From Benjamin Graber, abortionist, Pompano Beach, Florida:
16 week old unborn baby
“Although the procedure [partial birth abortion] is viewed as distasteful, alternative procedures are equally distasteful. Whether a 16-week fetus is delivered by dilatation and extraction (by which the fetus is dismembered within the uterus) or whether the fetus is delivered intact by decompressing the cranium, or whether the mother’s womb is injected with a substance that kills the fetus in utero, the outcome is the same for the fetus. The resulting complications to the mother from each procedure should be the question.”
.Palm Beach Post, “Opinion: Benjamin Graber, The Partial Birth Abortion Bill Sets Terrible Precedent” May 13, 1997
“… As you get into the second trimester, if we remove the pregnancy using forceps, and if a heartbeat is the measure of being alive, that happens all the time.”
Dr. Dennis Christensen, Madison Abortion Clinic, Wisconsin. From The New York Times; May 15, 1998; page A14
Note: The fetal heart starts beating at 18 –21 days after conception
Brief of Dr. Carhart et Al. in Stenberg vs Carhart:
After approximately 16 weeks gestation, the fetal head cannot typically be safely drawn through the woman’s cervix unless it is compressed. J.A. 296 (Stubblefield) …the physician either compresses the skull with forceps before pulling it into the vagina or removes the cranial contents.”
The affidavit of “Employee B,” a certified surgical technician employed at Midtown Hospital for a month and a half before resigning, describes Midtown’s patient care:
On April 18, 1998, at approximately 7:00 a.m., I witnessed a patient deliver an intact fetus in the toilet of a bathroom in the waiting room area. After expelling the baby and the afterbirth, the patient walked to the operating room because there were no wheelchairs. I opened the fetal sac so that the fetus could be weighed. The weight was approximately 3029 grams [over 6 pounds, 10 ounces]. It was a very big fetus. My impression is that at Midtown Hospital a procedure will be done at any gestational age as long as the patient has the money.
22 to 24 weeks sonogram, legal to abort in every state
“Complete Disregard” National Review November 23, 1998 p40
Abortionist Dr. Warren Hern, in his textbook on how to do abortions, describes the procedures a little more plainly. Here he describes a first trimester abortion. During the procedure:
“The physician will usually first notice a quantity of amniotic fluid, followed by placenta and fetal parts, which may be more or less identifiable.”
Warren Hern, M.D. Abortion Practice J.B. Lippenott Company 1984 p 114
Later he says:
“The procedure changes significantly at 21 weeks because fetal tissues become much more cohesive and difficult to dismember.”
p 154
And
“A long curved Mayo scissors may be necessary to decapitate and dismember the fetus.”
20 to 22 weeks
p 154
He also instructs:
“The aggregate fetal tissue is weighted, then the following fetal parts are measured, foot length, knee to heel length, and biparietal diameter”
Abortionist Dr. Crist discusses an abortion he performs on a young woman. This is what he says to her:
“Okay, Robin,” [abortionist] Crist says after administering anesthesia. “You’re going to feel some cramping sensations as I’m dilating your cervix.”
The paper states,
“He does this using a series of metal rods so he can get to the uterus, where the fetus is. The fetus is about6 inches long and weighs about four ounces. It has arms and legs and fingers and toes.”
Later in the article:
“Here’s an arm,” he says, beginning an inventory that he does after every procedure to make sure all of the fetus has been removed.
“This is the head. Here is part of the spine . . .
It’s all there. On to the next patient.”
A Chain of Tears: A Doctor and Abortion” St Petersburg Times June 3, 1990
14 weeks. Abortions in America can be done until birth in some states, and all through the second trimester in every state
“The first time I attended a late termination it was upsetting. I wouldn’t be human if I didn’t sometimes question what I was doing. But above all I believe that the woman must come first. In fact, I feel so strongly about this that when I was 20 weeks pregnant, I assisted in a [late] termination when all my colleagues refused on moral and religious grounds….
I don’t look at it as the taking away a life because embryos cannot sustain life outside the womb. If women could not have abortions, what would happen to the thousands of unwanted babies? “
Clinic Worker Pippa Jenkins
Ann Barrowclough “Abortion: This is What Our Nurses Really Think” Sunday Mirror August 18, 1996 p 16
