Abortion - Partial-Birth
by: Jerry Price - Jan 9, 2006 - comment
In describing the horror of partial-birth abortion, nurse Brenda Pratt Shafer testified before Congress in 1996: “[The doctor] went in with forceps and grabbed the baby’s legs and pulled them down into the birth canal. Then he delivered the baby’s body and arms – everything but the head. The baby’s little fingers were clasping and unclasping, and his feet were kicking. Then the doctor stuck the scissors through the back of his head…opened up the scissors, stuck a high-powered suction tube into the opening and sucked the baby’s brains out.”
Infanticide/Partial-Birth Abortion/Born-Alive Abortion [Accessed August 25, 2005]
There are those who claim that partial-birth abortion is either rare or does not exist. But there is evidence to conclude otherwise.
- On 2/26/97, the New York Times reported on Ron Fitzsimmons, executive director of the National Coalition of Abortion Providers, who admitted he “lied through my teeth” when he said partial-birth infanticide was rare: “As much as he disagreed with the National Right to Life Committee…he said he knew they were accurate when they said the procedure was common.”
- Martin Haskell, MD of Ohio admits to doing at least 1,000 partial-birth infanticide procedures.
- Of the procedure, the late Dr. James McMahon said in the Los Angeles Times Magazine (1/7/90): “Frankly I don’t think I was any good at all until I had done 3,000 or 4,000.”
- Lee Carhart of Nebraska admits in the American Medical News (10/7/96) that he has done 5,000 partial-birth infanticides, 500 in the last year, and “the vast majority of them are elective.”
- The Record, a New Jersey daily, reported on 9/15/96 that “doctors at Metropolitan Medical in Englewood estimate their clinic alone performs 3,000 abortions a year on fetuses between 20 and 24 weeks, of which at least half [1,500] are by [partial-birth].” One abortionist was quoted saying, “Most are Medicaid patients…and most are for elective, not medical reasons: people who didn’t realize, or didn’t care, how far along they were.”
Infanticide/Partial-Birth Abortion/Born-Alive Abortion [Accessed August 25, 2005]
“Partial-birth abortion is never necessary to save the life of the mother. In fact, it exposes women to additional and substantial health risks. Former Surgeon General Koop explained that ‘Partial birth abortion is never medically necessary to protect a mother’s health or her future fertility.’ Women who undergo partial birth abortion risk uterine rupture, abruption, amniotic fluid embolus, trauma to the uterus, iatrogenic laceration, secondary hemorrhage, and infertility. Warren Hern, MD, abortion practitioner and author of Abortion Procedure commented, ‘I have very serious reservations about this procedure . . . You really can’t defend it . . . I would dispute any statement that this is the safest procedure to use.’ The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists [ACOG] released a Statement of Policy on January 12, 1997, stating: ‘A select panel convened by ACOG could identify no circumstances under which this procedure . . . would be the only option to save the life or preserve the health of the woman.’”
Dr. Pia Francesca de Solenni, Partial-Birth Abortion: Dispelling the Myths (Family Research Council) [Accessed August 25, 2005]
Dr. C. Ben Mitchell, consultant on biomedical and life issues for the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention and professor of bioethics and contemporary culture at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, says that partial-birth abortion is nothing less than infanticide since the babies that are aborted in this type of procedure are “fully formed, fully awake and fully alive.”
Dr. Mitchell says further that more than just the lives of these babies are at stake. He maintains that “the conscience of our nation and the fitness of her laws are being weighed in the balance. Can our present system of American jurisprudence and those who interpret the rule of law sustain a ban on infanticide? If the ban becomes law, we will take heart and press forward in dealing with the other challenges we face. If our laws and judges will not support a ban on this clear and present evil, we should change both the laws and those who interpret them. We cannot long survive as a nation if we cannot ban such a loathsome practice as partial-birth abortion.”
Dr. C. Ben Mitchell, “FIRST PERSON: Partial-birth Abortion & Our Nation’s Health,” http://www.bpnews.net (Baptist Press), November 5, 2003 [Accessed August 25, 2005]
According to the American Medical Association’s website “…there does not appear to be any identified situation in which intact D&X [partial-birth abortion] is the only appropriate procedure to induce abortion, and ethical concerns have been raised about intact D&X.” In fact, they even advise against it.
“H-5.982 Late-Term Pregnancy Termination Techniques,” http://www.ama-assn.org (American Medical Association) [Accessed August 25, 2005, subscription required]
“The right to abortion is as legally secure as ever, but its advocates have never been so apparently ashamed of the practice itself. If pro-choice advocates believe in the necessity and goodness of their position, one would expect them to say something like, ‘We support abortion—that’s A-B-O-R-T-I-O-N—so women can eliminate unwanted children.’ Instead, they take refuge in the foggiest corners of obfuscation.
“One of the nation’s premier defenders of abortion rights is the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League. It’s a perfectly descriptive name, but the group nonetheless changed it last year to expunge the offending word. It is now known as NARAL Pro-Choice America. It’s as if the National Rifle Association changed its name to avoid any association with the word ‘rifle.’
“In three lawsuits challenging the partial-birth-abortion ban after it was signed, abortion-rights advocates refused to say ‘partial-birth abortion.’ They preferred the terms ‘intact dilation and extraction’ and ‘dilation and evacuation,’ better to keep anyone from understanding whatever they were talking about: Namely, the partial-breech delivery of a baby, until a doctor can pierce its skull with a sharp instrument and vacuum out its brain. Shannen W. Coffin, a former Justice Department official who fought in defense of the ban, recalls one pro-choice lawyer letting slip the phrase ‘partial-birth abortion,’ only to correct herself. The judge chided her, ‘You won’t get sick if you say the words.’
“Actually, you might get sick if abortionists don’t use euphemisms. According to Coffin, a doctor in one of the trials described crushing an infant’s skull as ‘reduc[ing]’ the ‘fetal calvarium’ to facilitate ‘completion of delivery.’ The completed delivery, of course, of an infant with a crushed skull. Another doctor said he ‘separated’ the ‘fetal calvarium’ from the infant’s body. Yes, and Abu Zarqawi separated Nick Berg’s calvarium from his body too.
“Yet another abortionist described what he does as seeking to ‘safely and efficiently empty the uterine cavity, rendering the woman unpregnant.’ For the layman, the state of ‘unpregnant’ is what you achieve when you kill your baby. Sorry. Did I say ‘kill’? I meant ‘vacuum the uterus,’ or ‘disarticulate the fetus.’”
Excerpted from Rich Lowry, The Right that Dare Not Speak Its Name, June 15, 2004 [Accessed August 25, 2005]
The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the ruling by a lower court which barred partial-birth Abortion. The Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act was signed into law by the president in 2003 and was declared unconstitutional by three federal judges in New York, Nebraska, and California. The court’s decision was based on the lack of an exception for the mother’s health. The latest decision also found the ban unconstitutional because, “while making an exception to the ban to protect the life of a pregnant woman, it made no exception to preserve her health.” This decision moves the law one step closer to a review by the Supreme Court. The make-up of the court will likely determine the eventual outcome of the law and the practice of partial-birth abortion.
Julia Preston, “Appeals Court Voids Ban on ‘Partial Birth’ Abortion,” http://www.nytimes.com , July 9, 2005 [Access fee required]
Another federal judge has declared unconstitutional a state’s law aimed at banning partial-birth abortion. This time it was the U.S. District Court in Detroit, Michigan. Judge Denise Page Hood ruled that the law places an “undue burden” on a woman’s right to choose an abortion. She also said the law is “confusing and vague, and its exceptions for the health or life of the mother are meaningless and unconstitutional.” Previous attempts to pass a state law against partial-birth abortion were struck down in 1997 and 2001. In the most recent attempt, after both houses of the legislature passed the measure, Gov. Jennifer Granholm vetoed it. Consequently, hundreds of thousands of voters signed petitions that allowed the bill to become law with only the approval of the Senate and House.
Judge: Mich. Law Against Type of Abortion Unconstitutional (Fox News), September 14, 2005
Further Learning
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