Partial Birth Abortions Shown Increasing

http://www.washtimes.com/national/20030114-75792581.htm

'Partial-birth' abortions shown increasing
By Cheryl Wetzstein
THE WASHINGTON TIMES


The number of "partial-birth" abortions has tripled in the past four years, according to a report on abortion trends released this week.
An estimated 2,200 dilation and extraction, or D&X, abortions were conducted in 2000, said researchers with the Alan Guttmacher Institute, who surveyed all known U.S. abortion providers during the past two years.
In 1996, institute researchers estimated that there had been 650 D&X abortions, which are performed on fetuses older than 20 weeks. Opponents of the procedure call it partial-birth abortion because in some cases the fetus is old enough to survive outside the womb.
The 2,200 D&X abortions account for 0.17 percent of abortions, said institute researchers Lawrence B. Finer and Stanley K. Henshaw. Moreover, the 2,200 figure "should be interpreted cautiously because projections based on such small numbers are subject to error," they wrote.
Douglas Johnson and Randall O'Bannon of the National Right to Life Committee, a national pro-life group, said the new number shows one of two things: "Either they vastly underreported the number in 1996 or there's been a huge increase, more than tripling partial-birth abortions in four years."
"We think even the new number only represents a fraction of the true number," Mr. Johnson added.
Late-term abortion is expected to be a political issue again this year, despite a U.S. Supreme Court decision in 2000 that struck down a Nebraska ban on partial-birth abortion and chilled enforcement of dozens of similar laws in other states.
"Congress is moving to address the issue on a national basis," Mr. Johnson said.
A federal ban should pass the House, "and we hope it will pass the Senate this year," he said.
Pro-choice advocates are expecting the "same-old, same-old" from the new Congress, said Elizabeth Cavendish, legal director of the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League's Pro-Choice America. Whatever Congress produces is likely to be "extreme and unconstitutional" and, like the Nebraska law, restrictive of too many abortion procedures, she said.
The new report offers comprehensive data from 1996 to 2000 from all 50 states and the District.
It found that:
•The number of abortions fell from 1.36 million in 1996 to 1.31 million in 2000, a 4 percent decline.
•The abortion rate declined 5 percent, to 21.3 abortions per 1,000 women ages 15 to 44.
•In 35 states, including Virginia, and in the District, abortion rates fell. In Virginia in 2000, the rate dropped 5 percent, to 18.1 abortions per 1,000 fertile women. In the District, the rate fell 39 percent, to 68.1 abortions per 1,000 fertile women.
•Maryland and West Virginia were among the 15 states with increased abortion rates. In Maryland the rate rose 11 percent, to 29 abortions per 1,000 fertile women. In West Virginia the rate rose 3 percent, to 6.8 abortions per 1,000 women.
•There were an estimated 37,000 early medical abortions done in the first six months of 2001. This shows a small but significant use of the newly legal chemical process called mifepristone, formerly known as RU-486.
Abortions are declining, institute researchers said, because of lower teen pregnancy rates, more contraceptive choices, an aging female baby boomer population and a shrinking pool of abortion providers (down to 1,819 providers in 2000).
Use of emergency contraception, in which women take extra doses of birth-control pills after unprotected sex, is also growing, said Mr. Finer, noting that the practice may have averted 51,000 pregnancies in 2000

 

not sure...check out this letter from the AMA

http://www.nrlc.org/Federal/AMA_endorses_PBA_ban.pdf

 

Let me preface this by saying it came from an anti-late term abortion website...but here it is anyway:

http://www.nrlc.org/abortion/pba/pbafact10.html

Reasons for Partial-Birth Abortions: Dr. Martin Haskell

In his 1992 paper, Dr. Martin Haskell, who has performed over 1,000 partial-birth abortions, described the procedure as "a quick, surgical outpatient method that can be performed on a scheduled basis under local anesthesia." Dr. Haskell, a family practitioner who operates three abortion clinics, wrote that he "routinely performs this procedure on all patients 20 through 24 weeks" (4 1/2 to 5 1/2 months) pregnant [emphasis added], except on women who are more than 20 pounds overweight, have twins, or have certain other complicating factors.

For information on why Dr. Haskell adopted the method, the 1993 interview in Cincinnati Medicine is very instructive. Dr. Haskell explained that he had been performing dismemberment abortions (D&Es) to 24 weeks:

But they were very tough. Sometimes it was a 45-minute operation. I noticed that some of the later D&Es were very, very easy. So I asked myself why can't they all happen this way. You see the easy ones would have a foot length presentation, you'd reach up and grab the foot of the fetus, pull the fetus down and the head would hang up and then you would collapse the head and take it out. It was easy. . . . Then I said, "Well gee, if I just put the ultrasound up there I could see it all and I wouldn't have to feel around for it." I did that and sure enough, I found it 99 percent of the time. Kind of serendipity.

In 1993, the American Medical News-- the official newspaper of the AMA-- conducted a tape-recorded interview with Dr. Haskell concerning this specific abortion method, in which he said:

And I'll be quite frank: most of my abortions are elective in that 20-24 week range. . . . In my particular case, probably 20% [of this procedure] are for genetic reasons. And the other 80% are purely elective.

In a lawsuit in 1995, Dr. Haskell testified that women come to him for partial-birth abortions with "a variety of conditions. Some medical, some not so medical." Among the "medical" examples he cited was "agoraphobia" (fear of open places). Moreover, in testimony presented to the Senate Judiciary Committee on November 17, 1995, ob/gyn Dr. Nancy Romer of Dayton (the city in which Dr. Haskell operates one of his abortion clinics) testified that three of her own patients had gone to Haskell's clinic for abortions "well beyond" 4 1/2 months into pregnancy, and that "none of these women had any medical illness, and all three had normal fetuses."

Brenda Pratt Shafer, a registered nurse who observed Dr. Haskell use the procedure to abort three babies in 1993, testified that one little boy had Down Syndrome, while the other two babies were completely normal and their mothers were healthy. [Nurse Shafer's testimony before the House Judiciary subcommittee, with associated documentation, is available on request to NRLC.]

Reasons for Partial-Birth Abortions: Dr. James McMahon

The late Dr. James McMahon performed thousands of partial-birth abortions, including the third-trimester abortions performed on the five women who appeared with President Clinton at his April 10 veto ceremony. Dr. McMahon's general approach is illustrated by this illuminating statement in the July 5, 1993 edition of American Medical News:

"[A]fter 20 weeks where it frankly is a child to me, I really agonize over it because the potential is so imminently there. I think, 'Gee, it's too bad that this child couldn't be adopted.' On the other hand, I have another position, which I think is superior in the hierarchy of questions, and that is: 'Who owns the child?' It's got to be the mother.'"

In June, 1995, Dr. McMahon submitted to Congress a detailed breakdown of a "series" of over 2,000 of these abortions that he had performed. He classified only 9% (175 cases) as involving "maternal [health] indications," of which the most common was "depression."

Dr. Pamela E. Smith, director of Medical Education, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Mt. Sinai Hospital, Chicago, gave the Senate Judiciary Committee her analysis of Dr. McMahon's 175 "maternal indication" cases. Of this sample, 39 cases (22%) were for maternal "depression," while another 16% were "for conditions consistent with the birth of a normal child (e.g., sickle cell trait, prolapsed uterus, small pelvis)," Dr. Smith noted. She added that in one-third of the cases, the conditions listed as "maternal indications" by Dr. McMahon really indicated that the procedure itself would be seriously risky to the mother.

Of Dr. McMahon's series, another 1,183 cases (about 56%) were for "fetal flaws," but these included a great many non-lethal disorders, such as cleft palate and Down Syndrome. In an op ed piece written for the Los Angeles Times, Dr. Katherine Dowling, a family physician at the University of Southern California School of Medicine, examined Dr. McMahon's report on this "fetal flaws" group. She wrote:

Twenty-four were done for cystic hydroma (a benign lymphatic mass, usually treatable in a child of normal intelligence). Nine were done for cleft lip-palate syndrome (a friend of mine, mother of five, and a colleague who is a pulmonary specialist were born with this problem). Other reasons included cystic fibrosis (my daughter went through high school with a classmate with cystic fibrosis) and duodenal atresia (surgically correctable, but many children with this problem are moderately mentally r****ded). Guess they can't enjoy life, can they? In fact, most of the partial-birth abortions in that [McMahon] survey were done for problems that were either surgically correctable or would result in some degree of neurologic or mental impairment, but would not harm the mother. Or they were done for reasons that were pretty skimpy: depression, chicken pox, diabetes, vomiting. ["What Constitutes A Quality Life?," Los Angeles Times, Aug. 28, 1996]

Over one-third of McMahon's 2,000-abortion "series" involved neither fetal nor maternal health problems, however trivial.

In Dr. McMahon's interviews with American Medical News and with Keri Harrison, counsel to the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Dr. McMahon freely acknowledged that he performed late second trimester procedures that were "elective" even by his definition ("elective" meaning without fetal or maternal medical justification). After 26 weeks, Dr. McMahon claimed that all of his abortions were "non-elective" -- but his definition of "non-elective" was very expansive. His written submission stated:

"After 26 weeks [six months], those pregnancies that are not flawed are still non-elective. They are interrupted because of maternal risk, rape, incest, psychiatric or pediatric indications." [emphasis added] ["Pediatric indications" was Dr. McMahon's terminology for young teenagers.]

 

sorry...actually they're accounts of testimony, though.

 

http://www.nrlc.org/abortion/pba/pbafact9.html

In 1987, the Alan Guttmacher Institute (AGI), an affiliate of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA), collected questionnaires from 1,900 women who were at abortion clinics procuring abortions. Of the 1,900, "420 had been pregnant for 16 or more weeks." These 420 women were asked to choose among a menu of reasons why they had not obtained the abortions earlier in their pregnancies. Only two percent (2%) said "a fetal problem was diagnosed late in pregnancy," compared to 71% who responded "did not recognize that she was pregnant or misjudged gestation," 48% who said "found it hard to make arrangements," and 33% who said "was afraid to tell her partner or parents." The report did not indicate that any of the 420 late abortions were performed because of maternal health problems. ["Why Do Women Have Abortions?," Family Planning Perspectives, July/August 1988.]

Also illuminating is an 1993 internal memo by Barbara Radford, then the executive director of the National Abortion Federation, a "trade association" for abortion clinics:

There are many reasons why women have late abortions: life endangerment, fetal indications, lack of money or health insurance, social-psychological crises, lack of knowledge about human reproduction, etc." [emphasis added]

 

the following may help a little...if a health concern crops up, then you can have an abortion past that time point you otherwise couldn't...but the key is in how you define "health"...if you're saying the woman is in an emotional trauma because she doesn't know if she can afford the baby...or you use some ofter "soft" definition of "health", then you can get around it.

http://www.nrlc.org/abortion/pba/pbafact7.html


The Boxer/NARAL amendment would have allowed partial-birth abortion to be performed without any limitation whatever until "viability," and also "after viability where, in the medical judgment of the attending physician, the abortion is necessary to preserve the life of the woman or avert serious adverse health consequences to the woman." (The Senate rejected this gutting amendment.)

The Boxer/Clinton language must be read in the light of Doe v. Bolton, the 1973 companion case to Roe v. Wade, in which the Supreme Court said that "health" must encompass "all factors-- physical, emotional, psychological, familial and the woman's age-- relevant to the well-being of the patient." Given this expansive definition of "health," adding the word "serious" has no legal effect, since Mr. Clinton proposes to leave entirely up to each abortionist to decide whether "depression" or some other "health" concern is "serious."

In a June 7 letter to leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention, Mr. Clinton said that he favored banning the procedure with an exception for "cases where a woman risks death or serious damage to her health," but not for cases involving "youth" or "emotional stress." But in his formal veto message on the bill, Mr. Clinton referred to a "health" exception as required by Roe v. Wade. Mr. Clinton, a former teacher of constitutional law, knows full well that these two positions are inconsistent, because if Roe/Doe applies to partial-birth abortions, then even after "viability," the exception must indeed cover "emotional" health.

In his June 7 letter, President Clinton asserted that "the medical community... broadly supports the continued availability of this procedure where a woman's serious health interests are at stake." However, the American Medical Association (AMA) Legislative Council voted unanimously to recommend endorsement of the bill, with one member explaining that the procedure was "not a recognized medical technique." (The full AMA Board of Trustees was divided on the bill and ultimately took "no position.") Of the five medical doctors who serve in Congress, four voted for the bill, including the only family practitioner/gynecologist.

 

no...Roe v. Wade is the law of the land...handed down by the supreme court...it governs every state.

pro-life groups want to make it a states rights issue, because that's the best they can do...

 

see if this has any influence on your feelings about it...congressional testimony from medical experts...

http://www.nrlc.org/abortion/pba/pbafact5.html


Dr. Norig Ellison, president of the American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA), wrote to the Senate Judiciary Committee:

Drugs administered to the mother, either local anesthesia administered in the paracervical area or sedatives/analgesics administered intramuscularly or intravenously, will provide little-to-no analgesia [pain relief] to the fetus. [Senate Judiciary Committee, Nov. 17, 1995 hearing record, page 226]

Dr. David Birnbach, president-elect of the Society for Obstetric Anesthesia and Perinatology, testified, "Having administered anesthesia for fetal surgery, I know that on occasion we need to administer anesthesia directly to the fetus because even at these early ages the fetus moves away from the pain of the stimulation." [hearing record, page 288]

Professor Robert White, Director of the Division of Neurosurgery and Brain Research Laboratory at Case Western Reserve School of Medicine, testified, "The fetus within this time frame of gestation, 20 weeks and beyond, is fully capable of experiencing pain." After analyzing the partial-birth procedure step-by-step for the subcommittee, Prof. White concluded: "Without question, all of this is a dreadfully painful experience for any infant subjected to such a surgical procedure." [House Judiciary Committee hearing No. 31, June 15, 1995, page 70.] Prof. Jean Wright concluded, "This procedure, if it were done on an animal in my institution, would not make it through the institutional review process. The animal would be more protected than this child is." [hearing record, page 286]

 

honestly...wasnt trying to twist a knife...i didn't know much about partial-birth abortion until reading on it within the last couple of years...i was largely ignorant to the procedure...how it's done...how it affects the baby...i actually heard an ex-nurse from an abortion clinic give a speech on it once...really traumatic stuff...it's one thing to talk about abortion in the context of first trimester...quite another to talk about pulling the baby 3/4 out of the womb and stabbing the back of it's head with scissors only to insert a vacuum device to suck its brain out....i think (or maybe i hope) that people will look back on that procedure 100 years from now and say, "how did people ever allow that to happen?" the same way they talk about slavery or the mistreatment of women historically...

honestly, i don't know how much you know about the subject...thought this might be the first you knew of the details of the procedure...or someone else's first exposure to it...just didn't know...didn't mean to offend you.

 

Pipe...I'm with you that the placement is questionable...but then I'm not so sure. Shouldn't people be aware of this?

My day won't be the same after seeing those pictures...wow. I can not imagine why this is acceptable. Bringing children 3/4 of the way out of the womb only to slaughter them...Dr. Mengle type stuff. Absolutely horrific.