Partial-Birth Abortion

Guided by ultrasound, the abortionist grabs the baby's leg with forceps.		The baby's leg is pulled out into the birth canal.		The abortionist delivers the baby's entire body, except for the head.		The abortionist jams scissors into the baby's skull. The scissors are then opened to enlarge the hole.		The scissors are removed, and a suction catheter is inserted. The child's brains are sucked out, causing the skull to collapse. The dead baby is then removed.

>> Click here to view photographic evidence of partial-birth abortion. WARNING: EXTREMELY GRAPHIC!

>> Click here to read Georgia Right to Life's press release on the ban on partial-birth abortion.

>> Order a free CD with a taped partial birth abortion being described by the inventor of the procedure. Learn more here.

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The Partial-Birth Abortion Ban – A Bittersweet Decision

By Josh Brahm, Dir. of Education

On April 18, 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a legal challenge to the federal Partial-Birth Abortion (PBA) Ban Act, allowing the law to go into effect for the first time since it was signed by President George W. Bush in 2003. Writing for a 5-4 majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote, “The Act proscribes a method of abortion in which a fetus is killed just inches before completion of the birth process… Congress determined that the abortion methods it proscribed had a ‘disturbing similarity to the killing of a newborn infant.’…”  The majority ruled that a general ban on the method is permissible and does not violate the general “abortion right” enunciated in past decisions such as Roe v. Wade (1973) and Casey v. Planned Parenthood (1992).

Unfortunately, the Supreme Court decision is bitter-sweet.  Here is the bad news, and the good news.

On page 17 at Section lll (A), the Supreme Court writes, “…the Act’s definition of partial-birth abortion requires the fetus to be delivered ”until… in the case of breech presentation, any part of the fetal trunk past the navel is outside the body of the mother. For purposes of criminal liability, the overt act causing the fetus death must be separate from delivery. And the overt act must occur after the delivery to an anatomical landmark.” Thus, the PBA Ban Act permits the abortionist to remove the baby up to the navel, and then kill her.

On page 18 of the same section:  “If a living fetus is delivered past the critical point by accident or inadvertence, the Act is inapplicable…no crime has occurred.”

In lay terms, the abortionist can still perform a text-book PBA if he was attempting to remove the baby only to the navel, but unintentionally the baby slipped out farther. Of course, an abortionist might have few witnesses to this, and could claim no intentionality, and possibly continue to perform a partial-birth abortion as desired.

On page 30 at Section lV (A), the Supreme Court suggests that, “The medical profession furthermore, may find different and less shocking methods to abort the fetus in the second trimester, thereby accommodating legislative demand.”

Even if the Federal PBA Ban did have a chance of saving babies, Georgia’s law banning partial-birth abortion includes a health exception. (The federal Ban only has a life exception.) The health exception has become a catch-all that permits a partial-birth abortion for any type of physical, emotional or psychological stress on the mother. In other words, presently, Georgia law permits partial-birth abortion on demand. 

The Good News
“How could there be good news after that? This is an outrage! There could be no victory in this decision!”

Thankfully this is not entirely true. There are some things in which we can and should rejoice. Jay Watts with Cobb Pregnancy Services and Scott Klusendorf with Life Training Institute have written the following concerning the decision.

1. For the first time ever since Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court upheld a law which restricted abortion. Upholding ANY restriction is an important first step legally. For the first time our nation’s lawmakers and Supreme Court have said that it is wrong to perform a certain action against the unborn; it is wrong, therefore we won’t do that. Prior to 1998, 30 states passed laws prohibiting PBA. In all but two states, federal judges threw out the restrictions as unconstitutional. Now, with this most recent Supreme Court decision, state lawmakers will once again be emboldened to propose new limits on abortion.
2. The upholding of the ban suggests the right to an abortion is not absolute, nor can it be supported as such by appealing to the Constitution. That sends an important message to state legislators around the country.
3. For the first time, the Court upheld a bill that did not contain a “health” exception. (The bill had a “life” exception—a very different thing.) Thus, the Court chipped away at the ruling in Casey, Carhart, and Roe/Doe. Perhaps even more importantly, the Court rejected the argument that simply said that if ANY possible (not plausible) objection could ever conceivably be raised regarding the constitutionality of an abortion restriction, that restriction should be thrown out. Up until now, that’s exactly what the federal courts have done.  Not any more. That’s a nice step forward for our side.
4. This decision helps us to start to frame the legal discussion in a new way. It opens up the opportunity to shift the discussion from the “precedent trumps all” language of Planned Parenthood v. Casey to an evaluation of the current practices of abortion in the United States based on the morality of the procedures/lethal action against human fetal life.
5. We caught the pro-abortion side lying and they were publicly humiliated. Planned Parenthood and the rest of pro-abortion movement argued continuously that partial-birth abortion needs to remain legal in case of emergency situations that threaten the life of the mother. Thankfully their argument was refuted, not by pro-lifers, but by the pro-aborts! The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists were forced to write a public policy on partial-birth abortion.  Here’s a direct quote:

   “Terminating a pregnancy is performed in some circumstances to save the life or preserve the health of the mother. Intact D & X (partial-birth abortion) is one of the methods available in some of these situations. A select panel convened by the ACOG could identify no circumstances under which this procedure, as defined above, would be the only option to save the life or preserve the health of the women.”¹

   Note that this is a statement of fact. A select panel of a very pro-abortion choice medical organization could not find a single instance in which intact partial-birth abortion was the only option. In other words, a physician is always able to find a different option if a mother’s life is in danger.

6. Our opponents hate partial-birth abortion legislation precisely because it works against them, not for them. They’ve said so from the start of the partial-birth abortion debate. Pro-abortion columnist Anne Roiphe writes: “The anti-abortion forces will again display horrible pictures of the technique, which they call partial-birth abortion. Although few in the abortion rights movement take this approach seriously, it has emotional resonance and erodes public support for all abortion.”²

She’s not the only one to fear the visual impact of the debate. “When someone holds up a model of a six-month-old fetus and a pair of surgical scissors, we say ‘choice’ and we lose,” writes feminist Naomi Wolf.³ Later, in a 1998 article in George Magazine, Wolf states: “The brutal imagery, along with the admission by pro-choice leaders that they had not been candid about how routinely the procedure was performed, instigated pro-choice audiences’ reevaluation of where they stood.”  As a result, “the ground has shifted in the abortion wars.”⁴ Cynthia Gorney, author of Articles of Faith, a book about the abortion wars, says that serious damage has been done to the pro-abortion side. “One of the dirty secrets of abortion is it’s really gruesome, but nobody would look at he pictures.  With partial-birth, the right-to-life movement succeeded for the first time in forcing the country to really look at one awful abortion procedure.”⁵

The quotes from Wolf, Rophie, and Groney are critically important. The abortion rights people are conceding their weakest point and we should listen. They are terrified of any debate over abortion procedures. That’s not the ground they want to fight on.

Even if the Supreme Court overturned the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban, the debate we’ve had in this country about partial-birth abortion in the last decade is probably the biggest success the pro-life movement has ever had. Why? Because we finally got the discussion from the subjective arguments about “choice” to the objective facts of what abortion does to a baby. That kind of discussion makes people much more uncomfortable about abortion. During the debate about partial-birth abortion, the percentage of those who thought abortion should be legal under any circumstances dropped from 33 percent to 22 percent.⁶ In a way, the graphic imagery used in the Supreme Court decision on partial-birth abortion works toward our side, because when pro-aborts read about these horrific procedures, it makes their stomach turn.

Just as William Wilberforce took the members of parliament on tours of the revolting slave ships, the pro-life movement has taken the Supreme Court on a tour of late-term abortions. Just as Wilberforce’s visits to the slave ship were incremental steps that didn’t save one slave that year but eventually made a difference, the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban is an incremental step that will one day lead to the end of legal abortion in America.

Sources:
1:  http://www.sdhealthyfamilies.org/media/pdf/ACOGAbortionPolicy.pdf
2:  “Moment of Perception,” The New York Times, September 19, 1996
3:  “Pro-Choice and Pro-Life,” The New York Times, April 3, 1997
4:  “The Dead Baby Boom,” George Magazine, January 27, 1998
5:  Cited in Larry Reibstein, “Arguing at a Fever Pitch,” Newsweek, January 26, 1998
6:  USA Today, CNN/Gallup Poll, 1997. Cited in Ruth Padawer, “Partial-Birth Battle Changing Public Views,” USA Today, 17 November 1997.