Category: Late Term Abortions

Recently a Washington Post article stated

“All the late-term abortions Carhart has done in Germantown have involved fetuses with anomalies, he said.”

Dr. Grace Morrison, of the Vitae Foundation, states,

“I have been protesting at Carhart’s on Mondays since December 6.  During this time, I have had the opportunity to speak with over twenty-five mothers who were there seeking late-term abortions.

“There has only been ONE case of a mother seeking a late-term abortion because of a poor prenatal diagnosis.  The other mothers were reportedly there because, even at this advanced stage in their pregnancy, they decided that the baby was an inconvenience.

“One mother, Kiesha, who came to Carhart’s for a late-term abortion decided to save her baby.  She just gave birth to a beautiful, healthy baby girl.”

“Late-term Abortion Provider Caught Lying in ‘Washington Post’ Front Page News Article Christian Newswire July 28, 2011

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Rep Charles  T. Canady said in testimony on the partial-birth abortion ban (Discharging the Committee on the Judiciary from Further Consideration Of the President’s Veto of HR 1833, Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 1995) documented on September 9, 1996 Capital Words, A Project of the Sunlight Foundation volume 142 , number 130 (found here)

“Another abortionist, Dr. James McMahon, who performed partial-birth abortions in the third trimester on five women who appeared with President Clinton at his April 15 veto event, submitted to Congress a detailed breakdown of a series of over 2,000 partial-birth abortions. He classified only 9 percent as involving maternal health indications, of which the most common was depression. Other health reasons included spousal drug exposure and the youth of the mother. That is what they are talking about when they talk about health.

Another 56 percent of these abortions were for fetal flaws, but these included a great many nonlethal disorders such as cleft lip and Down’s syndrome.

Most strikingly, Dr. McMahon did not list reasons, not even depression or cleft lip, for more than one-third of the partial-birth abortions he performed. “

While this information applies to partial-birth abortions, which are preformed late in pregnancy (usually at or beyond the latter part of the second trimester) the statistics hold true for all late-term abortions – most are not done for dire medical reasons. For more information on late-term abortions, the reasons they are done, and how the laws of different states deal with them, go here.

To see pictures of the remains of babies aborted late-term, go here.

 

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Anne Walshe is an abortion clinic administrator whose clinic performs 16,000 abortions a year. Half these abortions are late-term.

Late-Term abortions are controversial even among pro-choice people. Once an unborn baby can live outside his mother’s womb, most people are very uncomfortable about aborting him. Unborn babies have survived being born prematurely as young as 21 weeks, and viability  (the time when unborn baby is considered able to live independently of the mother) is generally accepted to be at 24 weeks. However, abortion is legal even after this point. Abortion in the second trimester, and even in the third, can be practiced throughout the United States and other countries. Roe versus Wade legalized abortion through all nine months of pregnancy while allowing states to enact restrictions on late-term abortion as long as a woman’s health was not endangered by the pregnancy. However, the court defined health very broadly, to include mental and emotional health. This means that, essentially, there are no legal barriers to prevent a woman from getting a third trimester abortion anywhere in the country, even in states that have laws on the books against them. All she has to do is maintain that the abortion is necessary to preserve her mental health, and there was no legal way to prevent her from killing her third trimester unborn baby.

Anne Walshe defends the women who come in to her clinic to abort their babies in the second and third trimester. She says:

 “What’s the difference? Abortion is abortion. The nice folks who are debating this, who want to draw the line and put a limit on gestational age, will just be putting a restriction on poor women. Women who want abortions get them. It will just force the poor women back to unacceptable remedies.”

Ultimately, Walshe is correct about there not being much difference between an early abortion are late abortion. Each one ends the life of an individual in the womb. The unborn baby at three weeks is just as alive as the unborn baby at three months, which is just alive is the unborn baby nine months, which is, in turn, just as alive as the infant that has been born. It is the same child in different stages of development – whether it is one day old, one month old, or one-year-old, is the same individual who has been conceived and whose life is ended violently in an abortion.

Source: LA Times, The Abortions of Last Resort, 1-7-1990

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Here is a more detailed breakdown of the reasons women sought late-term abortions, cited in Perspectives of Sexual and Reproductive Health:

45% had trouble finding abortion provider

37% unsure of date of last menstrual period

68% had no pregnancy symptoms

58% Didn’t comfirm pregnancy until in second trimester

30% had difficulty deciding on abortion

31% had previous second trimester abortion

Did not cite a single case of fetal abnormality

“Second Trimester Abortion: Logistics and Lack of Symptoms are Factors” Perspectives of Sexual and Reproductive Health Volume 38 No 2, June 2006

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According to Abby Johnson, former director of a Planned Parenthood clinic, late term abortions are usually done for elective, rather than medical reasons.

“…it is false to say the women who choose late term abortion do so because of medical reasons. We refered hundreds of women to abort their babies after 24 weeks…not ONE was for medical reasons.”

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Clinic worker Luhra Tivis, who worked for notorious late term abortionist Dr. George Tiller, has this to say of his practice:

“From May to November 1988, I worked for an abortionist. He specializes in third trimester killings. I witnessed evidence of the brutal, cold blooded murder of over 600 viable, healthy babies at seven, eight and nine months gestation. A very, very few of these babies, less than 2%, were handicapped…I thought I was pro-choice and I was glad to be working in an abortion clinic. I thought I was helping provide a noble service to women in crisis….I was instructed to falsify the age of the babies in medical records. I was required to lie to the mothers over the phone, as they scheduled their appointments, and to tell them that they were not ‘too far along’ Then I had to note, in the records that Dr. Tiller’s needle had successfully pierced the walls of the baby’s heart, injecting the poison what brought death…one day, Dr. Tiller came up the stairs from the basement, where the mothers were in labor. He was carrying a large cardboard box, and ducked into the employees only area of the office so that he wouldn’t have to walk through the waiting room. He passed behind my desk as I sat working on the computer, and he turned the corner to go around a short hall. He called out for me to come and help him. the box was so big and heavy in his arms that he couldn’t get the key into the lock. So I unlocked the door for him, and , pushing the door open, I saw very clearly the gleaming metal of the crematorium- a full sized crematorium, just like the one’s used in funeral homes. I went back to my computer. I could hear Dr. Tiller firing up the gas oven. A few minutes later I could smell burning human flesh. Mine was the agony of a participant, however reluctant, in the act of prenatal infanticide.”

Luhra Tivis “Where is the Real Violence?” Celebrate Life. Sept/Oct 1994

Note: this article was written before the murder of Dr. Tiller. Violence against abortion providers is morally wrong and hypocritical. The owners of clinic quotes vehemently oppose such actions.

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It is the official position of NARAL and other pro-choice groups that these abortions are extremely rare and are only done for dire medical reasons. However, doctors who perform these abortions have admitted otherwise. See the following quotes:

From NARAL president Kate Michelman

“But late-term abortions are only used under the most compelling of circumstances–to protect a woman’s health or life or because of grave fetal abnormality.”

Washington Times, June 16, 1996

And again, elsewhere

The fact is that late term abortions are exceedingly rare. They are performed only when necessary to preserve a woman’s health or life, or when a woman is carrying a fetus with lethal anomalies, many of which would die soon after birth. Again, the fact is that these abortions, these terminations are compelled by life and, life and health reasons and grave fetal abnormalities.”

NARAL News Conference Nov 7, 1995

Occasionally, a pro-choice activist will have a moment of honesty. Here, head of the National Coalition of Abortion Providers admits the following about (D&X) partial birth abortions, performed late in pregnancy:

“When you’re a doctor who does these abortions and the leaders of your movement appear before Congress and go on network news and say these procedures are done in only the most tragic of circumstances, how do you think that makes you feel? You know they’re primarily done on healthy women and healthy fetuses, and it makes you feel like a dirty little abortionist with a dirty little secret. I think we should tell them the truth, let them vote and move on. In the vast majority of cases, the procedure is performed on a healthy mother with a healthy fetus that is 20 weeks or more along. The abortion-rights folks know it, the anti-abortion folks know it, and so, probably, does everyone else.”

Ron Fitzsimmons, Executive Director of the National Coalition of Abortion Providers (NCAP), American Medical News, March 3, 1997.

see the other quotes in this section by doctors who perform late-term abortions and testify that the majority are for elective, nonmedical reasons

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Here is a quote by the late famous late-term abortionist Dr. George Tiller:

“We have some experience with late terminations; about 10,000 patients between 24 and 36 weeks and something like 800 fetal anomalies between 26 and 36 weeks in the past 5 years.”

Speech to the “National Abortion Federation” April 2-4 New Orleans, LA

(Note: Only 800 out of 10,000 were for fetal “anomalies”)

Picture: 28 Weeks

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Abortion provider Dr. Martin Haskell is quoted saying that 80% of his procedures are elective (i.e. on healthy mothers with healthy babies) He also denies the pro-choice claim that most or all fetuses in partial birth abortions are dead before the procedure.

Reporter: Let’s talk first about whether or not the fetus is dead beforehand…

Haskell: No, it’s really not…in my case, I would think probably about a third of those are definitely…dead before I actually start to remove the fetus. And probably the other two-thirds are not.

Reporter: Is the skull procedure also done to make sure that the fetus is dead so you’re not going to have the problem of a live birth?

Haskell: It’s immaterial. If you can’t get it out, you can’t get it out.

Reporter: I mean, you couldn’t dilate further? Or is that riskier?

Haskell: Well, you could dilate further over a period of days.

Reporter: Would that just make it…would it go from a 3-day procedure to a 4- or a 5?

Haskell: Exactly. The point here is to effect a safe legal abortion. I mean, you could say the same thing about the D&E [dialtion or dismemberment and extraction] procedure.

You know, why do you do the D&E procedure? Why do you crush the fetus up inside the womb? To kill it before you take it out? Well, that happens, yes. But that’s not why you do it.

You do it to get it out. I could do the same thing with a D&E procedure…But that’s not really the point. The point here is you’re attempting to do an abortion. And that’s the goal of your work, is to complete an abortion. Not to see how do I manipulate the situation so that I get a live birth instead.

Reporter: I wanted to make sure I have both you and (Dr.) McMahon saying ‘No’ then. That this is misinformation, these letters to the editor saying it’s only done when the baby’s already dead, in case of fetal demise and you have to do an autopsy. But some of them are saying they’re getting that information from NAF [National Abortion Federation]. Have you talked to Barbara Radford or anyone over there?

Haskell: Well, I had heard that they were giving that information, somebody over there might be giving information like that out. The people that staff the NAF office are not medical people. And many of them when I gave my paper, many of them came in, I learned later, to watch my paper because many of them have never seen an abortion performed of any kind.

Reporter: Did you also show a video when you did that?

Haskell: Yeah. I taped a procedure a couple of years ago, a very brief video, that simply showed the technique. The old story about a picture’s worth a thousand words.

Reporter: As National Right to Life will tell you.

Haskell: Afterwards they were just amazed. They just had no
idea. And here they’re rabid supporters of abortion. They work in the office there. And…some of them have never seen one performed…And I’ll be quite frank: most of my abortions are elective in that 20-24 week range…In my particular case, probably 20% are for genetic reasons. And the other 80% are purely elective…”

U.S. Congressional Record 1996 p H2919

Dr. Martin Haskell, explaining how his late-term abortion method is used to effect safe abortions, to American Medical News

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