Abortion Clinic Owners Charged With Murder After Failed Abortion

HIALEA, November 2, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Two Co-owners of a Miami-area abortion facility called Ginecologia may be charged with second-degree murder for killing a baby girl born alive in a recovery room. Co-owners Belkis Gonzalez and Siomara Senises are being investigated after Miami-Dade County police found the badly decomposed body of a baby girl at the facility. A search warrant reported that there was “probable cause” to pursue a second degree murder investigation.

A woman identified by Operation Rescue in their October 23 report as Ms. Betty Rojas informed police that a child had been killed by “a doctor” by drowning after being born alive.

18-year old Sycloria Williams, told police that she had arrived at the facility July 20 for the second half of a late-term abortion. She says she gave birth to a living baby girl while sitting in a recliner in the facility’s recovery room. Ms. Williams told police that she had watched her daughter moving and gasping for air for approximately five minutes.

The warrant says that the staff “began screaming that the baby was alive.” Then, “Ms. Belkis Gonzalez cut the umbilical cord, threw it into a red bag with black printing. Ms. Gonzalez then swept the baby, with her hands, into the same red bag along with the gauze used during the procedure.”

Eight days later, police found the body of the child which Rojas had informed them had been treated with a caustic chemical and left in the heat of the Florida sun to accelerate decomposition in a possible attempt to dispose of the evidence.

Proceedings are awaiting the results of an autopsy that, due to the severe decomposition of the body, might still be inconclusive. Police are interested in evidence that the baby was born alive and that she was possibly over 24 weeks gestation, the legal limit for abortion in Florida.

Since the October 23 report, the Miami New Times published a story revealing the substandard conditions of the for-profit abortion facilities owned or operated by Senises and Gonzalez. Hialeah Police Deputy Chief Mark Overton told the New Times that an unnamed witness confirmed that “the baby was born alive; it was attempting to breathe.”

Overton said, “This isn't about a botched abortion; there never was an abortion, and the mother is not the victim…The victim is the baby, and whether that baby had an hour or eight hours' worth of life, she had a right to that.”

“Palmetto General Hospital is only five minutes away,” he said, indicating that the child’s life could have been saved. “It is our opinion that this is a homicide, an unlawful killing of a human being.”

Overton told the New Times that the baby’s remains had weighed between two and three pounds and measured about 12 inches long. The average gestation of a twelve-inch foetus is between 24 and 25 weeks. The average for a baby weighing two pounds is 27 weeks.
Another of facility owned or operated by Senises and Gonzalez was closed by police in 2004 after the abortion of twins was botched and it was revealed that one doctor hired to do abortions there had no medical license. A third facility is still in operation.

On October 29, Overton told WorldNetDaily that he believes charges of second-degree murder will be filed in the case.

Read Operation Rescue report