Category: Late Term Abortions

Warren Hern, late term abortionist, on the abortions he performs. He does abortions up to 32 weeks and sometimes beyond at his clinic in Boulder:

“The generally accepted point of level viability is around 24-26 weeks. But you can’t take a given point in fetal development and apply that 100 percent of the time. It just doesn’t happen that way. If you look at premature deliveries and survival percentages at different weeks of gestation, you’ll get 24-week fetuses with some survival rate. The fact that you get some survivors demonstrates the difficulty in defining a point. ….

I don’t know that there is a typical second-trimester abortion. But if you look at the spectrum of abortions (most women are between the ages of 19 and 29) they tend to be younger. Some are older. The typical thing that happens with older women is that they never realize they were pregnant because they were continuing to bleed during the pregnancy. The other thing we see with older women is fetal malformations or Down’s Syndrome. These are being diagnosed much earlier now than they used to be. We’re seeing a lot of genetic diagnoses with ultrasound and amniocentesis at 17-18 weeks instead of 22-24 weeks. With the teenagers, anybody who has ever worked with or had teenagers can appreciate how unpredictable they can be at times. They have adult bodies, but a lot of times they don’t have adult minds. So their reaction to problems tends to get much more emotional than an adult’s might be.

It’s a question of maturity. So even though they may have been educated about all kinds of issues in reproductive health, when a teenager becomes pregnant, depending up on her relationship with her family, the amount of peer support she has–every one is a highly-individual case–sometimes they delay until they can no longer contain their problem and it finally comes out. Sometimes it’s money: It takes them a while to get the money. Sometimes its just denial….”

Discharging the Committee on the Judiciary from Further Consideration Of the President’s Veto of HR 1833, Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 1995 Can be found here.

So we see there are various reasons why late term abortions can be performed, and its interesting he did not cite a single case where abortion was needed to preserve a woman’s life or health. Does a baby with down syndrome really deserve to die?

This is what Dr. Hern does to babies at 23 weeks:

 

Below: ultrasound of baby between 22 and 24 weeks

Below: pieces of baby aborted at 20 weeks

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“Accurate figures on 2^nd and 3^rd trimester abortions are elusive because A number of states don’t require doctors to report abortion statistics. For example, one third of all abortions are said to occur in California, but the state has no reporting requirements.”

Diane Gianelli, commenting on her article which discussed the number of 3^rd trimester abortions done in America

Nat Hentoff “It’s Just Too Late: 3^rd Trimester Abortions Are an Outrage and an Insult to the Human Race” Pittsburg Post – Gazette July 27, 1993

above: 2nd trimester

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Pro-choicers argue that women who have late-term abortions are all carrying wanted pregnancies until they discover that their babies have horrible disabilities and that they “must” abort. However, late-term abortionists have admitted that many of their patients have no health problems and are carrying healthy babies. Former clinic workers have also revealed this. They did not know they were pregnant right difficulty making arrangements. Pro-choice author Mary Pipes  explains why some women do not realize they are pregnant until many months have passed.

“Women who have irregular periods – because they have only recently begun to menstruate or are approaching the menopause or who have irregular or long cycles – may not receive any indication that they are pregnant for some time because they do not expect to menstruate on a particular day. Furthermore some of the symptoms of pregnancy, such as swollen breasts, irritability, abdominal pain and tiredness, are very similar to premenstrual syndrome (PMS), and we may often think that we are about to start bleeding… It is possible that bleeding may occur and be confused with a period. Although this bleeding is usually short, if it is unaccompanied by any other symptoms we can be unaware of having conceived for several months.”

Mary Pipes Understanding Abortion (London: The Women’s Press, 1998) 30 – 31 

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“The July 5, 1993 edition of The American Medical News writes that he [Dr. James MacMahon] does abortions “through all 40 weeks of pregnancy.” In 1995, he informed the House Judiciary Committee in writing that he performed such abortions during the third trimester on babies who had no “flaw” at all for reasons such as the mother’s youth or for “psychiatric” problems. McMahon further admitted that one-fourth of the babies he aborted well into the seventh month had no flaws whatsoever. McMahon said that of the approximately 2000 partial birth abortions he performed, only 9% were performed for “maternal [health] indications” and then the most common reason was “depression.”

Raymond Dennehy “Anti-Abortionist at  Large: How to Argue Intelligently About Abortion and Live to Tell About It” (St. Victoria, B.C., Canada: Trafford, 2002) p 149

Dr. MacMahon is now deceased.

Read an eyewitness’s description of partial birth abortion 

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From an interview with late term abortionist Dr. Susan Robinson on what she does with the babies she aborts in the third trimester:

Robinson:

“With fetal anomaly patients,[who are aborting because the baby is handicapped] we ask them right up front if they plan to hold their baby after it’s born. These patients, their emotional needs are so different from the ones who are looking at their pregnancy as an absolute disaster, who are just thinking, “Get it out of me, please, please, please.” Those patients—the maternal indications patients—they are not relating to their fetus as a baby, they’re relating to it as a problem.

But with a fetal indications patient—if she refers to it as her baby, I’ll refer to it as her baby. If she’s named the baby, I’ll use the baby’s name too. I would say that most of these patients do decide to see and hold their baby, although many of them have a hard time dealing with the idea at first. We’ll take remembrance photographs, we’ll give them a teddy bear, the footprints… I don’t want them to go home from the procedure with absolutely nothing to remember and honor the baby, and its birth.”

Interviewer:

Wow. You’ll say “birth”?

Robinson:

Yes. I try to mirror what will be the most consoling to the patient. In general, these patients—fetal indications—do talk about giving birth, so I’ll say that as well.

Interviewer:

To simultaneously sustain these ideas—that you desperately loved and wanted this baby that’s here in your arms, and also that you just committed yourself to ending its life—it’s one of the most complicated emotional situations I can imagine. In these cases—I am sorry for this macabre question—the baby is dead, right? They never meet their baby alive?

Robinson says that yes, indeed, the baby is dead.

Jia Tolentino “Interview with Dr. Susan Robinson, One of the Last Four Doctors in America to Openly Provide Third-Trimester Abortions” The Hairpin Sept 20, 2013

 

 

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Dr. Rose R  Middleman, medical director of Pittsburgh Planned Parenthood clinic:

“It’s extremely rare, if nonexistent, for a physician to have a medical reason to abort a woman in the 7^th or 8^th month.”

“Doctor Refutes Abortion Claim” Reading Eagle June 14, 1972

If it was rare in 1972, one can only wonder how rare it is now with all the medical advances that have taken place since then.

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