The Netherlands is rightly condemned internationally for permitting infanticide. It has gotten so bad there that two separate studies published in the British medical journal Lancet reported that 8 percent of all Dutch infants who die each year are killed by doctors—between 80 and 100 per year.
Unfortunately, the United States has its own problem with infanticide; “partial birth abortion,” a procedure that ends the lives of anywhere between 640-5000 viable or near viable fetuses each year. (Source: United States Supreme Court, Stenberg v. Carhart.)
“Partial Birth Abortion” is the popular term for “intact dilation and extraction” (D&X)—an act that is so violent and brutal it was rightly castigated by the late pro-choice Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan as “infanticide.” In a partial birth abortion, a pregnant woman late in the second (starting at about 20 weeks) or during her third trimester of gestation, is given drugs to cause her cervix to prematurely dilate. After several days, the partial birth abortionist reaches through the birth canal into the mother’s womb, turns the unborn child to the breach position, and pulls most of the baby through the vagina, leaving only the head still within the mother’s body.
At this point, the baby is usually alive and only a few inches short of being born (hence the name, “partial birth abortion”). The abortionist then takes scissors, breaks through the child’s skull at the back of the head, inserts a catheter, and suctions out the brain. This collapses the skull so the head can be the rest of the way out of the woman’s body. It is a sickening act of killing.
Supporters of partial birth abortion complain that the procedure is misnamed. In a sense they are right, but not for the reasons about which they complain. A D&X is often not an abortion at all: it is a delivery. Williams Obstetrics, a premier medical textbook, defines abortion as occurring prior to the 20th week. (Some other medical texts extend that time to the 24th week.) Since most partial birth abortions occur after the 20th week, the act is, quite literally, an induced, incomplete delivery and killing of a living baby, i.e., infanticide.
Some abortion rights absolutists have defended PBA by claiming, for example, that it is rarely used, and when performed, it is primarily to save the life of the mother. But Congressional testimony over the years disclosed a far different story:
- Only a miniscule number of partial birth abortions are undertaken for purely medical reasons;
- Most of the fetuses/unborn babies killed by having their brains sucked out are healthy;
- Most of the mothers are not endangered by their pregnancies with approximately 80 percent of partial birth abortions being purely elective.
- The fetus is usually alive when the partial birth abortion takes place. [Source: Diane M. Gianelli, “Outlawing Abortion Method,” American Medical News, November 20, 1998];
- At 20 weeks or higher gestation period, the unborn child may feel the pain of being killed; [Source: National Conference of Catholic Bishops, “True to Life,” citing medical studies published in the New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet, and the British Medical Journal, August 28, 1998.]
- The American Medical Association, found that “there does not appear to be any identical situation in which intact D&X is the only appropriate procedure to induce abortion.” [Source: American Medical Association Report of the Board of Trustees, “Partial Birth Abortion Ban,” April 1997.]
Despite these horrible facts, in 2000, the United States Supreme Court overturned Nebraska’s ban on PBA in a case called Stenberg v. Carhart. It wasn’t as if the Court was unaware of the gruesome and cruel nature of the procedure. Indeed, the Court’s majority ruling acknowledged that the description of PBA is “horrifying.” Yet, despite the blood-curdling nature of PBA, the Court ruled that the Nebraska’s law was unconstitutional because it did not contain an exception permitting PBA to protect the “health” of the mother—which would mean no real ban at all since other court rulings have defined “health” very broadly in the abortion context to even include emotional wellbeing.
If PBA proponents thought that Stenberg would make the partial birth abortion controversy go away, they were woefully mistaken. Every once in a while an issue comes along in which the facts are so unequivocal, the truth so stark, the morality so clearly defined, that political advocacy about it cannot be suppressed.
Thus, in 2003, Congress outlawed partial birth abortion in a strong bi-partisan vote in which many pro-choice advocates (including Senator Hillary Clinton) supported the ban. Moreover, the law formally declared, based on expert testimony, that such an abortion could never be necessary to preserve health.
Predictably (and necessarily), lower federal courts overturned the federal law, following the binding Stenberg precedent. But the Supreme Court has now agreed to hear the case. Oral argument will be heard next fall with a decision expected about one year from now.
Opponents of PBA are optimistic. Stenberg was a 5-4 ruling, with now retired Justice Sandra Day O’Conner providing the swing vote against a ban. With the recent elevation of new Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr., many PBA opponents hope that the center of gravity of the court will have swung in favor of the federal law.
Still, predictions of outcome are risky. Both Justice Alito and newly elevated Chief Justice John Roberts are unknown quantities. The Court could rule that abortion legislation belongs at the state level, and thus overturn the federal law on the basis of federalism. Or, Justice Kennedy, who voted in the minority in Stenberg, could for some reason, swing the other way.
Whatever happens in the Supreme Court, democracy will eventually prevail. With seventy-five percent of Americans in a recent poll supporting a ban on partial birth abortion, agitation to outlaw this obscene procedure will never cease until it is permanently outlawed throughout the United States. The PBA case will not be heard until next fall. That means the decision should come out about a year from now.
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