Late-Term Abortions Get New Scrutiny

The Washington Post reports that dilation-and-extraction fetal-termination procedures (late-term abortions) have come under increased scrutiny following the death of George Tiller. The Wikipedia entry, clinical as it may be, provides a grisly description of the operation: "Forceps are inserted into the uterus through the vagina and used to separate the fetus into pieces, which are removed one at a time." I truly shudder at the thought.

Jill Stanek writes on the Post article:

The Washington Post has an article on late-term abortions which basically allows Warren Hern, Leroy Carhart and the National Abortion Federation's Vicky Saporta to make a number of unsubstantiated claims about the women who come to them for post-viability abortions and the only response is a couple of short quotes from Operation Rescue.

Why couldn't the Post find a pro-life doctor who specializes in helping women who want to carry their children with fetal anomalies to term?

Well, they don't want to, naturally.

But what really caught my attention on this was a morally repugnant entry I found today at Edge of the American West: "Four Months, Three Weeks, and Two Days of Poor Arguments."

The author, Dana, is really irked by all the focus on late-term abortions. So, with reference to the chart above, she provides this analysis:

I have little to say on the murder of Dr. Tiller than hasn’t been covered adequately elsewhere (e.g.). But two persistent points have been getting on my nerves regarding late-term abortion in which Dr. Tiller had specialized. So let’s have some data.

1) The focus on late-term abortion, especially the straw-fetus of frivolous late-term abortion. The typical discussion runs as follows: a very serious person argues that while he’s personally comfortable with first trimester abortion, the thought of a woman wandering in and deciding that she doesn’t want her baby in week 35 of a pregnancy is horrifying. (e.g., makes him want to puke.) And let’s accept for the sake of argument that it is horrifying.* What can the pro-choice advocate say?

First, that late-term abortions are really, really rare. Here’s a chart from the Guttmacher Institute ....

The full document is here. The chart shows percentage of abortions by week of gestation. Note that the vast majority are in the first trimester, and over half are before 9 weeks. (The answer to “Abortion stops a beating heart” should be “Well, about that…”; the heart isn’t beating before five weeks.)

But let’s look at the late-term abortions. Only 1.1% are after more than 21 weeks. 21 weeks is about two weeks shy of the lower-end of viability. 21 weeks is still in the second trimester. We can safely assume that the number of abortions in the third trimester is even smaller, especially because abortion after 24 weeks is generally not permitted by law except in cases of danger to the health of the mother and the fetus.

Here's the link. If you're up to it, keep reading Dana's (morally bankrupt) justification for baby killing.

The basic point for Dana is that (1) dilation and extraction is "exceedingly" rare, and (2) the procedure, "We can safely assume," is necessitated by "fetal abnormalities," with Down Syndrome mentioned as the primary example.

Well, I doubt Dana's been to The Upside of Downs homepage. Aborting a Downs child is destroying a potential life. And for what? Choice? Convenience?

But more than that, let's "safely assume" that all of these abortions were purported "fetal abnormalities," or were deemed medically necessary to "save" the life of the mother.

Hello? The numbers are still staggering!

A 2008 report cited 1.2 million pregnancies that were aborted in 2005. According to the chart above, 1.1 percent of pregnancies were terminated after 24 weeks. As Dana acknowledges, that would leave a total of roughly 13,000 potential children destroyed in the maw of the pro-choice killing machine.

And the brutal truth is that untold numbers of late-term abortions, many performed by George Tiller himself, are simply "second-thought" terminations. Women have decided past the second trimester that they don't want the baby. What to do? Look up Tiller the Killer, of course.

If you check the state report, "Abortions in Kansas: Preliminary Reports," it turns out that "the majority of late-term abortions are purely elective."

So, back to Dana's query, "What can the pro-choice advocate say?"

They can't say anything. Choose abortion and you're going to kill a baby, plain and simple. Maybe there's some extreme case for a Solomonic judgment to save the life of the mother. And I don't think anyone, any decent, moral person, would sleep well even contemplating such a choice. The fact is that fetal brain development begins within 14 days of conception. That is, the miracle of life begins immediately. The relative moral importance of the stage of the pregnancy is really a matter of leftist propaganda. See, for example, "Miracle of Life: The Action-Packed Days of Unborn Babies."

The ugly fact is that the pro-choice movement is an extremist death cult. The "rights" of women trump moral considerations on the beauty of life. Leftists just want to have their "Happy Abortion Stories." (Or, "they want to kill that baby.")

What's most sickening, ultimately, is how the left has exploited the killing of George Tiller. Perhaps in this man's death, radical leftists can revive a movement that has continued to lose public support in recent years.