Anna Claire Schmidt felt slapped in the face.
She saw his words scrolling through Twitter. The video clip stopped her cold.
“The baby is born. The mother meets with the doctor. They take care of the baby. They wrap the baby beautifully. And then the doctor and the mother determine whether or not they will execute the baby.”
President Donald Trump uttered that unbelievable smear against mothers and doctors to crowds at a rally in Wisconsin last week.
Schmidt, a critical care nurse who worked for years in the neonatal intensive care unit, knew about wrapping babies in warm blankets. She’s spent those last agonizing moments with at least 15 to 20 parents. Their grief is imprinted on her heart.
She responded on social media with a message for the president.
“I have wrapped a lot of babies in blankets. Some, beautifully, like you mentioned. Some, I just did my best because when you weight a scant 500 grams, there’s far more blanket than baby.
“I have stood next to my physician colleagues as we disconnected all the tubes, wires, pumps and equipment keeping these tiny people alive. Sometimes they live weeks, even months. Sometimes only hours. We spent the majority of that time keeping them alive with heroic measures, but the time would come to transition from the frantic pace of critical care and to dim the lights, make them comfortable -- and yes, wrap them in a blanket.
“I have taken footprints from people so small that they fit in the palm of my hand. I have cut curly, dark locks of hair from beautiful full-term babies. I have lifted them out of the only beds they have ever slept in, and handed them to their mothers for what was the very first and last time. I have given medication to ease any pain, and yes, I have wrapped them in a blanket.
“Baby killers, infanticide -- if that’s how you boil down providing palliative care at the end of life for babies that will not live to take their first steps, to feel the sun on their face, to take a single step outside the hospital -- so be it. If you want to call me and the nurses and physicians I work with executioners for providing a warm, comfortable, peaceful death for dying children, go for it. But don’t talk to me about wrapping babies in blankets.”
Schmidt, 30, who lives in St. Louis, said she realizes the president was trying to rally his base against so-called late-term abortions and likely has no clue how rare and difficult such cases are. But claiming that a mother would conspire with a doctor to “execute” a newborn has nothing to do with abortion. Perhaps some are immune to yet another lie from a man who has told more than 10,000 lies during his presidency so far. But this deserves greater attention than his run-of-the-mill falsehoods. This gruesome lie reveals an exceptionally dark and twisted view of women.
“I just keep thinking about the mom who handed me her baby after he died and made me promise that I wouldn’t put him down until I put him in the morgue -- and then came back (to find me) 10 minutes later, long after I thought she was gone, to make sure I kept my promise,” Schmidt wrote on Twitter.
The president’s heinous lie hurt her on behalf of the families she has seen through this kind of life-changing loss.
“He was deliberately attacking them,” she said.
He used the word “execute” to describe mothers whom Schmidt has held while they sobbed, grieving the life their child was supposed to have.
Trump told a dangerous lie designed to agitate his supporters.
He told a slanderous lie against physicians who dedicate their lives to saving others.
And most reprehensible of all, he called mothers who have lost their babies murderers.