babies would be aborted. She decided to stay at the hospital and try to get the hospital to stop performing abortions.
She privately appealed to them to stop. Her pastor then became involved with her efforts. Influential people, like Dr. C. Everett Koop, were asked to help get the hospital to stop. Koop, Stanek said, wrote a letter to the hospital condemning what they were doing.
"The hospital said they wouldn't stop," said Stanek. If the hospital didn't stop, her pastor threatened to go public with what the hospital was doing.
In July 1999, her pastor went public. She soon followed suit.
While publicly fighting the hospital, Stanek continued her job there. She tried to live two separate lives. But after 2-1/2 years, the hospital fired her.
Abortion, she said, is the "most divisive issue in our time." When she tells a crowd of her experiences and the kind of abortions that are performed today, "I find people are very shocked that abortion has gone this far."
She said the information she presents and shows at her talks is "very compelling" for those on either side of the abortion issue. "This puts fire under people. It gets people more active" in the fight against abortion, she said.
"The talk could be comparable to opening the doors of a concentration camp."
In that regard, her lecture is more appropriate for teens and older people. However, if there are children present, she said, she does talk at a level that will allow children to stay though the compellingness is lost.
America's views on abortion, she said, are changing. "... The polls are clear - the American public is changing its views on abortion."
When the Supreme Court ruled in 1973 to allow abortions, Stanek said, the court thought it was stopping a problem. Yet, she said, it just created the "second civil war." The debate on abortion is greater now than ever before and is not going to go away.
Even in cases of rape or incest, she said, abortion is wrong because the baby created is also a victim of the rape or incest and should not have to be a victim twice by being aborted. She said the evidence is "clear" that pain for the mother is not alleviated through an abortion.
Tickets for the banquet are $20 per person and can be ordered by calling 267-3481.
The Right To Life banquet Thursday will include dinner served by Katering Kitchen, a pro-life video called "Anthem to the Unborn Child" and an update on what Kosciusko County Right to Life has done during the past year and plans for the upcoming year.
Emcee will be Grace College and Seminary president Dr. Ronald Manahan. The Sacred Heart Select Singers will sing several songs.
