I could almost hug you, Kevin, for your statement of fact. Too bad you have garlic breath.
By the sixteenth week, the alive baby is becoming more strongly held together so that the baby may be grasped with forceps and turned for breach delivery (a leg or arm does occasionally come off during this step in the execution, but if the abortionists can persuade a female to wait but a two or three week period, the grasping, crushing and yanking will not as likely tear off limbs).
At twenty weeks, the alive child is but two to five weeks from having lungs developed sufficiently to sustain life in the air world (that would be a baby aged 24 to 26 weeks, still 16 weeks from normal delivery date). There isn't a known emergency at that age in a child's life when his or her existence is such a threat that killing that child using a two to three day methodology is the only way to save the mother. And anyone trying to pose such an argument is a liar and is a defender of the indefensible.
Partial birth abortion begins with a technique to open and spread the cervical os sufficiently to allow the killer access to the little one alive and dependant in the womb. This 'spreading' is a slow process with most females (that's why it takes two to three days with most females who are nulliparous), but it can happen 'too quickly' causing a delivery emergency before the final day for killing.
Partial birth abortion was 'invented' for the convenience of the serial killers making their blood money off of killing innocent, vulnerable, voiceless individual human beings. PERIOD. That so many democrats continue to defend this indefensible infanticide methodology ought to begin to sink in with average Americans, as they awaken to understand what this ban is seeking to stop and WHY! The process of fighting this particular battle has allowed untold numbers of Americans to come awake to the ghoulish truth of abortion and those who would defend it for political empowerment. I can personally attest to more than a dozen people with whom I've been able to discuss this ghoulish kill method ... and every one of them, leaving out not a single one, has been astonished that people like Boxer, Harkin, clinton, and Feintstein continue to defend this evil. The opened hearts and minds during the past eight years have been worth every minute of the struggle to accomplish this small, seemingly insignificant goal of banning this particular killing method.
Incidentally, has anyone ever approximated the number of partial birth slaughters that would have been prevented had sinkEmperor signed the first ban that came to his desk? ... The number is larger, substantially larger than the number of people in my town of 50,000 residents!