In her Nov. 17 letter, American Civil Liberties Union attorney Colleen Connell made several questionable claims.
She referred to the doctors who brought the lawsuit against the Illinois ban of the partial birth abortion procedure as “esteemed physicians who have a proud and outstanding record of caring for women experiencing high-risk pregnancies or significant fertility problems.”
In fact, these doctors are abortion providers at Hope Clinic in Granite City, Ill. According to a former clinic employee, these physicians perform 40 to 60 abortions per day.
A woman with a high-risk pregnancy should be in the care of specialists at a hospital equipped to handle difficult pregnancies. Both she and her unborn child should be treated with utmost care, respect and dignity. Medical decisions should not be made that pit the mother against the child, but rather seek to give both the best opportunity for the future.
Connell states that late second-trimester abortions are very rare events, performed most often when the woman’s health is in grave danger. But Dr. Martin Haskell, who has performed over 1,000 partial-birth abortions, has admitted that 80 percent of them are purely elective rather than for health reasons. The other 20 percent are for “genetic reasons,” which include non-life-threatening conditions, such as cleft palate or Down’s Syndrome.
Dr. James McMahon also testified before the U.S. House Judiciary Constitution Subcommittee that of 2,000 partial birth abortions, only 9 percent involved maternal health, with the most serious condition being depression.
The American Medical Association has specifically rejected the procedure as medically unnecessary and unsafe. Dr. Pamela Smith, director of medical education, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Mt. Sinai Hospital in Chicago, testified before the U.S. Senate, “There are absolutely no obstetrical situations encountered in this country which require a partially delivered human fetus to be destroyed to preserve the life or health of the mother.”
Dr. Bernard Nathanson, one of the founders of the National Abortion Rights Action League and a driving force behind the legalization of abortion in the 1960s, wrote in a letter to the Wall Street Journal that the partial-birth abortion procedure is not an abortion at all, but rather the breech delivery of a fatally abused preterm infant. He goes on to say, “this operation is so fraught with significant surgical hazards and complications that it is more likely to tip the health scales and kill the pregnant woman than it is to save her life.”
We in the pro-life movement readily admit that no method of abortion is acceptable. There is never a justifiable reason to directly take a child’s life. Outlawing the partial birth abortion procedure will probably not save one child’s life because other methods of late term abortion are available. But prohibiting such an odious procedure does, at least, indicate that as a society we still have some sensitivities and that we recognize infanticide for what it is. Once we admit that an unborn baby deserves at least some consideration at this late stage of development, we are on the road to restoring respect for life at all stages, whether born or unborn.
