Florida Pro-Lifers Renew Call for Prosecuting Abortion Business, Infanticide

State   |   Steven Ertelt   |   Nov 10, 2008   |   9:00AM   |   WASHINGTON, DC

Florida Pro-Lifers Renew Call for Prosecuting Abortion Business, Infanticide

by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
November 10
, 2008

Miami, FL (LifeNews.com) — Pro-life advocates in Florida are renewing their call for a full prosecution of the case involving an unborn child who was killed in an attempted abortion. The July 2006 incident, involving baby Shanice Denise Osbourne, saw abortion facility staff hide her body on the facility’s roof.

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.

Shanice was given a proper burial last month and now pro-life advocates are renewing calls for charges to be filed in her death.

Rev. O’Neal Dozier, of the World Wide Christian Center where Baby Shanice’s funeral took place last month, says that after two years of local prosecutors stalling, they need to take action.

He renewed his demands for prosecutors to end the delay in charging unlicensed abortion worker Belkis Gonzalez with Baby Shanice’s murder.

It was Gonzalez, according to a clinic worker who secretly reported the incident to the police, who cut the baby’s umbilical cord and, while the little girl was still moving and gasping for air, swept her into a biohazard bag filled with chemicals, and tossed her on the roof of the abortion clinic in order to conceal her body from discovery.

Police later recovered Baby Shanice’s body and an autopsy proved that Shanice’s lungs had breathed air.

Troy Newman, the president of Operation Rescue, is also calling on local officials to prosecute the case.

"In the interest of justice, we need an immediate arrest and prosecution of those responsible for this innocent baby’s murder," Newman told LifeNews.com. "We urge the public to contact the local prosecutor and demand that this case move forward."

Gonzalez is reportedly the subject of a grand jury investigation that could result in her being charged in Shanice’s death.

Hialeah police Deputy Chief Mark Overton told the Miami Herald after the incident that "’They hid the body from us for eight days," and there is suspicion that abortion facility staff hid the body of the baby on the roof.

Overton said at the time that homicide or manslaughter charges could be filed.

”This has to be a homicide, an unlawful killing. It could be manslaughter, but we believe it falls in that realm,” Overton said.

The city was preparing to take action on a license suspension for the GYN abortion center; but, before it could do so the owners of the abortion facility surrendered its license to operate to the state’s Agency for Health Care Administration.

Giving up the license means the abortion facility cannot practice medicine in the state, John Travers, the city’s licensing administrator, said.

Gonzalez, of Miramar, Florida, owns another abortion center there and it has run afoul of state regulations on numerous occasions. It was closed last year after three employees were found to be unlicensed.

Gonzalez is also the subject of a civil lawsuit from a pro-life law firm.

Tom Brejcha, president and chief counsel for the Thomas More Society, told LifeNews.com that the incident took place "without any licensed medical personnel (doctors or even nurses) in attendance."

He is concerned that local officials are not prosecuting the case as an infanticide because they wrongly believe the baby died naturally.

Brejcha indicates the Miami-Dade County medical examiner determined Shanice was born alive and concluded her death was “natural,” resulting merely from her “extreme prematurity.”

Officials then said that unless an infant could be proved to be “viable” her killing could not be condemned as “homicide” or otherwise culpable as a matter of law.

Brejcha is upset that no charges have been brought for more than two years, even though the Department of Health restricted the license to practice medicine of the abortion practitioner, Paul Renelique, and set a further disciplinary hearing for November 19, 2008.

Brejcha and Thomas More Society decided to intervene last year in the case.

They hired an investigator, dug up more facts and witnesses, kept consulting with police, prodded prosecutors, and retained an expert pathologist who critiqued the coroner’s botched findings and found that A Gyn Diagnostics’ unlicensed staff did play a causative role in the infant’s death.

Thomas More Society also retained expert Miami counsel, Tom Pennekamp, former president of the Dade County Bar Association, and an expert and very accomplished lawyer in major personal injury cases, as its co-counsel for the purpose of bringing a lawsuit for “wrongful death” of Baby Shanice.

The law firm also complains that the operators of the abortion center shut it down but moved the center down the street and reopened it. It is also concerned that Renelique may still be doing abortions there.

“To date, the Miami Dade County Attorney has not filed criminal charges against Gonzalez,” Brejcha concluded.

“Killing a baby born alive is still infanticide, and those responsible must be held to account civilly if not also criminally. Medical advances have made it possible to successfully treat even the tiniest of premature babies. Despicably low end ‘medical care’ facilities like A Gyn Diagnostics Center are getting away with murder."

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