Despite her warm smile and softly brushed hair, 12-year-old Fraser Valley resident Ximena Renaerts cannot hide her physical and mental problems. A quadriplegic, Ximena has cerebral palsy, is confined to a wheel-chair and has the mental age of a three-year-old. Ximena was born following a failed abortion and it is difficult not to conclude that her condition was worsened by the lack of care she received immediately following her birth.

In 1994 Ximena's adoptive parents, Bert and Margaret Renaerts, filed a lawsuit on her behalf seeking restitution from the institution and the nine doctors and nurses of Vancouver General Hospital (VGH) who attended at her birth. Also named in the suit are Ximena's birth mother, Nadine Bourne, and father, Justice Riley. Ms. Bourne's attempt to abort her child is not an issue; rather, the defendants stand accused of neglecting their duty to care for Ximena once she was born alive.

Anti-abortion advocates say the case highlights their contention that abortion is far from the safe, morally neutral and complication-free procedure that abortion activists make it out to be. Pro-lifers say this point is supported by the fact that in February the Nova Scotia Supreme Court found the Morgentaler Clinic in Halifax guilty of negligence in failing to provide a patient with adequate post-abortion care. As a result, the clinic's founder, Dr. Henry Morgentaler, was assessed $724,547 in damages.

Ximena's suit has faced numerous delays on its way to trial, the last hurdle being cleared two weeks ago when B.C. Supreme Court Justice Mark McEwan dismissed an application by the defendants to be tried without a jury. The judge set the trial to begin June 1 at the Vancouver law courts. Depositions obtained by Ximena's lawyers - former B.C. NDP leader Thomas Berger, his daughter Erin Berger and Prince George lawyer Charles Lugosi - have already shed light on the circumstances that prevailed the night she was born.

Ximena's life began December 16,1985, when her mother was admitted to the VGH emergency ward. She told the admitting physician that she had had an abortion three days earlier in Bellingham, Washington. Although the attending physician, Dr. Kamal Jaroudi, examined her abdomen and vagina, he failed to realize that Ms. Bourne was still carrying a fetus with a gestational age of 26 to 29 weeks, which put the baby well into its third trimester of development. Dr. Jaroudi's own notes show that Ms. Bourne told him that "the embryo" was still inside her uterus. At 3:20 a.m. Ms. Bourne expelled her baby into what nurses call a "hat," a plastic potty that fits into a commode chair.

Called to Ms. Bourne's room, senior nurse Vera Wood, formerly assistant clinical director of obstetrics and gynecology at VGH, took the hat, with the baby in it, and put it in the service room where dead fetuses were stored. During a pre-trial examination for discovery, she conceded that when she put the baby in storage it was viable - that it was ,'moving, gasping, crying weakly."

According to her nursing notes, Ms. Wood checked Ximena 26 minutes later and discovered she was still gasping and whimpering weakly. She called nursing supervisor Joyce Hatherall who arrived at about 4 a.m. Nurse Hatherall testified that when she arrived, Ximena was still in the hat, still uncovered and uncared for.

The nurse also indicated that the medical staff seemed unconcerned about the baby. Nurse Wood was seated at a desk and, in Ms. Hatherall's words, three other nurses were 'more or less standing around." Mr. Berger wrote in his submission to the court: "The failure by Vera Wood and the other VGH nurses to take any measures to care for the baby is so lamentable, that it can only lead to the conclusion that she and the others treated this living baby as if it were a dead fetus."

Ms. Hatherall called for a resuscitation team, which arrived at 4:03 a.m.- more than 40 minutes after Ximena was born. However, although she was covered with a blanket, Ximena was placed directly on a stainless steel counter, leading to a continued loss of heat. Dr. Jaroudi arrived shortly after nurse Hatherall and checked with his supervisor, Dr. Gerald Korn, who was at home. Dr. Korn told him to call the Infant Transport Team (ITT) at British Columbia Children's Hospital (BCCH). But Dr. Michael Whitfield of BCCH has testified that when the call came, Dr. Jaroudi merely said, "Come quickly, you need to get the baby." Only 30 minutes later did a nurse call back to tell the ITT where the baby was.

When the team from BCCH arrived at about 4:40 a.m. Ximena was still on the countertop. Experts on both sides agree that hypothermia contributed to her permanent brain damage.

Ximena's lawyers are asking for general, special, and punitive damages. No amount of money has been specified, but accord0ing to court documents, an expert for Ximena's legal team has estimated she and her adoptive mother could be awarded up to $10 million. None of the defendants would speak of the case last week, but in their statements of defence all deny they were negligent "or in breach of any duty, contractual, fiduciary or otherwise." As well they "deny that they owed the infant plaintiff a fiduciary duty, either as alleged, or at all."

Nevertheless, testimony by nurse Wood suggests she failed to follow hospital procedure by filing an incident report. Ms. Wood admitted she had never before seen a living fetus that was not considered viable ( demanding that every attempt be made to preserve life), yet she continued to deny that the situation called for an incident report. Nor did VGH conduct an internal inquiry into the events surrounding Ximena's birth.

The birth of a live baby following an abortion procedure is called a "dreaded complication" by abortionists, says Mark Crutcher of Denton, Texas, president of Life Dynamics Inc. That is because it contradicts the assumption that abortion does not take the life of a human being. Moreover, says Mr. Crutcher, because, "Everybody involved [in a typical failed abortion] is a co-conspirator," it is very hard to get accurate information on how many abortion survivors are allowed to die through negligence. A check with the Ministry of Health shows that no government attempts even to track the number of late abortions performed. Based on United Kingdom records, Dr. Kenneth Flegel, an internist at Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal, estimates "that at least 40 very late abortions are performed in Canada each year."

Live births following abortion occur less frequently than was the case 10 years ago because doctors have adopted methods designed to kill the baby before it is removed from the womb. As stated by Vancouver gynecologist Dr. Jon Cope in a speech last October, today's preferred method is called "dilation and evacuation,"in which the fetus is "morcellated" (broken into small pieces), the skull crushed, and then the pieces are removed through the cervix. Dr. Tony Levatino, who spoke at a youth pro-life conference in Abbotsford last month, said he used to specialize in the procedure until he came to the realization he was killing an actual human being.

Despite the efforts of abortionists to keep their procedures out of the public eye, prolifers contend that society is increasingly uncomfortable with the current climate of unregulated abortion. In fact, Vancouver abortionist Dr. Garson Romalis complained last year that few interns are even willing to train for the procedure anymore. And abortion is so unpopular in the Okanagan that only one doctor in the area is willing to do them.