Partial Birth Abortion ban Upheld, A step in the right Direction

The opinion piece below appeared in the New Hampshire Union Leader.

When I read it I felt compelled by the emotion I felt to post it. I was disturbed by it, and at the same time it felt good to know this procedure will no longer be performed.

Warning: The article contains a graphic description of a partial birth abortion from a nurse who witnessed it.

This description was used by Justice Anthony Kennedy when writing for the majority in the supreme court’s verdict to uphold the ban on partial birth abortions.

Here is the piece:

THE U.S. Supreme Court yesterday approved the ban of a spectacularly horrifying procedure doctors use to kill perhaps tens of thousands of unwanted American babies each year. It is a tiny but significant legal victory for the voiceless victims of America’s thriving abortion industry.

The court ruled that the federal partial birth abortion ban of 2003 was constitutional because it eliminated only one procedure that could be used to kill and extract an unborn baby and that doctors concerned about the health of the mother could use alternative methods.

Roughly 130,000 American abortions each year are performed after the first trimester. These typically consist of dismembering the baby and removing him or her body part by body part, or delivering the baby up to the head then puncturing the skull and removing the brain, collapsing the head so it can pass through the cervix.

The court upheld Congress’ ban on the second procedure.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the 5-4 majority, included this nurse’s description of the procedure:

“Dr. Haskell went in with forceps and grabbed the baby’s legs and pulled them down into the birth canal. Then he delivered the baby’s body and the arms — everything but the head. The doctor kept the head right inside the uterus . . .

“The baby’s little fingers were clasping and unclasping, and his little feet were kicking. Then the doctor stuck the scissors in the back of his head, and the baby’s arms jerked out, like a startle reaction, like a flinch, like a baby does when he thinks he is going to fall.

“The doctor opened up the scissors, stuck a high-powered suction tube into the opening, and sucked the baby’s brains out. Now the baby went completely limp . . .

“He cut the umbilical cord and delivered the placenta. He threw the baby in a pan, along with the placenta and the instruments he had just used.”

That is what for years has passed for an acceptable medical procedure, conducted on thousands of helpless, innocent infants each year.

But no longer. Thank God, no longer.