An article in The National Review discusses the horror of partial-birth abortions and late-term abortion in general:
“The campaign against partial birth abortion has revealed that the public’s moral sentiments, if not always its moral reasoning, remain healthy. It has revealed something, too, about the politicians, the writers, the judges, who support abortion on demand. They have watched a baby, partly out of the womb, have her skull punctured and her brains sucked out. They have been asked, “Must even this be tolerated?” and they have looked at this grisly scene and answered “yes. Even this.” The logic of abortion is merciless.”
“Ruling Without Mercy” The National Review 6/28/00
Diagram of a partial birth abortion. Now the partial-birth abortions are illegal, abortions in the second trimester are either done by injecting poison into the womb or by D&E. A D&E diagram is below.
Seems that the horror of partial birth abortions is more from the viewer’s perspective than the fetus’s. If one wished to minimize the number of babies killed, the logical course of action would be to mandate that ALL abortions be performed as partial birth abortions, and perhaps force the mother to watch.
On a related note, lethal injection says something similar about how society deals with uncomfortable truths. The morally honest way of killing someone that deserves to die is by guillotine.