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September 8, 2001
PUBLIC LIVES An Island of Peace in the Midst of an Abortion Debate
By JOHN W. FOUNTAIN
 OKENA, ILL -- An air of peace surrounds Jill Stanek, sitting here in the living room of her Victorian-style suburban home, her two cats, Fifi and Belle, roaming from the windowsills to the carpeted floor on a sunny day when the last breaths of summer stir leaves outside.
Mrs. Stanek appears unshaken and unwavering in her faith, though it is still only days since she was fired from Christ Hospital and Medical Center in south suburban Oak Lawn. In her eight years as a nurse there, Mrs. Stanek, 45, a mother of three and a grandmother, was known to have ruffled a few feathers. Since 1999, she has been outspoken in her criticism of the hospital's use of an abortion procedure in which premature labor is induced in cases where doctors have determined that the mother's life is threatened or that a fetus has a genetic defect that would prevent it from surviving outside the womb. Mrs. Stanek has testified on this issue twice before the House Judiciary Committee, most recently in July. Last month, a suburban Chicago newspaper ran an article about Mrs. Stanek, whose criticisms of the hospital's abortion practices had drawn national attention to her and to the hospital. On Aug. 31, the day she returned from a two-week vacation, Mrs. Stanek was handed a notice of termination and escorted from the building by a hospital official, she said. She and her lawyers believe she was fired in retaliation for her outspokenness. "The only thing I can say at this point is that her termination was related solely to her activities in speaking out against Christ Hospital's abortion policy," Mrs. Stanek's lawyer, Erik Stanley, said. Michael Maggio, a Christ Hospital spokesman, said yesterday that federal and state laws prohibited him from speaking about an employee's records, but he said Mrs. Stanek was not fired for her criticism of the hospital. "To try to tangle that up with pregnancy termination issues is irresponsible," Mr. Maggio said. "It's inappropriate, and I'm not sure why this is getting so much media attention." Mrs. Stanek said she had never dreamed that she would get caught up in the whirlwinds of the news media and the issue of abortion, let alone that she would be fired from a job she loved. She is a Christian, but not an activist, a self-assured, practical woman who had long wanted to become a nurse. That desire was nurtured when she was 21 and happened upon the scene of an automobile accident. Paramedics had not arrived. She found two adults in the car who were badly shaken and in shock. Their baby had been hurled into the windshield. "The baby was dying. And I didn't know what to do and felt very helpless," Mrs. Stanek said. "That was one of the reasons I got into the medical profession, because I didn't ever want to feel like that again." After graduating in 1993 from South Suburban College in South Holland, Ill., she applied to be a registered nurse at Christ Hospital. It was a Christian hospital, she said, "and I thought that I wouldn't have to deal with the moral and ethical issues that I'm having to deal with now." The hospital is affiliated with the United Church of Christ and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Mrs. Stanek started working in a cardiac unit, then two years later moved to labor and delivery. She "never knew we were involved in abortions, never was told," she said. In fact, she recalled that she had been working as a delivery nurse for a year when she heard a report that doctors were aborting a second- trimester Down syndrome fetus. "The first shock was finding out that abortion was done at a Christian hospital," she said. "The second shock was finding out the way that they abort," by prematurely inducing labor, which can result in live births. "I knew that I would have to deal with it sometime, but I sat on it not quite knowing what to do." One night, about a year later, she noticed a co-worker carrying an aborted fetus to a hospital utility room to leave it to die, she said. "I stepped in and said I could not let that happen," Mrs. Stanek recalled. "And I would hold him until he died." She prayed, and she later spoke with her husband, Richard, and her pastor, the Rev. Tim Harlow, of the Parkview Christian Church in Tinley Park. "My advice for her was to do what she thought God wanted for her to do," Mr. Harlow said. "But she needed to think about the implications of what that meant, which frankly I thought would mean her being fired a long time ago."
SITTING in her living room, she has no regrets. "I have a lot of trouble understanding how people can be more concerned about externals like people, rather than God, and someday meeting their maker and having to explain themselves," Mrs. Stanek said. "I have a lot more trouble understanding why people are willing to forgo an eternity for concerns about what their peers think. "Not that it's easy," she continued. "It's painful." But peaceful. |
