Main Entry: par•tial-birth abortion
Function: noun
: an abortion in the second or third trimester of pregnancy in which the death of the fetus is induced after it has passed partway through the birth canal -
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/mplusdictionary.html
The Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003 prohibits doctors from performing dilation and extraction (otherwise known as partial-birth) abortions. For a good description of what partial-birth abortions are, and of the procedure itself, I recommend reading this paper by Martin Haskell – scroll to page 3 on the electronic version:
http://www.house.gov/burton/RSC/hask...tructional.pdf - I do warn you, however, that the procedure is not the sort of thing you want to read about while eating diced tomatoes, for example.
A doctor is just about the most legitimate authority there is when it comes to the subject of abortions. Ob/gyns are particularly well-qualified to weigh in on the issue. With that said, take a look at the poll numbers found here:
http://www.memag.com/memag/article/a....jsp?id=116460 – You see that doctors of many different fields are strongly pro-choice, which certainly didn’t come as a surprise to me. Ob/gyns specifically want abortion to remain legal by 65% to 24% against. However, when these same women’s experts are asked for their views on partial-birth abortions, 33% of ob/gyns support the procedure versus 57% who oppose it. If it truly were the case that banning dilation and extraction put the lives of women at risk, 57% of ob/gyns would certainly not support making the procedure illegal.
It can be argued that banning partial birth abortions would just increase the number of people seeking abortions illegally. This is probably true, as at least some of the women who would have sought legal partial birth abortions would get them anyway. However, I don’t think it is a stretch to say that the total number of partial birth abortions performed in this country would decrease. As a consequence, we would see both an increase in women seeing abortions earlier in their pregnancies (an improvement, surely) and in women carrying their pregnancies to term.
During a partial birth abortion, a living fetus is partially removed from the uterus before it is killed in a rather disgusting method described in gristly detail in Haskell’s paper cited above. The reason I see this procedure as being wrong, whilst I am otherwise pro-choice, is that the fetus that is killed during that partial birth would, in a very large number of these cases, live, if it were completely removed from the birth canal (with skull intact, of course). If the fetus was completely removed from the mother and then had the same scissor/suction procedure performed on its skull, the doctor would rightly be charged with murder. It seems impossible to justify partial birth abortion without also justifying infanticide of the sort just described, as the only difference in the two scenarios is the location of the fetus. I strongly believe that killing viable fetuses is a very specific form of murder, and one that should be prohibited by federal law. Surely we can join together in opposing infanticide outside of the birth canal. Why do we disagree about infanticide within it?
What do I have to say about the fact that the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003 doesn’t have an exception to allow for the procedure to take place when the life of the mother is at risk, you ask? That’s pretty easy. It does.
I’ll let that two-word sentence sink in for a moment. Everything you’ve heard about there not being an exception to the ban in cases where the mother’s life is threatened is untrue. Here’s the relevant quote:
“(a) Any physician who, in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce, knowingly performs a partial-birth abortion and thereby kills a human fetus shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 2 years, or both. This subsection does not apply to a partial-birth abortion that is necessary to save the life of a mother whose life is endangered by a physical disorder, physical illness, or physical injury, including a life-endangering physical condition caused by or arising from the pregnancy itself. This subsection takes effect 1 day after the date of enactment of this chapter.” -
http://news.findlaw.com/hdocs/docs/abortion/2003s3.html
That’s right, folks: If the mother’s life is in danger, there is no punishment for performing a partial-birth abortion. Thus, the Act in question contains the one and only appropriate exception to the general rule that partial-birth abortions are not to be performed. I hope you will join with me in supporting this ban.
To conclude, partial birth abortions are performed exclusively on well-developed fetuses, a large number of which are viable human babies. While it is permissible to abort such a fetus if it is necessary to save the mother’s life, there are no other cases in which this form of infanticide is justifiable. If killing the baby outside of the mother is illegal, it should also be illegal to do so before the baby is born completely.