A Pennsylvania woman has been arrested and charged with murder after she gave birth to a baby in a women’s room at a sports bar, then stuffed the newborn into a plastic bag and ditched him in the tank behind a toilet.
According to local news reports, 26-year-old Amanda Hein was with friends at Starters Pub near Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, for an evening of pay-per-view wrestling when she disappeared into the women’s room at the pub, returning some 40 minutes later with blood on her clothes but insisting she was okay.
The next morning one of the bar’s cleaning crew found the body of the premature, but viable, baby boy in one of the women’s restroom toilets. Hein admitted to police that she had given birth to a healthy baby in the bar’s bathroom, afterward wrapping the child in a plastic bag she took from a trash container, and stuffing him into the toilet tank.
According to court documents, Hein then returned to her friends in the bar where she watched the end of an advertised “SummerSlam” pro wrestling broadcast for another hour before leaving.
District Attorney John Morganelli said police were able to track down Hein because the booth where she was sitting was covered with blood. A seating chart provided by the pub showed that a party of four had reserved the booth. The reservation led police to Luis Rivera, one of Hein’s friends at the bar that evening, who in turn provided detectives with Hein’s identity.
According to the county coroner, Hein’s baby was born late in the third trimester, but was otherwise healthy. The coroner ruled that the baby died from suffocation, and that the death was a homicide. Court documents show that Hein discovered in May or June that she was pregnant, but did not tell anyone.
Because of the child’s age — and the fact that he was born live rather than aborted — Hein will face a murder charge and could be sentenced to death if convicted.
“I cannot get inside this lady’s head,” District Attorney Morganelli offered to the New York Post when asked about the crime. “I have no clue.” He added that “whether it was one hour or ten minutes old or one year old, it is a person, and this person’s life was taken.”
The bar’s owner, Dave Rank, said that his employees were deeply disturbed by the callous act of the young mother. “I’ve been on the phone with the police, and I’ve been on the phone with my church,” a choked Rank told the New York Daily News. “I mean, this is a devastating thing.”
Ironically, Pennsylvania’s latest newborn murder occurred just 30 miles north of Philadelphia, where notorious late-term abortionist Kermit Gosnell and his staff spent years killing hundreds — if not thousands — of babies similar in age and viability to Hein’s newborn, and demonstrating at least as much heartlessness as the young mother.
Gosnell was convicted in May of the murders of just three babies who were born alive at his Philadelphia abortion clinic and then quickly killed and disposed of. It is likely impossible to determine with any accuracy the actual number of child murders in which Gosnell was either directly involved or tacitly complicit.
As reported by The New American, Stephen Massof, one of Gosnell’s high-level assistants, estimated that during his five years working in the clinic he witnessed at least 100 babies born alive, whose spinal cords were then snipped with a surgical scissors, a procedure he called “a beheading.” Several other Gosnell employees confirmed that the procedure was not uncommon for babies born alive during the illegal late-term abortions for which Gosnell had gained a reputation in the past several years.
Like a number of other Gosnell associates, Massof pleaded guilty to third-degree murder in the deaths of infants at the clinic and joined his boss in a lengthy prison sentence.
Unlike Hein’s crime, however, which prompted plenty of national and global attention because of its appalling nature, Gosnell’s horrific nightmare story attracted very little coverage — even from local newspapers or TV news teams, and almost no grief over the mostly faceless babies who died by Gosnell’s hand.
The Christian Post reported that the Philadelphia medical examiner even denied the request of a group of concerned Pennsylvania pro-life allies to turn over to them the nearly 50 bodies of deceased babies found in Gosnell’s clinic so that they, at least, could be given a proper burial. “The medical examiner, Sam Gulino, said that his office does not release deceased bodies to ‘unrelated third parties,’ but he assured the groups that the babies would receive a ‘proper and respectful disposition,’” reported the Christian Post.
Michael McMonagle, president of the Pro-Life Coalition of Pennsylvania, said that his group was simply trying “to bring dignity to the [babies’] deaths,” adding that his group would be glad to pay the city for the cost of the burials. “Financially, they should be willing to do it,” McMonagle said of the cash-strapped city. He added, however, that “I think it’s clear city officials don’t want to appear they’re taking a pro-life side in abortion politics.”
Based on comments from a spokesman for Philadelphia’s medical examiner, unless a family representative of the deceased babies steps forward to claim the bodies — meaning, in effect, the mothers who chose to abort their children in the first place — the city will store the remains for the next decade, at which time it will, most likely, quietly and unceremoniously dispose of them.
