Miami, FL (LifeNews.com) -- A leading pro-life law firm has filed a lawsuit on behalf of a baby born alive after a failed abortion at a Miami abortion business. Following Shanice Denise Osbourne's birth in July 2006, staff at the abortion facility put her body on the roof of the building to hide her death from local police.

According to witnesses, a young woman went to the GYN Diagnostic Center abortion facility in Hialeah, outside Miami, for an abortion.

Police say the 18-year-old had an abortion and returned the next day complaining of severe stomach pains.

Abortion facility staff told her the abortion practitioner was not available and that she would have to wait. After being taken to a waiting area, the woman allegedly gave birth to the baby that she thought had been aborted the day before.

Officials hid the baby's body when local officials investigated.

Now, representatives of the Thomas More Society, a leading pro-life law firm, have retained prominent Miami personal injury attorney Tom Pennekamp to prepare and prosecute the case.

TMS alleges that abortion center owner Belkis Gonzalez was ultimately responsible for the baby's death.

Thirteen defendants (including Gonzalez, abortion practitioner Pierre Jean-Jacques Renelique and their conglomerate of four South Florida abortion clinics) have been sued for unlicensed and unauthorized medical practices, botched abortions, evasive tactics, false medical records and the killing, hiding and disposing of the baby.

Tom Brejcha, president and chief counsel of the Thomas More Society, told LifeNews.com his firm took an interest in the case when a local law school professor was quoted in the Miami Herald saying that, if the baby wasn't viable, then it "couldn't be a case of homicide."

"That opinion is dead wrong," Brejcha told LifeNews.com.

"A disabled or dying patient may not be 'viable' in the sense of being able to live very long or without help, but if you kill them, it's murder. This was a case of infanticide, and we're not going to let it go ignored or unpunished," he explained.

TMS tried to secure a second autopsy but prosecutors wouldn't release the baby's body, or take any action to begin criminal proceedings. The firm retained an investigator and expert pathologist and, after examination of the autopsy slides and investigation of all the facts, they say the acts and omissions of the abortion practitioner and clinic staff were causative factors in Shanice's untimely death.

Brejcha complains the state attorneys' office has had this matter "under investigation" for more than two years.

"This case will trumpet to the world that abortion clinics are places of barbarism where mothers as well as their babies are at serious risk," he says.

"Moreover, this case should put some sharp teeth into the Born Alive Infant Protection Act. As we struggle to end the scourge of legal abortion in this country, we must hold the line against infanticide," he adds.

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