Partial Birth Abortion: Compassion or Execution
...writes. "Scientific evidence suggests that women considering abortion can be assured that fetuses do not experience pain in the way that those who oppose abortion claim (qtd. in “Can a Fetus Feel Pain?”). Pro-life supporters argue that partial birth abortion is done up to 4,000 times a year, and is usually used in situations that aren’t life threatening. In 1993, the American Medical News-- the representative newspaper of the AMA-- presented a tape-recorded interview with Dr. Haskell, an abortionist, involving this particular abortion process, in which he said: “And I'll be quite frank: most of my abortions are elective in that 20-24 week range. . . . In my particular case, probably 20% [of these procedures] are for genetic reasons. And the other 80% are purely elective” (Haskell 1993). Pro-lifers believe that the fetus is not just tissue, but a living breathing human being that can feel pain. By 20 weeks, the earliest an abortionist will do an Intact D&X, the infant has a regular schedule of sleeping, turning, sucking, and kicking, and all of his/her organs are completely formed (“Second Trimester”). Dr. Norig Ellison states that misinformation is spread about the fact that anesthesia given to the mother kills the fetus before the partial birth abortion is performed. He claims that “[this has] absolutely no basis in scientific fact,” and is “misleading and potentially dangerous” (qtd. in “How Medical Misinformation…” ). Medical experts have confirmed that fetus’ of that age can experience pain. The selected head of the Medical Research Council at Edinburgh University in the United Kingdom said that a fetus was utterly conscious of pain by 24 weeks and conceivably as early as 20 weeks. That is earlier than the previously accepted 26 weeks (Beaucar 2001). Putting these claims together, one could come to the conclusion that if the anesthesia has little effect on the infant, it will be in excruciating pain before it is killed. There are benefits and harmful effects to an Intact Dilation and Extraction. According to Dr. Martin Haskell, who has executed more than 1,000 partial-birth abortions, the benefits of partial birth abortion are that the process is "a quick, surgical outpatient method that can be performed on a scheduled basis under local anesthesia” (Haskell 1992). It is also less traumatic to the mother than say, Intact Dilation and Evacuation, where the baby is torn apart limb-by-limb. The harmful consequences are also definitely something to consider. According to Abortionfacts.com, the risk of breast cancer is greatly increased due to the fact that your body produces more estrogen when you become pregnant. This in turn makes the cells in your breast increase in the first half of your pregnancy. In the second half of your pregnancy your body produces different hormones to stop the previous growth of the cells caused by the rapid increase of estrogen. Without this second half of the pregnancy to shut these hormones off they leave your breast susceptible to cancer (qtd. in “How Does an Abortion Increase…”). In the past decade, the controversial issue of partial birth abortion has reached our courtrooms. One of the reasons it is hard to make the procedure ethically right is that when an infant’s head sometimes slips out during an Intact D&X, the infant has full legal rights as a U.S. citizen. Yet the abortionist will still perform the abortion. The abortion is now dancing the fine line between abortion and infanticide (Sprang and Neerhof, 1998). The contentious event of Intact Dilation and Extraction finally reached Congress in 1996. The Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act was presented before the House of Representatives and the Senate, at which time Brenda Shafer, R.N. testified: I stood at the doctor’s side and watched him perform a partial-birth abortion on a woman who was six months pregnant. The baby’s heartbeat was clearly visible on the ultrasound screen. The doctor delivered the ba...