Related articles and links |  1 of 3

On April 6, 1977, a California woman who was seven and a half months pregnant decided to abort her baby. Into her womb a salt saline solution was injected, intended to burn the fetus both inside and out over the next 24 hours. After 18 hours, however, a little girl was born—alive. Because the abortionist had not yet arrived, the little two-pounder was rushed by a nurse to a hospital. Four surgeries and twenty-five years later, Gianna Jessen is a beautiful young woman who walks with a limp because of oxygen deprivation during the botched abortion. "I am happy to be alive," she cries. "Every day I thank God for life."

If Gianna's mother had sought an abortion today, she might have been given a partial-birth abortion (PBA), and Gianna never would have had a chance. In PBA the abortionist delivers an unborn child's body until only the head remains inside the mother, punctures the back of the child's skull with scissors, and sucks the baby's brains out before completing the delivery.

A January 2003 Gallup poll found that 70 percent of Americans favor a law to make PBA illegal in the last six months of pregnancy "except in cases necessary to save the life of the mother." Therefore one would think that the "Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act," introduced into Congress the third week of February, would win easy passage. But opponents will make four objections, each of which is based on misinformation.

1. "In 2000 the Supreme Court already declared such a bill unconstitutional." The Court struck down a Nebraska statute because it might be interpreted to make another abortion procedure (D & E, which dismembers well-developed fetuses while still in the uterus) illegal, and because the Court believed that PBA in some cases might be the procedure with the fewest side-effects. But the current bill explicitly applies only when most of the baby is killed outside the mother, and cites the extensive congressional hearing record that found "that partial-birth abortion is never medically indicated to preserve the health of the mother; is in fact unrecognized as a valid abortion procedure by the mainstream medical community; [and] poses additional health risks to the mother."

2. "PBA is used rarely and only in acute medical crises." According to The New York Times (Feb. 26, 1997, p. A11), Ron Fitzsimmons, then and now executive director of the National Coalition of Abortion Providers, admitted this was only the "party line." He said, "I lied through my teeth. … In the vast majority of cases, the procedure is performed on a healthy mother with a healthy fetus that is twenty or more weeks along." Rare? The Alan Guttmacher Institute, an affiliate of Planned Parenthood, declared that 2,200 PBAs were performed in 2000, and the Bergen (N.J.) Record reported in 1996 an Englewood clinic that performed more than 1500 PBA procedures annually in that facility alone.

3. "This could open the door to the eventual elimination of all legal abortion, which would be devastating to women's health." First of all, there is no political will for this, since a large majority of Americans still supports legal abortion in the first trimester. But more importantly, the very premise of this objection is undercut by a new book which argues that abortion is unhealthy for women. In "Women's Health After Abortion: The Medical and Psychological Evidence" (2002), Elizabeth Ring-Cassidy and Ian Gentles point to short-term risks (death from both legal and illegal abortions, infection, damage to reproductive organs) and long-term risks (infertility, psychological trauma). They also cite compelling evidence that abortion on demand has fostered a climate of sexual irresponsibility, which has contributed to the spread of STDs among women.

next page... |  1 of 3

share this page

February (Web-only) 2003, Vol. 47