Late-term abortion a life and death debate

January 2008, Dr David Van Gend | THE claim that late-term abortion is done only in cases of lethal abnormality or to save the mother's life is demonstrably false. The truth is that most late abortions, which are 20 weeks of pregnancy, are done to entirely healthy babies of entirely healthy mothers, and by a method so cruel I am reluctant to describe it.

In many cases these are babies older than those in our hospital nurseries, who might have been born alive and adopted to loving parents, but were instead "terminated".

Dr Lachlan De Crespigny and Prof Julian Savulescu (Opinion 23/1) state that late abortion is done only "for major problems as a last resort", giving the example of a lethal heart abnormality in the fetus.

The medical data tells a different story. In Victoria, the most recent data is from the Health Department's 2005 survey of perinatal deaths. The majority of late abortions were for psychosocial reasons, not fetal abnormality.

2007

A Victory for Babies (and Humanity)

April 2007, Bill Muehlenberg | Last week the US Supreme Court voted by a 5-4 majority to uphold a ban on late-term abortions. On April 18 the Court decided to uphold the 2003 Partial-Birth Abortion Ban. Also known as D & X abortions, this method of abortion is as close as you can get to actual infanticide.

... Unfortunately most people do not know what takes place during this grizzly procedure. I have written elsewhere about this barbaric act of baby killing, but my words may not count for much. The words of someone who has been there and done that may carry more weight.

Thus I reprint here part of a testimony given on March 21, 1996 by a registered nurse, Brenda Pratt Shafer. She was speaking before a U.S. House of Representatives hearing on The Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act (HR 1833). Her words are so powerful and compelling that they deserve little or no commentary. Here is part of what the nurse said:

I am a registered nurse, licensed in the State of Ohio, with 14 years of experience. In 1993, I was employed by Kimberly Quality Care, a nursing agency in Dayton, Ohio. In September, 1993, Kimberly Quality Care asked me to accept assignment at the Women’s Medical Center, which is operated by Dr. Martin Haskell. I readily accepted the assignment because I was at that time very pro-choice. I had even told my teenage daughters that if one of them ever got pregnant at a young age, I would make them get an abortion. They disagreed with me on this, and one of them even wrote an essay for a high school class that mentioned how we differed on the issue.

So, because of the strong pro-choice views that I held at that time, I thought this assignment would be no problem for me.

But I was wrong. I stood at a doctor’s side as he performed the partial-birth abortion procedure - and what I saw is branded forever on my mind.

ABORTION: Five doctors and a dead baby

2007, Endeavour Forum Media Release | Timed to perfection in the week before Victoria’s recent state election, an eminent Melbourne obstetrician and gynaecologist made an emotive plea for the decriminalisation of abortion, reports

In an article, “A child is unborn” (Herald Sun, November 20, 2006), former head of ultrasound at Melbourne’s Royal Women’s Hospital, Dr Lachlan de Crespigny, appeared to endorse Victoria’s Steve Bracks Labor Government, which is reportedly committed to decriminalisation of abortion. (The Bracks Government was re-elected on November 25 for another four-year term). In his article, Dr de Crespigny makes several questionable assertions. His article refers to the termination six years ago - because the mother was threatening to commit suicide - of the life of a 31-weeks-gestation baby, suspected of “dwarfism”.

The termination caused considerable controversy, with investigations by the Royal Women’s Hospital (where the procedure occurred), the police, the coroner, the Medical Practitioners Board of Victoria, and Senator Julian McGauran, who took up the cause of the baby. Dr de Crespigny writes about the “persecution” of the abortionists and the depression of the mother.

Contrary to Dr de Crespigny’s assertion, this baby was born. However, it was ensured that she was born dead because potassium chloride was injected into her heart before labour was induced. The unfortunate mother had to give birth in the usual way, the only difference being that her baby was born dead.