By Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Writer

On January 27, 2009, a lawsuit was filed in Miami, Florida on behalf of Shanice Denise Osbourne, a 23 week-old infant who was allegedly murdered shortly after being born in July of 2006. 

Baby Shanice was born alive after a botched abortion performed on July 20, 2006 at the Gyn Diagnostic Center in Hialeah, Florida. Still breathing, Shanice was crudely shoved into a plastic bag and deposited in a trash can. Anonymous callers alerted police who eventually found the decomposing body. A medical examiner confirmed that Shanice had filled her lungs with air, confirming that she had been born alive.

Shanice’s sad story began in July of 2006, when her 18 year old mother, Sycloria Williams, discovered she was pregnant. She struggled with the decision to have an abortion but felt she was too immature and lacked the resources to raise a child. After a sonogram confirmed that she was 23 weeks pregnant, she made the decision to abort the child.

What happened next has shocked both sides of the abortion debate.

Williams went to an abortion clinic outside Miami on July 19 and paid $1,200 for Dr. Pierre Jean-Jacque Renelique to terminate her 23-week pregnancy. Renelique gave her a drug to dilate the cervix, and prescribed three other medications, according to the administrative complaint filed by the Health Department. She was told to go to yet another clinic, A Gyn Diagnostic Center in Hialeah, where the procedure would be performed the next day, on July 20, 2006.

Williams arrived in the morning and was given more medication. Just before noon, however, she began to feel sick. The clinic tried to reach Renelique but could not. Two hours later, he still hadn’t shown up but by then, Williams went into labor. While sitting on a recliner in the clinic’s recovery room, her water broke and she delivered a live baby girl. The baby writhed and gasped for air, the umbilical cord still connected.

The complaint says one of the clinic owners, Belkis Gonzalez, who has no medical license, came in and cut the umbilical cord with scissors, allowing the baby to “bleed out.” She then placed the baby in a plastic bag, and the bag in a trash can.

Williams, who was in shock, was given sedatives. Meanwhile, anonymous tipsters began calling local police to report the murder. A week later, and after searching the clinic several times, they finally located Shanice’s decomposing remains in a cardboard box in a closet in the clinic.

“I don’t care what your politics are, what your morals are, this should not be happening in our community,” Tom Pennekamp, the attorney representing Williams, told the Associated Press. 

The case has riled the anti-abortion community, which contends the clinic’s actions constitute murder.

“The baby was just treated as a piece of garbage,” said Tom Brejcha, president of The Thomas More Society, a law firm that is also representing Williams. “People all over the country are just aghast.”

That includes even those who support abortion rights.

“It really disturbed me,” said Joanne Sterner, president of the Broward County chapter of the National Organization for Women, after reviewing the administrative complaint against Renelique. “I know that there are clinics out there like this. And I hope that we can keep (women) from going to these types of clinics.”

Also at issue is the fact that the medical examiner blamed the death on “extreme prematurity” rather than on eyewitness testimony saying the baby had been murdered.

According to LifeSiteNews.com, the Thomas More Society became interested 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,” says Brejcha. “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.”

The Thomas More Society tried to secure a second autopsy but prosecutors wouldn’t release the baby’s body, or take any action to begin criminal proceedings.
 
An investigator and expert pathologist were retained by the Society, and the expert concluded – after examination of the autopsy slides and investigation of all the facts – that the acts and omissions of the abortionist and clinic staff were causative factors in Shanice’s untimely death.
 
The state attorneys’ office has had this matter “under investigation” for more than two years with regard to filing what the Thomas More society says should be a clear case of criminal murder, or at least manslaughter.

“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,” said Brejcha. “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!”

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