Partial-birth abortions seem to have been on the front lines of the abortion debate for at least the last few years.
Why?
It’s my understanding that this is a very rarely practiced procedure, and is almost always done only when the mother’s life is in jeopardy, not risk. It’s also my understanding that most abortion practitioners have not only never performed a partial-birth abortion, they’ve never known a colleague who had.
Could the focus on this procedure by abortion opponents be because it is so repulsive to the general public? Wouldn’t that be rather disingenuous, if what I state above is indeed true?
As far as the number of partial-birth/D&E abortions go, here is some of what I’ve picked up. This site references a February 25, 1997, New York Times article (but I think you have to have a password to get into the archives), and an article in the March 3, 1997, American Medical News journal. It also links the Fitzsimmons revelation to a 1995 Nightline interview.
The site is maintained by the Lutheran (Missouri synod) Office of Government Information.
http://www.ogi.lcms.org/OGI/HTML/News/1997/PBAB%20lie
"Ron Fitzsimmons, executive director of the National Coalition of Abortion Providers (a coalition of 200 independently owned clinics), acknowledged that he had “lied through his teeth” during the recent partial-birth abortion debate that went down to defeat with President Clinton’s veto of the ban.
“Mr. Fitzsimmons was always quick to offer the party line, namely that partial-birth abortions were very rare (only 400 or 500 per year) and were performed only to preserve a woman’s health or when the fetus had severe abnormalities. However, Fitzsimmons, citing a guilty conscience (about lying that is, not about abortions themselves), recently admitted that partial-birth abortions are not nearly as rare as had been presented-–Fitzsimmons estimated that there are between 4000 and 5000 per year. This figure may be much higher, as just one clinic in New Jersey performs 1500 partial-birth abortions every year.”
I’ve heard the Fitzsimmons revelation admitted by just about every paper/source I’ve read, regardless of ideology. I get the impression that even the pro-choice movement is embarrased by him.
“Partial birth abortion” is not actually a medical term, and has no medical definition. Any study claiming to have numbers on the frequency of partial birth abortions is thus suspect. The term has been used quite broadly by people attempting to further their political agendas. For instance, sometimes the term is used to apply to all dilation and extraction abortions, regardless of when the abortion is performed.
I would like to see some definitions of “partial birth abortions”. It sounds icky enough. It sounds, in fact, as if during birth after the head emerged the baby was somehow killed. I assume that this is not what happens. I also assume that this is what I am intended to assume.
This is exactly what happens. The fetus is pulled by its legs almost out of the birth canal; the doctor sticks scissors into the base of its skull, makes a hole for a suction tube, and sucks out the brains. The preferred nomenclature, of course, is “evacuates the cranial contents.”
You can call it cranial evacuation, or brain sucking, or any damn thing you want to fit your political agenda, as long as it gets done if that’s what it takes to save the life of somebody I love.
The argument against the proceduce boils down to the fact that it’s icky. IMO, though, the alternative (and actually preferred) method, the dilatation and extraction, is even ickier. The outcome is the same. The choice of method is a medical decision that should be made between the doctor and the patient–not the legislature.
Please note that I am not pushing any political agenda. The posts I have made are factual in nature, or at least backed up by cites.
Even most ardent pro-lifers acknowledge that in some cases it is necessary to sacrifice one life for another. I would sacrifice my life for a loved one to live. If it came down to making a choice of “who lives,” how could a pro-life person reconcile a dead mother with “pro-life?”
However, this is a red herring in the abortion debate. According to former U. S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop:
I’ve checked on this on the internet. You’d think that out there on the http://www.you’d be able to find ONE source about this subject that is not provided by one or the other sides. NOT! So when looking for statistics on the number of these “late term abortions” performed it’s hard to say. It is also hard to find a source that accurately describes the proceedure. The stories vary so much. Some sites say that this is strictly a surgical proceedure that is always performed in a hospital, yet you see right here someone stating statistics that there are over 4000 a year performed in clinics. Which is it? I can’t form an opinion on this subject because all of the information is either inflamatory or contradictory. I’m beginning to wonder if they exsist at all. Usually you might have heard of a famous case or known someone who knew someone who had something happen to them. (Hope that makes sense.) But for all the hype on this subject…who has these abortions? Where are these women and their doctors? Do any of you out there know anyone who knows someone who’s had one of these proceedures? If there are 4000 to 5000 being performed a year then on who? I think the entire issue has become nothing more than a bunch of smoke and mirrors.
First of all, Milossarian, I’d appreciate the deletion of the term “anti-choicers.” There’s only one type of choice involved here: abortion. Those who oppose abortion do not dispute people’s right to choose what clothes to wear, what candidate to vote for, what (otherwise legal) items to sell and buy, etc. They oppose the choice to abort in the same way that all people oppose the right to choose murder. This sort of labeling is a public-relations scheme by the pro-abortion side which doesn’t like calling itself “pro-abortion” for some reason…even though they maintain that there is nothing morally wrong with choosing abortion.
Now, as for your question about partial-birth abortion…the procedure is more medically known as intact dilation and exctraction (the “D&E” that other responders had referred to).
As for why abortion opponents are trying to focus on that procedure, I think the reason is obvious…it’s an attempt to turnm public opinion against the pro-abortion-rights camp by showing them that the pro-abortion-rights folks actively support a procedure that differs only slightly from full-fledged infanticide. It’s a political tactic, nothing more…but boy, the pro-abortion-rights folks are playing right into their hands, and allowing their opponents to define them in the eyes of the public, something no political group wants to do.
C’mon, Chaim, it’s poor form to decry one side’s poor labeling (and I do agree that demonizing those who oppose abortion as “anti-choice” is not the best move) and then hint that an innaccurate labeling of another side’s position is meet and proper. Consider this analogy: I support people’s right to choose religion, although personally I would not choose it for myself. I believe that on occaision religion can do more harm than good, but I think it is up to each person to determine what is best for them, and sometimes choosing a religion can be the best choice for that particular person at that point in life. I think there is nothing inherently morally wrong with following a religion (unless the religion itself causes people to do immoral acts). Now, I don’t think even the most charitable person would label me as “pro-religion” given these beliefs. <grin> There is a difference between saying “I think people have the right to choose to do X” and “I think X is the greatest thing in the world and we should all do X.”
The reason for the inflated statistics is that there are only two clinics in New Jersey that are allowed to perform an abortion after 21 weeks. Due to varying state regulations, people come even from out of state to those clinics.
The 4000 figure is therefore a severe misquote.
I will be starting a new thread with a reference to a debate I’ve been finding very interesting.
Which is precisely why it is perfectly proper to talk about the issue in terms of “choice” instead of in terms of “abortion.” Everyone knows we’re talking about abortion; the question is whether a woman has a right to choose to have one.
Does anyone who knows anything about this issue seriously think otherwise? It has always been obvious to me that the “choice” under discussion is whether or not a person may have an abortion, no what candidate they ought to vote for. I find the very assertion that this terminology may be confusing to be naive at best.
The problem, of course, is that it is by no means clear or undisputed that abortion, in all cases, equals “murder.” Moreover, the reason behind opposing the right to choose to have an abortion does not change the fact that this is precisely what anti-choice (and I use the term advisedly) people do – they oppose the right to choose. To choose what? To choose to have an abortion. That is, after all, what we’re talking about.
Actually, it’s no more a “public relations scheme” than the opposition calling themselves “pro-life” – which I at least give them credit for truly believing they are. That’s an equally politically charged term, as you surely must realize, implying as it does that those who are not “for life” must be “against life.” I do not like being called “pro-abortion” because I am not pro-abortion. The label is, for me and for many, factually inaccurate. I am not in favor of abortion; I am against any person telling any other person what she may do with her body in the early stages of pregnancy on the grounds that the rights of some potential child a woman may have outweigh the rights the woman herself has. In other words, I support a woman’s right to make that decision herself, which is why it is perfectly accurate to describe me as “pro-choice” and not accurate to describe me as “pro-abortion.”
I’m sure someone else will correct me if I am wrong but I do not believe a D&E or a D&C is the same as a “partial birth abortion” as that term is commonly understood. I think most people consider “partial birth abortions” to be a partial delivery followed by cranial evacuation – sucking the brains out, as described above. (And I don’t object to calling a spade a spade; these are not pleasant matters we are discussing.) A D&E I believe is the process of terminating a fetus in utero and then extracting it, either whole or in parts. The difference, so far as I know, is when the fetus is killed.
Actually, I don’t disagree with this. I think it is reasonable to consider a procedure performed on a fetus that is developed enough to survive outside the womb an infanticide. The question therefore becomes, of course, under what circumstances, if ever, an infanticide is justifiable. What if the baby is severely deformed, developing without a brain, for example? The context under which most partial birth abortions are contemplated, so far as I know, is not the health of the mother, but rather the future of a baby that suffers from severe congenital defects that would indicate for it a difficult, sometimes agonizingly painful life, often followed by a difficult and possibly agonizingly painful death. That was the context in which the other partial-birth abortion I am personally aware of was performed: the parents chose to abort a relatively late-term pregnancy of a child that had such grave (and so many) defects that its chances at anything but a short and painful life full of tubes and needles was nil. This couple still mourn that child, and still agonize over their decision. I refuse to believe that the government could put any more thought into that decision than they did – or that it has any more right to make it.
Being “pro-choice” is not synonymous with being “pro-partial-birth abortions in all circumstances.” Part of what I do as a person who is avowedly pro-choice is to refuse to have my beliefs misrepresented by those who would paint them with the broadest and most extremist brush in order to furnish their own counter-agenda. For me (and, I think, for most pro-choice people), the issues are not black and white and the decisions are not easily made – which is another reason we don’t presume to dicate what decisions other people should make is situations that are not our own.
Not quite. The procedure known commonly as a “partial-birth abortion” is the intact delivery and evacuation, or IDE. This differs from the other method, dilatation and evacuation, or DE. Confusing as all hell, I know. I hate medical terminology.
Oh, and I think “pro-choice” and “anti-abortion” are the most factually accurate terms for the two major factions in the debate. Of course, you should never try to squeeze your opinion into a hyphenated word, but it seems that most people either think that 1.)abortion should not be allowed, or 2.)abortion is not a good thing, but a woman should have the right to have one if she chooses.
The biggest question that I have, is that if this procedure is intended to save the life of the mother – why does the baby have to be 95% born before slaughtering it? I would think that by then, the stress of birth would have affected the mother.
I am all for elective abortion, but I find no use for this procedure at all. IF they can bring the baby that far out why not extract it fully and place it in intensive care or whatever and then into a foster home if the mother does not want it? Most procedures I know of where they take the baby to save the mother, the child is far too small to survive and they do a chemical abortion.
It seems to me that if they bring all but the head into the world, and the mother has no problems with this, that they could safely bring it entirely out. I find it hard to grasp the type of person who not only thought up this procedure, but the type of congress who approved it.
The baby isn’t 95% born. Most are done before the 21st week.
The baby has almost four months to go at that point. Heck, at 25 weeks the kid is probably going to grow up blind or with cerebral palsy even given the best of care in an incubator.
I’m not too familiar with the procedure, but it seems that reducing the size of the head makes the whole operation much easier and less dangerous on the mother then an attempt at bringing it out alive.