by Dr. C. Everett Koop in the New York Times on 9/26/96. Dr. Koop was Surgeon General from 1981 to 1989. Received via PK on 9/26/96.
HANOVER, N.H. -- The debate in Congress about the
procedure known as partial-birth abortion reveals
deep national uneasiness about abortion 23 years after
the Supreme Court legalized it. As usual, each side in
the debate shades the statistics and distorts the facts.
But in this case, it is the abortion-rights advocates
who seem inflexible and rigid.
The Senate is expected to vote today on whether to join
the House in overriding President Clinton's veto of a
bill last April banning partial-birth abortion. In this
procedure, a doctor pulls out the baby's feet first,
until the baby's head is lodged in the birth canal.
Then, the doctor forces scissors through the base of the
baby's skull, suctions out the brain, and crushes the
skull to make extraction easier. Even some pro-choice
advocates wince at this, as when Senator Daniel Patrick
Moynihan termed it "close to infanticide."
The anti-abortion forces often imply that this procedure
is usually performed late in the third trimester on
fully developed babies. Actually, most partial-birth
abortions are performed late in the second trimester,
around 26 weeks. Some of these would be viable babies.
But the misinformation campaign conducted by the
advocates of partial-birth abortion is much more
misleading. At first, abortion-rights activists claimed
this procedure hardly ever took place. When pressed for
figures, several pro-abortion groups came up with 500 a
year, but later investigations revealed that in New
Jersey alone 1,500 partial-birth abortions are performed
each year. Obviously, the national annual figure is much
higher.
The primary reason given for this procedure -- that it
is often medically necessary to save the mother's life
-- is a false claim, though many people, including
President Clinton, were misled into believing this. With
all that modern medicine has to offer, partial-birth
abortions are not needed to save the life of the mother,
and the procedure's impact on a woman's cervix can put
future pregnancies at risk. Recent reports have
concluded that a majority of partial-birth abortions are
elective, involving a healthy woman and normal fetus.
I'll admit to a personal bias: In my 30 years as a
pediatric surgeon, I operated on newborns as tiny as
some of these aborted babies, and we corrected
congenital defects so they could live long and
productive lives.
In their strident effort to protect partial-birth
abortion, the pro-choice people remind me of the gun
lobby. The gun lobby is so afraid of any effort to limit
any guns that it opposes even a ban on assault weapons,
though most gun owners think such a ban is justified.
In the same way, the pro-abortion people are so afraid
of any limit on abortion that they have twisted the
truth to protect partial-birth abortion, even though
many pro-choice Americans find it reasonable to ban the
procedure. Neither AK-47's nor partial-birth abortions
have a place in civil society.
Both sides in the controversy need to straighten out
their stance. The pro-life forces have done little to
help prevent unwanted pregnancies, even though that is
why most abortions are performed. They have also done
little to provide for pregnant women in need.
On the other side, the pro-choice forces talk about
medical necessity and under-represent abortion's
prevalence: each year about 1.5 million babies have been
aborted, very few of them for "medical necessity." The
current and necessarily graphic debate about
partial-birth abortion should remind all of us that what
some call a choice, others call a child.