A couple of weeks ago, I put something in a column that shocked and disgusted a few people to the point where they questioned the truth of it.
Tow editors here asked for my source of information. My own sister-in-law said, "I just don't believe it."
What I put in my column was a brief, fairly clinical description of how late-term abortions are performed.
For those of you who missed it, this is what I wrote:
The doctor turns the baby in the uterus and delivers it breech birth, legs first. The heard of the infant, however, is left in its mother's uterus so that it can be claimed that child had not yet been delivered and so is still a candidate for legal termination. The doctor then takes a pair of sharp forceps, jams them up into the back of the baby's skull, and then opens them to spilt the skull. This is done in utero so the doctor can avoid the legal problem of being charged with infanticide later on.
For the sake of brevity, I left some things out. Like the part where the doctor then uses a machine to suck out the baby's brain to collapse its skull. This so it can be more easily removed from the mother's womb.
This technique is routine in the tens of thousands of late-term abortions that are performed yearly, as Dr. Martin Haskell readily will admit.
Dr. Haskell is from Cincinnati, Ohio, and specializes in late-term abortions. A few years ago a University of Cincinnati medical student observed Dr. Haskell at work and, believing she had witnessed a crime was moved to file a compliant with the police.
Dr. Haskell explained to the the "Dayton Daily News" that the student "quite possibly" misinterpreted what happened in the abortion. He explained what happened during the abortion this way:
"... it came out very quickly after I put the scissors up in the cervical canal and pierced the skull and spread the scissors apart. It popped right out ... the previous two, I had to use the suction to collapse the skull."
When Dr. Haskell was questioned by police he maintained that when he does abortions he always causes the death of the fetus just before delivery rather than after.
Other abortionists, however, aren't always so careful.
Dr. David Brewer remembers one abortion he assisted in early on in his medical career, during which the doctor actually delivered the baby through Cesarean section.
"They took that little baby that was making little sounds and moving and kicking, and set it on the table in a cold stainless steel bowl. And every time I would look over while we were repairing the incision in the uterus and finished the Cesarean, I would see that little person kicking and moving in that bowl. And it kicked and moved less and less, of course, as time went on. I can remember going over and looking at that baby when we were done surgery and the baby was still alive. You could see the chest was moving and the heart beating and the baby would try and take a little breath like that and it really hurt inside, and it began to educate me as to what abortion really was."
Now if, at this point, you put this newspaper down in disgust or turn to more pleasant news stories about, say, the situation in Bosnia, I certainly would understand. Techniques of abortion are no fun to read about. And let me tell you they are no fun to write about. But abortion is what it is. And looking the other way because of the horror of it is, it seems to me, a sort of cowardly thing to do.
It's my belief that no organization tries harder to obscure the truth about abortion more than Planned Parenthood Inc. On woman I talked to who underwent abortions via Planned Parenthood says its "counselors" routinely lie to young women about the procedure and the risks involved. They work hard to keep information from women about the life that is growing inside them and encourage abortion over all other options.
Organizations like Planned Parenthood and the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL) have clearly framed the political debate on the issue as a matter of a "woman's choice." If you are anti-abortion you are anti-women.
But a group called Feminists For Life is attempting to blow that argument to smithereens.
They argue that it is the abortion rights activists and abortion providers who exploit and hurt women.
"True feminists don't profit from a woman's crisis," says Lisa Toscanni, Pennsylvania chapter president of Feminists For Life. And they say that's what Planned Parenthood, a $167 million business, does.
"It skillfully markets a product to people who are in crisis," she says.
The people are women. The product is abortion.
Planned Parenthood says that its aim is to make abortion "as rare as possible."
But when Minnesota passed a parental notification bill in 1981 teen pregnancies declined 20 percent while abortion rates fell by 27 percent. Yet, the executive director of Planned Parenthood of Minnesota still continued to denounce the law even while admitting that it contributed to falling teen pregnancy rates.
Pennsylvania's parental consent law, though polls indicate it's favored by a vast majority of Pennsylvanians, has yet to go into effect because it is being appealed by pro-abortion advocates. The courts have been very friendly to the pro-abortion cause. But pro-abortionists won't be happy until taxpayer-funded abortion on demand is codified into law.
Among other things, F.O.C.A. allows: Abortion for any reason during the fourth, fifth, and sixth months, and allows abortion for "emotional health" even during the final three months of pregnancy; requires states to allow abortion for any reason, even as a method of birth control or sex education; forbids state parental consent and informed consent laws; and could require hospitals religiously opposed to abortion to perform them anyway.
Feminists For Life and other anti-abortion groups are trying to marshal their forces to make sure the bill is defeated. (If you want to help, Lisa says, call her at 933-0732 or the National Right to Life Committee at 202-626-8800.)
Opinion surveys indicate the American people overwhelmingly oppose the kind of "choice" F.O.C.A. offers, so its supporters will have to push for its passage extra hard.
In the meantime, Roe vs. Wade protects Dr. Haskell and the others in the abortion business very nicely.
Gil Spencer's column appears Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
