Posted on 03/30/2004 3:17:48 PM PST by MegaSilver
NEW YORK -- A doctor testified Tuesday that the delivery of a largely intact fetus in a procedure threatened by a new law is sometimes preferred by women who are grieving the loss of a pregnancy and want to properly bury the fetus.
Amos Grunebaum, a specialist in maternal fetal medicine at New York Hospital, testified on the second day of simultaneous trials in New York, San Francisco and Lincoln, Neb., on the constitutionality of the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act.
Abortion rights advocates say the law signed by President Bush in November will endanger almost all second trimester abortions or 10 percent of the nation's 1.3 million annual abortions. The government says the law will end an "inhumane" act that causes pain to fetuses.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsday.com ...
I took out the spin.
bump.
The plaintiffs in the New York case include Dr. Timothy Johnson, chairman of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Michigan Health System.
U.S. District Judge Avern Cohn in Detroit has ordered the University of Michigan to give Johnson access to its records so that he could see if any abortions performed there fit the criteria in the government's inquiry. The university complied, but Johnson found no relevant records, the university said last week.
In testimony in New York, Grunebaum said more than 95 percent of the women he has treated who must give up their pregnancies in the second trimester "really, really, really wanted to have a baby."
He said doctors used to hide the fetus from women after an abortion before studies in the late 1970s and early 1980s showed that women grieved less after a failed pregnancy if they get to see the fetus.
"It is the same as any baby dying. People want to hold the fetus," he said, adding that he goes so far as to put a cap on the head of the fetus just as he would a newborn.
Meanwhile, in U.S. District Court in Lincoln, a doctor testified Tuesday that he would risk going to jail rather than obey a federal ban on abortion that is being challenged as unconstitutional.
"I'd probably continue" performing abortions, said Dr. William Fitzhugh of Richmond, Va. "I'd have to take my chances."
In his testimony, Grunebaum disagreed with some key findings by Congress as it developed the law over eight years.
He said Congress was wrong to suggest doctors sometimes kill the fetus by blindly forcing a sharp instrument into the base of the skull as it is being pulled out of a woman.
"I can see it. I can feel it. I'm aware of it," Grunebaum testified.
He disagreed with Congress' conclusion that certain abortions, performed as an intact fetus is pulled from a woman's body, never are necessary to preserve a woman's health and that it is a practice not embraced by the medical community.
He said it is practiced at hospitals across the country.
"If it was outside standard medical care, believe me, those hospitals would quickly forbid it," Grunebaum said.
The litigation in three courts centers on the ban of what lawmakers defined as "partial-birth" abortion and what doctors call "intact dilation and extraction" -- or D&X.
Opponents of the ban also argue that its language is vague and could be interpreted as covering more common, less controversial procedures, including "dilation and evacuation." Known as D&E, it is the most common method of second-trimester abortion. An estimated 140,000 D&Es take place in the United States annually.
On Monday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Sean H. Lane told U.S. District Judge Richard C. Casey in his opening statement that the procedure "blurs the line between live birth and abortion" and never is necessary to protect a woman's health.
A. Stephen Hut Jr., an attorney for abortion rights activists, argued that the law "in its stunning breadth would ... remove the range of abortion alternatives available to women in the second trimester" and threaten the health of women because it allows no exceptions.
Lane, the government lawyer, said doctors performing the abortions act as if they are assisting a live delivery, using the same terminology and techniques as obstetricians, just before they "end the life of a partially born fetus just inches from birth," often by suctioning brain tissue.
He said the law does not ban abortions in which the fetus is destroyed while it is still in the woman's body or when a plan to destroy it in the body accidentally results in a partially delivered fetus, "because there is no intent to take the steps prohibited by the Act."
In San Francisco, Maureen Paul, a chief medical officer for Planned Parenthood, testified Monday that she chooses to perform methods of abortion that violate the new law because they are among the safest options.
She testified that her "purpose in bringing the fetus out past the navel ... is to empty the uterus in the safest way possible." She said inserting a needle into the woman's uterus to kill the fetus before it is partially out of the body carries risks.
These people are sick bastards.
'pears to me that, while we have grown technologically in the interim, we've come a long way down morally.
I cannot even imagine that you could find a doctor who would perform an abortion, much less a "partial birth" abortion. I must wonder where the people who do these things come from. Sad.
This was serious testimony???
I know he's not kidding, but his answer is it's got to be OK because the hospitals permitted it to take place??? Puleeeze.
There are so many good comments on this thread, I didn't know which one to reply to!
I have read before of abortion clinics letting the mother hold the baby, if they want to. Quasi-religious ceremonies have been invented. They are trying to ease the psychological shock of this action to the mother's psyche. (Now that pro-lifers have pointed out that there is such an effect!).
Yes, it defies logic; but it is to keep intact the fabric of denial. "Yes, my little one, I love you; it just wasn't time, you see. It couldn't be now. Come again later, when I can handle it . . . " I read a poem to that effect by a co-ed after her abortion. Totally self-absorbed. Recognizing the need to mourn, even the need to love, admitting it is a baby . . . but justifying that it is not the right baby at the right time . . .
The line to justifying infanticide becomes more blurred and fuzzy, does it not?
The co-ed is fooling herself. IF she is able to have a baby later (abortion is not a picnic for the reproductive system, and many VDs result in infertility), it will be a different baby; she will still be the mother of this dead one, by her own choice; and some day will have to face that shattering reality . . .
When is a good time, anyway? I waddled around campus earning my doctorate during two complete pregnancies. I noticed, sadly, that I seemed to be the only pregnant student, of any age . . . I can remember stumbling through the library carrying heavy stacks of books, weak with nausea. Well, it didn't ruin my life, or my future . . . They are fooling themselves.
I love this one. It pretty much sums up the attitude I was trying to describe, but using many fewer words! I think we should characterize all these machinations of reason and logic as Alice in Abortionland! ;)
This is the first time that I can recall an abortionist using the word "kill" to describe the procedure.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.