A Right to Late-Term Abortions?

Mr./Ms. President:

You asked for my advice on whether or not to sign the new abortion bill, which would ban the practice of "partial-birth abortion." I think you should.

I know that abortion is a complicated and difficult issue. Reasonable people can reasonably disagree. But this procedure goes beyond any definition of reasonable. In this case a doctor delivers a late-term fetus, feet first, until only the head remains in the birth canal. The doctor then stabs it in the base of the head with scissors and suctions out the brain. In most cases the fetus has to be turned around in order to be delivered feet first. Why deliberately turn around a baby to do a breech delivery? Because if the child were delivered headfirst and this same procedure were performed, it would legally be infanticide. But by any common-sense definition this is infanticide, which is probably one reason why so many members of Congress who usually support abortion rights, inlcuding Susan Molinari, Dick Gephardt, and Joe Biden voted for the ban. It is also supported by eighty percent of the public.

But what if the procedure is medically necessary to protect a women's life or health? The "mother's life" exception is already in the bill. As for "health" and "medically necessary," these seemingly forthright terms have been twisted by insidious legal wording. Since Doe v. Bolton, the companion case to Roe v. Wade in 1973, "health" abortions have included those performed for the sake of social or emotional "well-being," and "medically necessary" has meant any abortion performed by a qualified medical professional, no matter what the reason. A "health" exception in the bill would have gutted it.

If we use the word "health" in the ordinary sense, there is no justification for partial-birth abortions. One obstetrician called it "a maverick procedure." The American Medical Association's legislative council stated that it is "not a recognized medical technique," "almost does not exist in the medical literature," and is "basically repulsive." The AMA has remained neutral on the partial-birth bill, but its council unanimously supported it.

Not only is the procedure medically unnecessary, but respected physicians have also testified that it actually imperils women's health. Dr. Pamela Smith, obstetrics director at New York's Mt. Sinai hospital, says that the procedures used in this abortion technique "have been clearly documented to be causal factors in the death and reproductive morbidity of women." Former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop has stated, "In no way can I twist my mind to see that the late-term abortion as described . . . is a medical necessity for the mother." Dr. Koop added that many of the medical conditions which are used as justification for using the partial-birth abortion procedure are ones that he has personally remedied in other children by operations. Some of the infants with these conditions die, of course, but it is hard to see how anyone's grief is lessened by letting a doctor kill them while they are being born.

What, then, of the five women who spoke so movingly about the procedure? After noting what experienced gynecologists said of their testimony before Congress, Mr./Ms. President, all I can conclude is that these were five honest women who were tragically misled by the doctor who performed the procedure on them -- a doctor who was not an obstetrician but a family physician who did abortions for a living. One of the five, Coreen Costello, testified that her fetus had already died in utero, which if true would mean that her case had nothing to do with the legislation we're considering. Testimony in the other four cases was sketchy, but apparently involved cases of fetal abnormalities, such as hydrocephalus ("water on the brain") and trisomy (a chromosomal abnormality). Obstetricians have testified that in none of these cases is such a procedure required. Hydrocephalus, for example, which might complicate a vaginal delivery, can be relieved by drawing fluid from the brain without injuring the fetus. Dr. Harlan R. Giles, a professor of "high-risk" obstetrics at the Medical College of Pennsylvania, who has performed many abortions, has testified under oath, "I cannot think of a fetal condition or malformation, no matter how severe, that actually causes harm, or risk to the mother of continuing the pregnancy." Dr. James Jones, chairman of Obstetrics and Gynecology at New York Medical College, has stated that he "can't think of any situation where you have to carry out a specific, direct attack on the fetus." Indeed, another group of five women, who were carrying children with conditions similar to those of the group who testified, yet allowed the children to be born, have offered to meet with us and provide their testimony -- which, from what I have read so far, is also moving.

Mr./Ms. President, for the sake of morality, decency, and, not least, the reproductive health of American women, I urge you to join Congress in banning this barbaric practice.

Mr./Ms. President:

Veto this bill. It is intended only to embarrass you. If you sign it you will infuriate your supporters. If you veto it you will incur the wrath of the Catholic Church. The bill's architects refused to grant your request to include an exception for the health of the mother because then you would have signed the bill -- and they would have lost a wedge issue.

Not surprisingly, politics drives this issue. To opponents of abortion rights, late-term abortions of the kind to be banned by this bill are a superb propaganda tool that allows them to indulge in a pornography of mutilated flesh, to insinuate the idea that this grisly procedure is similar to other types of abortions. They see this bill as the beginning of a process that will end with a ban on all abortions -- achieved either directly (by showing footage of broken fetuses) or indirectly (through narrowing the geographic scope of where one can obtain an abortion). Already, 84 percent of U.S. counties have no abortion providers. "Last year", the New York Times editorialized recently, "legislators in 22 new states introduced bills for mandating waiting periods. Twenty-eight states require women under 18 to notify or get the consent of one or both parents. . . . Thirty-seven states deny Medicaid coverage for abortions even when necessary to preserve the woman's health." This slow, state-by-state hollowing out of the right to choose has been given a mighty push by the propaganda surrounding this bill. And let's be clear -- the propaganda of innocent flesh is also aimed at intimidating medical professionals in rural areas, where, to quote from the Times editorial, "few doctors are determined enough to risk their practices and even their lives to perform abortions."

That is the real aim of the bill, Mr./Ms. President: to create a climate of shame and fear.

Should Maureen Britelle, a woman I spoke with to learn about the issue first-hand, feel ashamed for receiving the kind of late-term abortion this bill would ban?

The early sonograms of the baby she was carrying were normal. She and her husband, a member of the active-duty military, were delighted. They were pro-life Catholics. This would be their second child. Her name would be Dahlia. However, a second sonogram taken at the start of the third trimester showed that something had gone wrong; Dahlia, the doctors finally told Maureen, had not developed a brain. She would die at birth.

Yet every time Maureen moved, she felt her baby moving with her -- surely the doctors were wrong. She could feel Dahlia!

Her torment can only be imagined.

Maureen Britelle says that she feared for her sanity. Her doctors feared for her health. If the 1996 bill banning late-term abortions had been law, Maureen Britelle would not have been able to have an abortion.

In a full-page ad in The Washington Post the Catholic hierarchy said that allowing a health exemption in the new bill would permit women to get abortions who were "emotionally upset" at or who felt their careers threatened by being pregnant. Maureen Britelle was certainly emotionally upset: she was carrying a brainless baby. But to say that she was worried about her career is a vicious caricature that libels her and the 500 to 600 decent women a year whose almost-exclusively wanted pregnancies (the women who didn't want a baby would have had abortions long before) went terribly wrong in the third trimester.

Stand with these women, Mr./Ms. President.