Apologists For Partial-Birth Abortion

from the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights

Bill Donohue comments on reaction to Donald Trump's criticisms of partial-birth abortion:

Lying about abortion is a cottage industry, so it was hardly surprising to learn that pro-abortion advocates would label Donald Trump a liar for telling the truth about partial-birth abortion.

"You can take the baby and rip the baby out of the womb in the ninth month, on the final day," he said.

Trump was right: he offered an accurate account of what partial-birth abortion entails.

This did not sit well with the champions of abortion. Dr. Aaron B. Caughey, chairman of obstetrics and gynecology at Oregon Health and Science University, branded Trump's comment "absurd." He said, 

"I'm unaware of anyone that's terminating a pregnancy a few days prior to delivery of a normal pregnancy." Similarly, Erin Gloria Ryan, writing for The Daily Beast, said Trump was peddling a "myth."

Too bad these apologists didn't explain why the U.S. Supreme Court felt obliged to ban this barbaric procedure (in most instances) in 2007. If it were a fiction, what were the judges banning?

Their lame denials—have they ever heard of Dr. George Tiller or Dr. Kermit Gosnell—won't wash. Tiller performed over 60,000 abortions, many of them—he bragged about it—involving babies who were 80 percent born. Gosnell's "house of horrors" included the remains of babies he cut up just prior to, or after, birth. No wonder Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Ed Koch, both of whom defended Roe v. Wade, labeled partial-birth abortion "infanticide."

We've been down this road before. In 1995, Ron Fitzsimmons, executive director of the National Coalition of Abortion Providers, went on national television saying he "lied through [his] teeth" when he "just went out there and spouted the party line" about how rare partial-birth abortion is.

Apologists also contest what partial-birth abortion really is. Dr. Jen Gunter, for instance, protests Trump's comment about "ripping" the baby out of the mother's womb. She says "we don't 'rip' anything in OB/GYN." So what do they do? 

"We use sharp dissection and blunt dissection, but we don't rip." 

How reassuring to know that when a scissors is jammed into the skull of a baby about to be born that nothing is "ripped."

In 2004, Dr. Carolyn Westhoff testified before a federal panel on this subject. Here is an excerpt from the exchange during cross-examination.

Q: And at that point the fetus' body is below the cervix and the neck is in the cervix with the head still in the uterus, right? 

Westhoff: Yes. 

Q: And it's at that point that you take a scissors and insert it into the woman and place an incision in the base of the fetus' skull, right? 

Westhoff: Yes. 

Q: Now the contents of the fetus' skull, just like the contents of my skull, and your skull, is liquid, right? 

Westhoff: That's right. 

Q: And sometimes after you've made the incision the fetus' brain will drain out on its own, right? 

Westhoff: That's right. 

Q: Other times you must insert a suction tube to drain the skull, right? 

Westhoff: That's right. 

Q: And then the skull will collapse immediately after its liquid contents have been removed and the head will pass easily through the dilated cervix, right? 

Westhoff: That's right.

Another tactic used by the apologists for partial-birth abortion is to take issue with the nomenclature. Dr. Caughey says that doctors like him "wouldn't use" language like partial-birth abortion. He prefers a more sanitized expression. He calls aborting an unhealthy baby at the end of term an "induction of labor for a nonviable pregnancy."

No doubt he calls "throwing up" by its medical term, "emesis." In all honesty, this is enough to make me puke. 

         

The Catholic League is the nation's largest Catholic civil rights organization. Founded in 1973 by the late Father Virgil C. Blum, S.J., the Catholic League defends the right of Catholics – lay and clergy alike – to participate in American public life without defamation or discrimination.  Use this link for more information on the Catholic League.