Presbyterians Pro-Life NEWS
Spring/Summer 2004
Partial birth abortion goes to court
Testimonies address brutal procedure, danger to mother, pain to live unborn baby
Congress has voted three times to ban partial birth abortion. Last November President Bush signed the ban into law. It went immediately into the courts of three states: California, New York, and Nebraska. The suits against the law have been brought by Planned Parenthood, The National Abortion Federation and the American Civil Liberties Union.
Trials produce account of late term abortion procedures
Leroy Carhart, a late term abortion provider in Nebraska, who is not a board-certified physician, described his procedures in court testimony on April 1, 2004. He said,
Under 17 weeks, I would use a forcep [to] remove the part of [the] fetus that was easily reachable ....Hopefully try to use small bites to work [my] way up and remove the rest of the fetus so that it comes out intact. If not, then remove whatever part that I could get easily and then go back and remove the rest.... Certainly, when an upper extremity comes through the vagina, and I have to remove it at that point–the shoulder joint actually tends to be more substantial than other joints in the body. So mostly if I can grab above the elbow, I will get part of the scapula, and sometimes even part of the chest wall from that extremity; ribs, and possibly even lung tissue or other tissue inside of the chest cavity.
I can normally remove, virtually intact, as I said, two, three pieces. I can often get up to the base of the skull then go back and remove the skull. I can often get both lower extremities, and divide somewhere at the upper part of the spinal cord, removing abdominal organs and some even thoracic organs on the very first removal.
In the New York trial, Dr. Timothy Johnson described the instrument used in late term abortions as "tongs...thick enough and heavy enough that you can actually grasp and crush with those in-struments." Dr. Carolyn Westhoff said it is "necessary to insert our forceps, open them as wide as possible to try to capture the head within the opening of the forceps and then crush the head using external force applied against the head." She admit-ted that there is usually a heartbeat when she performs a partial birth abortion.
Physician testifies to danger of partial birth abortion for women
Testifying under a pseudonym in the California trial, an abortion practitioner admitted that there are risks to the woman’s cervix when the forceps are opened wide enough to grasp the head of the unborn baby. The risks include perforation or laceration of the cervix or of the lower uterine segment. The abortionist testified that the same risks to the mother apply during the crushing of the baby’s head. He agreed that the risks can be life-threatening for the mother.
Research shows that cervical damage is a leading cause of long term complications from abortion.
Expert says abortion procedures inflict pain on the baby prior to death
Dr. Kanwaljeet Anand is an Oxford- and Harvard-trained neonatal pediatrician and pain expert. He told the New York court that unborn children feel "prolonged and excruciating pain" in late term abortion procedures. Dr. Anand said that unborn children can feel pain even more than adults or infants. By 20 weeks, fetuses have developed all the nerve and brain functions to feel pain, he said, but none of the coping mechanisms that help infants and adults to deal with the sensations. Dr Anand said he personally believes women have an "unalienable right" to abortions–except in the case of fetal pain.
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