Posted on 03/30/2004 6:29:17 PM PST by Pharmboy
NEW YORK - At closely watched abortion trials across the country Tuesday, one doctor said he will risk breaking a new law banning some abortions and another said he fears he will be prosecuted for doing a form of abortion "I consider safer."
At trials in New York, San Francisco and Lincoln, Neb., lawyers for abortion rights advocates are putting doctors on the witness stand to support their claim that the law, signed by President Bush in November, is unconstitutional.
The doctors dispute many of the conclusions Congress reported reaching during eight years of research about a form of abortion that is carried out just as a live fetus is brought partially out of a woman's body.
Government lawyers say the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act prohibits an "inhumane and gruesome procedure" that causes pain to the fetus and is never necessary to protect the health of a woman because there are proven and safe alternatives.
The government maintains that the ban would affect as few as several thousand abortions annually, while lawyers for plaintiffs say 130,000 of the 1.3 million abortions performed annually in the United States may be affected.
The law is the first substantial limitation on abortion since the Supreme Court's landmark Roe v. Wade decision. The cases appear likely to reach the high court.
In Lincoln, Neb., Dr. William Fitzhugh, of Richmond, Va., testified Tuesday that he would "probably continue" performing abortions even if the law is upheld.
"I'd have to take my chances," he testified.
In New York, Dr. Amos Grunebaum said he had "fears of being prosecuted and having to face imprisonment" for a law so poorly written that even some miscarriages might violate it.
Grunebaum, a specialist in maternal fetal medicine at New York Hospital, said he fears that after 30 years of practicing medicine and after performing 1,000 abortions, "I would go to prison for doing a procedure I consider safer."
He said the law was so vague that it could outlaw virtually any type of abortion performed during the second trimester because the fetus is sometimes still alive as it is brought outside the body.
He said the process of pulling the fetus partially out of the woman's body and then puncturing the skull to collapse the soft tissue and squeeze the head out is often the safest method available.
Dr. LeRoy Carhart of Bellevue, Neb., enters the federal
building in Lincoln, Neb., Monday, March 29, 2004, where
the last of three trials challenging a federal ban
on so-called partial birth abortions is being heard.
The Lincoln trial is the result of a lawsuit filed by the
Center for Reproductive Rights on behalf of abortion provider
Carhart and three other doctors.
(AP Photo/Nati Harnik)
Besides, he said, many women request that the fetus be preserved as intact as possible for a proper burial or so full testing can be done to learn why the pregnancy failed.
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.
Don't be. That's like being ashamed to be a soldier because of the Waffen SS. These people are doctors like Colonel Sanders is a PETA activist.
This is the second time I have seen that comment made. A 'failed' pregnancy would result in a miscarriage. How does an abortion constitute a failed pregnancy?
Catholic Ping - let me know if you want on/off this list
For a long time, people in the pro-life movement thought that convincing mothers that the "blob of tissue" or "fetus" was actually a child would end abortion immediately. What they didn't realize is that most women, encouraged by society and the abortion lobby, know this and don't care.
They can now go down the block to the local feminist "healing service," where they are told that they really NEEDED to kill this child and that they should be just fine with the whole thing and that Goddette will understand and it will all be groovy.
You don't request a "proper burial" for something that was never alive or never a person in the first place. They know what they're doing.
It's none too safe for the baby.
Agreed. But people who murder (#2 definition for any legal positivists who may reply) will have no qualms about lying.
If they wanted to have the baby WHY WOULD IT STILL BE ALIVE and require an abortion?
The INTENDED PURPOSE is to have a DEAD baby.
Cordially,
In med school, I was a street demonstrating, committed lefty (late 60s). My first taste of Stalinism came, however, when I suggested to our activist med school group that visiting clinic patients (who had missed appointments) on the weekend was intrusive. They ignored me after that (and I was one of the leaders of the group).
Then, I had the abortion experience as described.
Then, I practiced upstate NY and as part of what I thought was community service, volunteered for Planned Parenthood (non-OB-Gyns like me just check for sexually transmitted diseases and wrote scripts for birth control pills).
Then, I went to my first (and last) PP awards dinner. I was shocked--these people acted like numbers of abortions reported was a source of PRIDE. It disgusted me, and I've been a right to lifer ever since. These people are SICK.
Peace and love to you.
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