By Dave Andrusko

The New York Times Magazine article, written by Emily Bazelon, is titled, "The New Abortion Providers." A long, long piece (over 8,000 words), it can be read at www.nytimes.com/2010/07/18/magazine/18abortion-t.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all.

Dr. Rachael Phelps (left), an alumna of the Family Planning Fellowship. Dr. Emily Godfrey (right), whose specialty is family medicine, with a patient undergoing a routine checkup.

Bazelon is the granddaughter of pro-abortion judge David L. Bazelon and the cousin of the legendary pro-abortion feminist Betty Friedan. Pro-abortion to the soles of her own feet, Bazelon is a gifted writer who wastes her talents celebrating the expansion of abortion training and ridiculing pro-lifers as either stupid or dangerous. In the past few years I've written about a couple of her New York Times magazine pieces (here and here).

But if you want the nub of her piece you could listen to Slate magazine's "GabFest" today found at here. The part where they discuss "The New Abortion Providers" begins 30 minutes in and goes for roughly eight minutes.

The one big thing you miss by listening is the enormously powerful impact of the foundation set up by billionaire financier Warren Buffett for his wife, the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation.

According to Bazelon, it's given hundreds of millions of dollars to Planned Parenthood at home and abroad and $50 million to "the Kenneth J. Ryan Residency Training Program. The program gives medical schools two or three years of seed money for abortion training for OB-GYN residents. Through it, 58 campuses in the U.S. and Canada have received financing. [Uta] Landy [a former director of the National Abortion Federation] directs the Family Planning Fellowship, with Jody Steinauer as the associate director."

The Fellowship, we read, is "a two-year stint following residency that pays doctors to sharpen their skills in abortion and contraception, to venture into research and to do international work."

At Slate's Gabfest, you quickly understand the politics of the magazine article and how it fits into the overall strategy of leading abortion proponents. On the one hand Bazelon says she was surprised to learn how more abortions are ended earlier in pregnancy--meaning fewer "recognizable human parts."

[Recognizability was a continuing subtext. As one participant delicately noted, "doctors" can experience squeamishness because "a baby looks more like a baby later in term."

[Indeed, one participant argued that earlier abortions represented "moral progress," which prompted another co-contributor to ask for clarification. He meant, he said, that the child has "more person-like attributes as it develops." So, "The earlier you catch it"--it's only intuitive, he said--"You don't want the baby kicking. You want to get this early."]

On the other hand another crucial component is to have medicine (as Bazelon put it) "fully re-embrace abortion." If abortions were performed not just in free-standing clinics but "more and more in regular doctors offices or primary care clinics or hospitals," well, then no one would know why women are coming in. They may be coming in because they have a cold.

A well-researched article and an even more revealing Gabfest. Take the time to read or listen or both.

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