Opinion polls repeatedly showed that over two-thirds (68% to 70%) of American adults were appalled by partial birth abortion and were in favor of a federal ban on the D&X PBA procedure except in a rare case where it might be necessary to save the life of the mother.  

In spite of multiple Partial Birth Abortion Ban bills passing in both houses (Congress and Senate) in the 1990s, by significant majorities, they were vetoed by then-President Clinton each time.  The Senate was unable to reach the necessary two-thirds override votes.

It took the election of President G. W. Bush to get the eventual Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003 signed into law – without an exception for so-called ‘health consideration’ of the mother, but with an exception to save the ‘life’ of the mother.  The 2003 PBA Ban Act was subsequently upheld, as is, by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Legislative voting on the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003 (and prior votes on all earlier-proposed PBA Ban bills) proved to be the ultimate litmus test as to how U.S. senators and congressmen personally felt about and politically judged the morality of termination, by abortion, of post-21-weeks’ gestation infants.  It was legislatively acknowledged, and testified-to by medical experts, that such D&X partial birth abortions – about 3,000 a year – were never medically necessary.  

Religious preference of the lawmakers – those elected representatives of their constituents – seemed to make scant difference to their votes.  Forty (40) Catholic congressmen and women voted against the Ban on Partial Birth Abortion (even though the final vote in the House of Representatives was overwhelmingly in favor of the Ban by 281 to 142).  In the U.S. Senate, ten (10) Catholic senators voted against the PBA Ban – where once again the final Senate vote was 64 to 33 in favor of the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003.

The Jewish vote was similar to Catholic legislators’ votes, probably even more pronounced toward support for continuation of late-term D&X Partial Birth Abortion.  Of the 26 Jewish congressmen voting, only 1 voted in favor of the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003.  In the U.S. Senate, only 2 of 11 Jewish senators supported the overwhelmingly-passed Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003.

Political affiliation DID, however, have a recognizable impact on the way those U.S. legislators voted in the 1990s and up through early 2003.  Returning to the important Catholic vote, of the 50 Catholic U.S. legislators (in House and Senate) who voted against the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003, 49 were Democrats!

And geographic location seems also to have had an impact on U.S. legislators’ votes.  Of the 50 Catholic U.S. legislators who opposed passing the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003, 13 Catholics were from the abortion capital of the world, California.  In fact, of the total Nays (all votes against the PBA Ban Act 2003) 32 were from California.

In fact, of the combined 175 Senate and House Nay votes opposing the PBA Ban Act of 2003 (versus 359 Yea votes) some 78 Nay votes were from just 6 states:  California, Florida, Texas, and the eastern seaboard pro-abortion bloc comprising New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.  76 of the 78 Nay-voters from these 6 states were Democrats.

It seems very clear that, whatever the key underlying reason for those Senators and Representatives who voted against the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003,  those that did so are – by an extraordinarily large  percentage – members of the Democratic Party.  Of the U.S. Senators voting Nay, 30 of the 33 were Democrats.  Of the U.S. Representatives voting Nay, of the 142 voters a total of 137 were Democrats.

Why is that?  The question is asked in several books and countless articles, and never fully answered.  Norman Podhoretz’s book “Why Are Jews Liberals?” is riveting but does not zero in on abortion as a major issue for Jews, except superficially.  David Carlin wrote a book entitled “Can A Catholic Be A Democrat?”; the answer is obviously yes…but why?  Is it due to their Irish or other ethnic heritage, or their concern for the poor – or is it because they are simply in favor of abortion, even late-term abortion, for any reason at any time (like D&X Partial Birth Abortion and D&E Late-Term Dismemberment Abortion)?  Even if it means going against the fundamental tenets of their Catholic faith?  Another author, Michael Winters, wrote a book, “Left At The Altar”, which speculates that Catholics may help to change the Democratic Party – but convincingly?

A more thorough analysis is presented in Ramesh Ponnuru’s brutally-titled “The Party Of Death” (subtitled “The Democrats, the Media, the Courts, and the Disregard for Human Life”).  The author points out that in decades past, the Democratic Party was more inclusive and took a more nuanced view of abortion, with prominent leaders such as Hubert Humphrey and Edmund Muskie being openly pro-life.  ”Somehow,” he writes, “the Democratic Party changed from being the ‘party of the little guy’ to turning its back on the littlest guy of all.”

However, pro-abortion advocates that go beyond the pale and advocate late-term second-trimester abortion – of what are now known to be potentially viable infants at post-21 weeks’ gestation – by either method of D&X Partial Birth Abortion or D&E Dismemberment Abortion are by no means restricted to above-referenced Catholic and Jewish sectors.  Women legislators who voted Nay on the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003 outnumbered Yea female voters by a ratio of 3-to-2.

It has been so long now since the debates on Partial Birth Abortion that the American public seems to have forgotten how frightful that procedure was, and forgotten how adamant they were that late-term D&X abortions by that Partial Birth Abortion method should be banned.  What the public never realized, in or before 2003, was that there was – and is – another equally gruesome method of late-term abortion – perpetrated on precisely the same gestation age and same potentially-viable infants – known as “the classic late-term abortion method” comprising D&E (dilation and evacuation) Dismemberment Abortion.

D&E Dismemberment Abortion was performed on more than 17,000 viable and potentially-viable infants annually prior to 2003.  D&X Partial Birth Abortion was performed at that time on about 3000 viable and potentially-viable infants annually in the two decades preceding 2003.  Immediately the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003 became effective as law, those 3000 annual D&X abortions reverted to being D&E Dismemberment Abortions.  Since 2003, the number of late-term D&E Dismemberment Abortions of potentially-viable infants has exceeded 20,000 per year.

The D&X Partial Birth Abortion Ban did not save one single viable infant’s life.

The eventual Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003 and the long, long debate leading to its passage, was to reveal to the American public the horror of that procedure, and most importantly, to reveal clearly how the political views and positions of U.S. elected legislators stood in relation to late-term abortion of viable infants, abortions at any time in the gestation cycle, for any reason.

It is nearly a decade later on.  Late-term D&E Dismemberment Abortion of potentially-viable infants continues apace, at the rate of nearly a quarter of a million such infants a decade, by a medical abortion procedure – of dismembering living children in the womb – that is even more gruesome and primitive than the partial birth abortion method ever was.

It is past time to once again gauge the political positions and moral views of the current cadre of U.S. congressmen and senators in regard to a potential Ban on D&E late-term Dismemberment Abortion (with the same exception as in the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act, i.e. taking into consideration the life of the mother) and the means for doing so is to put forward a Bill in the House of Representatives and begin anew the long debate.  

A draft Bill has been published on this blog website, modeled precisely on the wording and rationale of the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003 – refer to the April 26, 2011 post on this site, and to other earlier posts on the same subject.

The election season is upon America again and everything, understandably, is about the jobs crisis, the budget crisis, the potential double-dip recession looming crisis, the European crisis, the housing crisis, and above all the lack of governance leadership crisis.  No one, but no one, wants to talk about late-term abortion in America, or what it may be doing to potentially erode our nation’s moral fiber.  No one wants to know the real numbers.  No one believes the facts, that over 20,000 truly viable and potentially-viable infants are killed each year by stripping their limbs and heads from their torsos, in-utero, and evacuating the destroyed fetal parts by suction.

This crisis of late-term D&E Dismemberment Abortion in America has to be talked about head-on, has to be debated, analyzed, brought out in the open.  It will be banned, eventually; one would hope much sooner than in a decade hence.  If we Americans defer the dialogue of this core moral issue now, we may not easily solve the crises involving the other issues that are confounding our lives at this time.

We can not count on this current President ever signing into law a similar D&E Ban Act as the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act, a new Act comprising a Ban on D&E Dismemberment Abortion.  President Obama would veto such a Bill just as President Clinton did over a decade ago.  But the composition of congressmen and women and U.S. senators may continue to change…maybe even previously-pro-late-term abortion positions of many Catholic and Jewish and women lawmakers in the U.S. Congress and Senate may change.  Indeed, perhaps a majority of Democrats may change their minds about this pivotal issue.  Late-Term D&E Abortion should not be seen as a core Democratic Party political tenet.

Juan O’Callahan  29 September, 2011     

This writer sent the following to the Editor at the Journal regarding Dan Senor’s piece:-

Is “Israel” finally trumping “abortion” as a turnaround raison d’etre vis-a-vis the traditional Jewish Democrat vote and ‘08 Obama obsession?  (“Why Obama Is Losing the Jewish Vote”, op-ed, Dan Senor, 09-14-2011.)

As Norman Podoretz made clear in his 2009 “Why Jews Are Liberals?”, the unequivocal answer appears near the end of his book:  “In particular (McCain’s) long-standing pro-life position was bound to make him unacceptable to the overwhelming majority of Jewish women, who seemed to think that the absolute right to an abortion had been inscribed on the tablets Moses brought down from Sinai:  And when he chose Sarah Palin, an equally adamant foe of abortion, to be his running mate, he guaranteed that hardly a Jewish woman in America would vote for him.”

That probably explains why, earlier, Jewish U.S. senators and congressmen in Washington voted against the overwhelmingly passed Late-Term D&X Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003 by the astonishing margin of 92% (34 to 3).

Republican President George W. Bush was one one staunchest friends of Israel that American Jews ever had.  McCain would have been the same.  President Obama has been anything but.

However, if op-ed author Dan Senor thinks Jewish women will vote for a pro-life Republican, or their menfolk will do the same (courage!), because of this administration’s diffident treatment of Israel, he may be expecting a minor miracle. 

Let’s pray for a miracle!  The vote in New York regarding replacement for Mr. Weiner’s seat is a promising omen.
 

‘Gradualists’ are those who may be seen to occupy a middle ground, by (possibly) accepting certain legal limits to certain abortions of infants who have reached a presumed gestation age of viability, say, 24 to 26 weeks (according to Frances Kissling, a proponent of abortion):  But who also do not see anything wrong with any or all earlier abortions such as during the first trimester and most of the second trimester.

Gradualists may consider themselves and be defined as “pro-choice” (as most are). A few gradualists may be of the waffling variety, with the sometimes-heard rhetoric – (especially from a few liberal Republican political candidates) – “I’m basically pro-life, in the sense that Im against late-term abortion”.  

Professor Kaczor defines ‘Absolutists’ as those at the extremes on either end of the abortion debate.  ”At one extreme, absolutist critics of abortion hold that abortion is always wrong and that the basic moral status of every human being is equal:  At the other (extreme), absolutist defenders of abortion hold that (abortion) is always ethically permissible, even moments before the birth of a full-term baby.”

I am an absolutist critic of abortion and I absolutely hold that the moral and God-given status of every human being, from conception to natural death, is equal.

At the same time, I am an advocate of promoting a federal legislative directive banning the abortion of any child in the womb at or over the gestation age of 21 weeks lmp, the age of 21 to 22 weeks lmp being the now-proven and medically definitive viability gestation age of extremely premature-birth infants = NOT 24 to 26 weeks – (see US and UK medical studies referred to earlier in this blog).  The 21-week cut off vis-a-vis abortion may warrant being lowered to 20 weeks, for yet another another reason, which comprises the indication based on further medical studies that infants of that age are capable of experiencing pain.  The federal ban on such late-term D&E abortions at 20 weeks and over would emulate the guidelines and legislative language set forth in the 2003 Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act.

What Professor Kaczor omitted from his analysis is that it is possible to be both ‘Absolutist’ in reference to abortion, and in favor of banning late term-abortions (which he seems to assign as the territory of only ‘Gradualists’) as a tactical procedure:  I call that, which is what I am, being an ‘Incrementalist’.

I am an Incrementalist because we CAN ban such late-term D&E abortions (with an exception to save the life of the mother, as in the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act) and actually save the lives of over 20,000 such aborted, viable infants a year.  We can do that soon!  We will not be able to ban all abortions, to overturn Roe v. Wade any time soon.

The Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003 was the ultimate litmus test a decade ago as to how our legislators, of either party and of all sectors and faiths, voted on that issue.  That was – unfortunately – its only value.  It did not, and has not, saved ANY babies lives, late-term or otherwise.  That’s because the 3,000 late-term babies that were previously aborted by the D&X Partial Birth Abortion method, simply continued to be aborted each year by the equally painful and macabre D&E Dismemberment Abortion method (comprising the other 17,000 late-term babies aborted each year by that so-called “classical abortion method”).

I am an Incrementalist and a Pro-Life Absolutist.

Several responders take issue with that, and insist that one must fight to ban all abortions now, and not divert efforts by hoping to ban one small sliver of the million-three-hundred-thousand infants destroyed each year.

I beg to differ.  It IS worth the fight to Ban Late-Term D&E Abortions NOW for two important reasons.  One, it can be done:  And we save over 20,000 lives a year – nearly quarter of a million in a decade.  Two, it will once again give us a stark litmus test, real voting records, of our current crop of legislators in Congress and the U.S. Senate, on the inflammatory issue of killing viable babies by dismembering their bodies in the womb, shredding their limbs.  

We need to record once again how the Catholic senators and congressmen would vote on this vital issue; how our women and men would vote; how Jewish legislators would vote this time; how those of other faiths and of no faith would vote.  This is THE bedrock, the keystone issue underpinning the morality of America.   It needs to be recorded and voted on.  

Are we going to go the way of secular Europe:  Or are we going to remain that one nation apart from the rest?

Of comments submitted to this blog, over half comprise negative assertions of the sort summarized above.  (As notified last year, and in 2009, we do not publish comments if responders decline to identify themselves.)

On the other hand, very few respondents appear to be supportive of the author’s effort to ban late-term elective D&E abortions of viable infants; or to express surprise or shock at the magnitude of the numbers of potentially-viable children aborted annually (i.e. 20,000); or applaud a goal to make the American people aware of our nation’s virtual infanticide; or even indicate that they did not realize there was a difference between late-term D&X partial birth abortion (already banned) and late-term D&E elective ‘dismemberment’ abortion of viable babies.  

With such ambivalence, one is tempted to consider if one is doing the right thing.

Yet, this author is convinced that the real numbers and facts are so extraordinary that most people cannot grasp them; or, in extreme instances, people just will not believe them.  A typical comment by an unidentified respondent:  ”Your article is not credible.  You could be making up the numbers.  I can’t locate any corroborating studies.”  This despite an enormous library of cccf research posts throughout 2009, 2010 and 2011 citing references, data and conclusions from recent and earlier medical studies, annual surveillance data, analyses and reports in this country and abroad (e.g. CDC, US NICHD, UK EPICure, UCONN Health Center, Guttmacher Institute, California DHCS, Harvard Medical among others) including web address links.

Naysayers are reluctant to do research.  It’s easier to close the lid and shut one’s eyes to the truth.

Yes, the numbers are real!  There really ARE 20,000-plus potentially viable babies aborted every year in the U.S., in the second half of the second trimester.  Yes, the reasons for late-term second-trimester D&E abortions of potentially viable infants are virtually ALL elective; almost none are by reason of medical necessity.  Yes, the proven potential viability of infants in the womb IS NOW 21 to 22 weeks gestation, not 28 or 26 weeks as previously ‘guesstimated’ at the time Roe v. Wade was enacted by the then members of the U.S. Supreme Court.  

Yes, we are killing real, survivable, ‘ensouled’ human beings – real persons – at the rate of 400 children a week, every week of the year, by the D&E medical abortion method of dismantling and shredding their bodies while alive and feeling pain. 

Now the gestation age at which infants in the womb actually feel pain (medically proven and defined as 20 weeks, if not earlier), and the gestation age at which infants born extremely prematurely at major hospitals’ neonatal units and surviving in significant percentages (thus setting the new post-2000 definition of infant viability as circa 21/22 weeks gestation lmp…which is the equivalent of 20 weeks from conception) have come together.

There can no longer be any doubt in the minds of U.S. legislators.  No infants of 20 weeks’ (lmp) gestation or older should be permitted to be aborted unless the life of the mother is in grave danger (should such a pregnancy termination not be performed).  The lives of 20,000 viable babies a year would be saved.  America would not be killing it’s viable children.  America would not be inflicting indescribable pain on viable infants, nor would its medical practitioners be performing a killing procedure reminiscent of the the fifteenth century capital punishment method of drawing and quartering the human body.   

An unidentified responder (apparently a ‘Catholic mother’ but proudly not in harmony with her Church, the Vatican or the U.S. Bishops) submitted a professionally composed list of arguments as to why late-term second-trimester D&X partial birth abortion, and D&E in-utero dismemberment abortion methods should both be permissible, for any reason at any time through 28 weeks’ gestation, citing a 2006 Guttmacher study for some of her support.  (However, the referenced Guttmacher survey confirmed, in fact, that no second trimester abortions were performed for medical reasons.)  That concerned ‘Catholic mother’ – using an alias and ‘nospam.net’ mycingular mail – was likely a staff member of a pro-abortion group.  Fine, if the writer identified herself and her affiliation.  We would then publish the responder’s comments in full.

Be assured; no numbers on this blog are “made up”.  Where estimates are made, the sources for reaching those estimates are clearly identified.

Think about it.  Then again, think about it again.  20,000 annually, is the number of viable and potentially viable children who are aborted by shredding every year.  

For a comparison of the language used in the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003 and the proposed language for a similar Ban Act for Post-20-Weeks’ D&E Dismemberment Abortion (with an exception, in both Acts, as worded in the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003, for the “life of the mother” being gravely endangered) see three earlier Posts/Articles below, the first and most recent being “PARTIAL BIRTH ABORTION AND D&E DISMEMBERMENT ABORTION BAN ACT/S COMBINED” dated March 12th, 2011:  a working draft entitled “Completing Section 3 To Draft Late-Term D&E Dismemberment Abortion Ban Act Proposal” also dated March 12, 2011; and the earliest entitled “Late-Term D&E Abortion Ban Act Draft Bill” dated January 2, 2011.

What the “Completed Section 3″ of the proposed Draft Act/Bill does is to combine the proposed language of the D&E Dismemberment Abortion Ban Act with the very language used in the D&X Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003.  Since both D&X and D&E Abortion rationales at this stage of pregnancy are the same, the gestation ages of the infants are identical (i.e. late 2nd-Trimester), the purposes of both Abortion methods are in neither case ever medically necessary, and that severe pain is caused in both gruesome procedures, it is logical that the language of both Bills/Acts are identical.

The number of infants destroyed by these two procedures, D&X and D&E, during the second half of the 2nd-Trimester – when those infants have now been medically proven to be potentially-viable or positively viable – over the past 35 years must total on the order of 700,000 (i.e. at least 20,000 per year).  Both the U.K. and the U.S. medical studies on the viability of extremely premature birth infants show statistically that for the period encompassing 22 through 26 weeks’ gestation (lmp) the average rate of viability to survival over two years of age was in excess of 50%.  That statistic would indicate that the minimum number of Positively Viable Babies killed by D&E and D&X Late-Term 2nd-Trimester Abortion in America since Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton has totaled more than 350,000 human beings – persons – viable, survivable persons.   Not only has this carnage been “virtual infanticide” as Patrick Moynihan said; it may be more accurate now to declare that it has as “virtual genocide”.

The facts below explain the seriousness of this annual destruction of 20,000 viable and potentially-viable infants in America.  The facts are unknown in America.  The title of the power-point presentation should be “The Unknown D&E.”

Fred Barnes’ intuition leads him to advise Republicans to continue ‘an incremental approach’ to cutting the massive federal spending outlined in President Obama’s proposed budget.  ”The end zone is far away … and impatience won’t get Republicans there:  Impatience is not a strategy:  It may lead to a government shutdown with unknown results. …  In the meantime, the incremental strategy is working.”  (Two other issues that Barnes argues Democrats won’t compromise on, include major cuts in planned spending for Obamacare, and public taxpayer funding for CPB.)

Shutting down U.S. government the last time around (1995) was blamed on the Republican Party, and resulted in President Clinton’s favorability ratings being elevated.  As an unfortunate by-product of Clinton’s subsequent re-election, he vetoed several proposed (and overwhelmingly passed) Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act Bills, prolonging that hideous late-term virtual-infanticide method of abortion another half-decade.

With regard to abortion, it is difficult to continue to endure and to espouse patience.  There are those in the U.S. National Right To Life movement that want the overturn of Roe v. Wade now, all or nothing, no compromise.  Then there are some who – like Barnes’ advice vis-a-vis a strategy for serious reduction in federal spending – advocate continuing an “incremental approach” to ending abortion-on-demand in America, especially late-term elective abortions.  After the election of President Obama, the Rev. Thomas Enteneuer of HLI exhorted his readers to focus more on attainable efforts:  ”Do not become absorbed in the quest for a political solution to abortion …do not waste any more energy on overturning Roe (v. Wade) …let’s focus on more productive things …” (08/21/2009).

Patience in the American Abortion context requires not simply a strategy encompassing one legislative year, or three or four years.  One may be talking decades; half a century!  A young pro-life advocate or activist who was just 21 years old back in the early 1990s, when the first drafts of a potential federal ban concept were being formulated to combat a late-term abortion procedure that became known as Partial Birth Abortion, would later be in his early thirties when President Bush signed the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003 into law.  He would be approaching 38 by the time the U.S. Supreme Court finally upheld that PBA Ban Act.  Now he is over 40, and has begun to realize that the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003 has not reduced the number of annual abortions in America by a single abortion, not even a single late-term abortion.

As one exuberant young blogger wrote after the U.S. Supreme Court, in 2007, upheld the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003: “I think we’re alright girls; this Act just bans a procedure, a method.”  In other words, those abortion practitioners who were previously using the D&X Partial Birth Abortion procedure to terminate about 3,000 late-term potentially viable babies a year simply reverted to the more-popular “classical” late-term abortion method of D&E Dilation & Evacuation Abortion, which was – and still currently is – used to terminate over 20,000 potentially viable infants a year during their 21st through 27th week of gestation age (the last half of the second trimester).

Now, in 2011, that young 21-year-old back in 1990 may have to wait another decade, and he or she will be in his or her 50s, before a federal Ban is successfully enacted prohibiting late-term elective D&E “Dismemberment” Abortion of 20,000 potentially viable infants a year (on the exact same basis and rationale as the D&X Partial Birth Abortion procedure was banned).

But that “incremental step” – of seeking, right now, to set the legislative wheels in motion to effect a Ban on elective D&E Late-Term Dismemberment Abortions of Viable Infants – is the right thing to do.  Even though it involves just 20,000 infants a year, it is the right thing to do.  Because IT IS – in fact – a productive, attainable and achievable thing to do.  And in no way is it contrary to the goal of eventually overturning Roe v. Wade and/or of banning all million two hundred thousand elective medically-unnecessary abortions in America.

Yes, one needs patience.  Impatience is not a strategy, as Fred Barnes said.

It is more important right now to encourage U.S. legislators in Washington to Ban D&E Late-Term Dismemberment Abortions, rather than to try and Ban federal funding for Planned Parenthood AT THIS TIME IF IT MEANS THAT THE GOVERNMENT WOULD BE SHUT DOWN AS A RESULT.

The draft language for a Federal Ban Act of D&E Late-Term Dismemberment Abortion is posted on this blog, and has been sent to nearly 100 legislators in Congress.  In this time of crises around the world, with our nation at war in theaters abroad, and domestically still reeling from massive unemployment, unprecedented financial deficits and impending drift toward Euro-secular-social systems of governance – and an important election getting underway for 2012 – conservative legislators and voters may be inclined to consider the issue of late-term abortion as the very-least-significant subject imaginable.   Unfortunately, the annual killing of 20,000 of America’s unborn children in their initial weeks of viability, in the womb, by the most gruesome procedure conceivable, is a cancer that must be causing the erosion of the nation’s civility and culture.  There IS nothing more important to consider, and to correct.

Late-term second-trimester elective abortions of over 20,000 viable and potentially-viable infants a year are performed by a method known in the medical field as the “classical method”, that is, D&E Dilation and Evacuation, which comprises shredding the limbs and torso of the child inside the womb with a toothed instrument, crushing his or her head, and after extracting a majority of infant fetal parts through her mother’s birth canal, suctioning the rest out and scraping the lining of the uterus.   Late-term D&E should properly be called the Dismemberment Abortion method.

Late-term D&E Dismemberment Abortion is a distinctly more painful method of abortion to the child than was the currently-banned D&X Partial Birth Abortion method.  D&E Dismemberment Abortion is also more brutal, primitive and ghastly in its medical execution procedure (quite unbelievably so) than was the horrific D&X Partial Birth Abortion method.   D&X was often labelled infanticide (famously so by the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan), and is alluded to in similar direct language in the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003.  D&E Dismemberment Abortion is equally comparable to D&X Partial Birth Abortion in terms of the gestation age of the infants killed and in its callous brutality, and it merits being equally designated as raw infanticide.

The Guttmacher survey and its subsequent report are the work of five senior research associates (including GI vice president for research) at the Guttmacher Institute, New York.  The survey forms were completed in 2004 involving 1,200 women at 11 very-large abortion clinics in various geographic sectors of the United States, supplemented by personal interviews at 4 of the sites with just 10 women at each.  The resultant data was compared to a similar survey conducted in 1997 involving 1,900 women.

Gratuitous comment and opinions are interjected in the published report that have no basis from the survey data itself, and little if any from the 40-odd personal interviews.  For example, the final sentences of the report asserts; “Although the focus of this study was women’s reasons for having abortions, our findings have broader implications regarding the burden of unwanted pregnancy, and the need for increased access to and use of contraceptive services. … The fact that an increasing proportion having abortions are poor underscores the importance of public assistance for family planning programs as a means of reducing the incidence of both unintended pregnancy and abortion.”

Based on a few comments in regard to adoption, (as an alternative), by 13 of the interviewed women (none of the 1200 surveyed women were asked about abortion) the Guttmacher Institute reported that “they  - the 13 women – considered adoption and concluded it was a morally unconscionable option because giving one’s child away is wrong”.

Bequeathing a living child to loving, caring foster parents is “morally wrong” and an “unconscionable option”, but killing a living child is morally acceptable?  Really?

In that context, the Guttmacher Report concluded, “women in our survey emphasized their conscious examination of the moral aspects of their decisions;  although some described abortion as sinful and wrong, many of those same women, and others, described the indiscriminate bearing of children as a sin and their abortion as ‘the right thing’ and a ‘responsible choice’”.   One has to wonder – at the ‘sophistication’ of the interviewees; the structure of the questions; the motives of the researchers.  That ‘some’ of the respondents could say in one breath ‘abortion is sinful’, and in the next the ‘indiscriminate bearing of children is a sin’, stretches credulity.

What stands out from the 2004 ‘data’ collection is that one partial reason for having an abortion comprises the ‘possible physical “health” of the woman’.  It was listed as a reason by 13% of respondents.  Tho majority of those (13%) respondents probably cited multiple other reasons, since the Guttmacher survey data percentages as reported are duplicative.  For example, 74% of respondents said, “having a baby would dramatically change/interfere with my life”; 73% said, “can’t afford a baby now”; 48% said, “don’t want to be a single mother”, etc.   The inference has to be that at least 90%-plus of women having abortions – as well as post-13-weeks’ abortions including late-term second-trimester abortions of potentially viable infants – are doing so for elective reasons.

On a more ominous note, 12% of respondents in the GI report cited as a reason for their abortion the “possible problems affecting the health of the fetus”.  This may implicitly refer to Down syndrome.  Over 90% of infants in the womb diagnosed by physicians – usually in the first half of the second trimester – as potentially having Down syndrome are now aborted.   Supporting that inference is the survey data showing that for the sub-segment of women having abortions of over-13-weeks’ gestation infants, the percent citing “fetal health” as a reason for the abortion leaps to 21%.

The depressing aspect of this relatively superficial Guttmacher Institute “research” survey is that it highlights the fact that there are no other credible or professional (or governmental) sources examining the detailed reasons why women have abortions, especially late-term abortions, in the United States.

It would be quite practical (and logical), for example, for the medical reports filed by abortion providers (clinics, hospitals, physicians) with their state’s Departments of Public Health to include a line, ” – stated reason for this abortion – “, or – in the case of a late-term abortion (21 to 27 weeks gestation ) and for a third trimester abortion, ” – physician’s determined reason for this abortion – “.   That critically important data would then be included in the CDC’s Annual Surveillance of Abortions – United States Reports.

The CDC data admittedly has certain limitations, as clearly identified in the narrative to its own reports, mostly caused by flawed input from many of the reporting states – especially California, which has not reported to the CDC for over 13 years and does not even keep records of its own abortion data (except for the one-third of abortions that are MediCal-state-funded).

Nevertheless, reporting by states of actual reasons for women having abortions (even if such were initially considered ‘partial reporting’ and/or by less than all 50 states and Washington, D.C.) should be considered essential to the continuing national evaluation of the morality and efficacy of abortions in America.

There is an urgent need for an additional, independent research organization to be established; and to have as its mission to ascertain and publish all additional facts that are now hidden surrounding the issue of abortion in America.  It is vitally important to include analysis and research of the facts involving late-term 2nd-trimester D&E abortions of the 20,000 potentially-viable infants a year.

This latter, not-insignificant sector (just 20,000 out of 1.3 million – but living VIABLE human beings) of the American Abortion Saga is the “Unknown and Buried Late-Term Sector of Abortion” that so embarrasses America, to the point of denial.

The approximately 1.3 million total abortions a year (the real number is higher than the Guttmacher’s published estimate) is made up of first trimester abortions at around 1,150,000 a year, by far the vast majority of abortions.

Then in the first half of the second trimester, that is, from 14 through 20 weeks’ gestation lmp, there are some 135,000 abortions a year:  These comprise abortions of rapidly forming infants that have quickened and the mother can begin to feel their movement in her womb.  They are not yet viable infants.

In the second half of the second trimester, from 21 through 27 weeks gestation lmp, there are somewhat over 20,000 abortions a year, of infants that have become potentially viable by 22 weeks and are positively viable by 25/26 weeks gestation.  These are the gestation-age infants that – prior to 2003 – some 3,000 a year were aborted by the notorious partial birth abortion procedure (D&X) that was determined to be horrific by the public and banned by federal law in 2003 (except in an instance to save the life of the mother).  At this time all 20,000 of these potentially-viable and viable children a year are aborted by an equally horrific procedure called D&E (“the classical method”) abortion, which comprises the dismemberment and shedding apart of the child in the mother’s uterus and extracting the fetal parts using clamps and by suction.  Almost all these 20,000 D&E abortions of viable infants are for elective reasons.

Lastly, in the third trimester, from 28 weeks to 39 or 40 weeks lmp, there are about 650 abortions a year, mostly all for medically-necessary reasons.

IT IS THE SECOND HALF OF THE SECOND TRIMESTER THAT REQUIRES OUR CURRENT ATTENTION, FOR IT IS DURING THIS PERIOD THAT THE INFANT IN THE WOMB HAS BECOME POTENTIALLY TO FIRMLY VIABLE, AND IT IS IN THIS PERIOD THAT WE ARE STILL ALLOWING THE LEGAL KILLING OF SOME TWENTY THOUSAND LIVING VIABLE SOULS A YEAR FOR NO MEDICALLY NECESSARY REASON.

Twenty thousand viable-infant elective D&E abortions a year equals the equivalent of an average of 55 children deaths a day, day in day out, every day of the year.  The D&E method of destroying these infants is painful to them, has been medically proven to be so, and is primitively savage.  The American public should be outraged, but there is no awareness, and the media keeps silent on the issue.

During the decades’ long debate on partial birth abortion, the average number of potentially-viable-infant D&X elective abortions a day by that method was less than 8.  The United States Congress saw fit to enact a federal ban on the D&X procedure that was signed into law by the President and later upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court (in 2007).  Now we have 55 potentially-viable-infant D&E elective abortions a day:  The United States Congress should once again take courage, hold the debate, and see fit to ban this barbaric infanticidal habit.

Fifty five living viable infants a day, day in, day out:  That is the average number of D&E Dismemberment Abortions of viable infants a day.  Nearly 400 a week, every week of the year.

For further medical proof of viability at 22 weeks gestation and above, study the research articles in www.savingviableinfants.com and write to your Congressman to sponsor a Late-Term D&E Dismemberment Abortion Ban Act Bill, as proposed in DRAFT form in the cccf post below.