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NRLC response to final congressional approval
of the
Partial-Birth Abortion
Ban
Act, with information on
history
of debate and key documentation
What appears below is NRLC's response to final congressional approval of the
Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act on October 21, 2003, with a history of key
junctures in the eight-year debate on partial-birth abortion and links to
key documentation.
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Following final congressional approval of the Partial-Birth
Abortion Ban Act today, by a 64-34 vote in the Senate, the National Right to
Life Committee (NRLC), the nation's major pro-life organization, issued the
following statement:
"In 2000, five Supreme Court justices said that Roe v. Wade guaranteed the right
of abortionists to perform partial-birth abortions whenever they see fit -- but
Congress is now inviting the Supreme Court to reexamine that extreme and
inhumane decision," said NRLC Legislative Director Douglas Johnson.
In the case of Stenberg v. Carhart in 2000, by a 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court
struck down a Nebraska law banning partial-birth abortions, holding that under
Roe v. Wade an abortionist must be permitted to use the method, even on
perfectly healthy women, if he thinks it is preferable to other methods.
The bill represents the first direct national restriction on any method of
abortion since the Supreme Court legalized abortion on demand in 1973.
President Bush urged Congress to pass the ban in his January 28 State of the
Union speech. An official
Statement of
Administration Policy on the bill was issued on March 10, 2003.
A January Gallup poll found that 70 percent of the public favors the ban.
Several pro-abortion groups say that they will challenge the ban in the federal
courts. NRLC's Johnson said, "This litigation will pose the question: Does the
Constitution really guarantee a right to deliver a premature infant to within
inches of complete birth, and then kill her?"
The bill bans "partial-birth abortion," a legal term of art, defined in the bill
as any abortion in which the baby is delivered "past the navel . . . outside the
body of the mother," OR "in the case of head-first presentation, the entire
fetal head is outside the body of the mother," BEFORE being killed. The bill
would allow the method if it was ever necessary to save a mother's life.
The color illustrations of the partial-birth abortion method that were displayed
on the Senate and House floors during the debates this year, along with
documentation of their accuracy by eminent medical authorities, are here:
http://www.nrlc.org/abortion/pba/PBA_Images/PBA_Images_Heathers_Place.htm
MYTHOLOGY REVIVAL
In recent weeks, NRLC has witnessed attempts to revive erroneous claims about
partial-birth abortion that were thoroughly discredited in 1996 and 1997. For
example, the Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA),
in a
September 17, 2003 press release asserted that the bill would "outlaw a
medical procedure used primarily in emergency abortions."
"This is the same claim that Planned Parenthood foisted on the news media and
the public in 1995 and 1996," said NRLC's Johnson. "It was thoroughly
discredited by investigative journalists and even by leading spokespersons for
the abortion industry, who admitted that partial-birth abortions are usually
performed on healthy babies of healthy mothers," said NRLC's Johnson.
"Apparently, Planned Parenthood thinks that enough time has now elapsed that
they can attempt to again peddle this grossly deceptive claim."
Links to documentation on "facts and fiction" about partial-birth abortion
appear below.
WHAT THE BILL DOES
The bill bans "partial-birth abortion," and legally defines a partial-birth
abortion as any abortion in which the baby is delivered "past the navel . . .
outside the body of the mother," OR "in the case of head-first presentation, the
entire fetal head is outside the body of the mother," BEFORE being killed. The
bill would allow the method if it was ever necessary to save a mother's life.
"Partial-birth abortion" is a legal term of art, contained in the congressional
legislation (and in laws enacted in more than half the states, although these
laws currently are not being enforced because of the 2000 Supreme Court
opinion). It is erroneous to equate the method banned by the bill with any of a
number of pseudo-medical terms that have been coined by abortion providers, some
of which clearly apply to some procedures not banned by the bill, and others of
which would exclude some abortions banned by the bill. For details, see,
"Call It Partial-Birth Abortion -- It's the Law!.
HISTORY OF THE LEGISLATION
The Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act was introduced by Congressman Charles Canady
(R-Fl.) on June 14, 1995. The bill was developed in collaboration with NRLC.
The House first passed the bill on November 1, 1995, 288-139. The Senate first
passed the bill on December 7, 1995, 54-44. Over the following years, the level
of support in the Senate has increased to about 65.
In the 104th and 105th congresses, Congress approved the ban but President
Clinton vetoed the bills; in both of those congresses, the House overrode but
the Senate sustained. In the 106th Congress, both the House and Senate passed
similar bills, but no final bill was approved. In the 107th Congress (2002),
the House passed the ban, but the Senate Democratic leadership blocked it from
coming to the Senate floor.
During the current (108th) Congress, the Senate approved the bill on March 13 by
a vote of 64-33. The Senate rejected amendments to add gutting exceptions to
the bill, but adopted a Harkin amendment to express support for Roe v. Wade
(52-46). On June 4, the House passed the ban without the Harkin amendment,
287-133. On September 30, a conference committee dropped the Harkin amendment
and reported out a clean bill, which the House approved on October 2, 281-142.
Thus, the Senate now faces only a single debatable question: Whether to approve
the final bill (called the "conference report"). Reportedly, opponents of the
bill are insisting on six hours of debate on that issue, even though numerous
past votes demonstrate that about 65 senators favor the bill. The debate and
vote could occur as early as Tuesday, October 21.
HOW THE ISSUE EVOLVED
From the time of the bill's initial introduction in 1995, Congressman Canady,
NRLC, and other bill supporters cited as documentation
an
instructional paper written by partial-birth abortionist Martin Haskell in
1992 that explained in detail how to perform the procedure, as well as a number
of interviews in which Haskell and Dr.
James McMahon (who is credited with developing the abortion method) answered
questions concerning disputed issues.
Much of this documentation is posted on the NRLC website in the chronological
archive on partial-birth abortion, which is the most extensive collection of
documentation on the subject available anywhere on the internet. It includes
groundbreaking reports by investigative journalists for major newspapers and
periodicals, and expert-certified color illustrations of the method, all at
http://www.nrlc.org/abortion/pba/index.html
Here are a few specific documents that spotlight some of the key junctures in
the evolution of the debate:
(1) The eyewitness account of nurse Brenda Shafer, which had a powerful impact
on the congressional debate in 1995:
http://www.nrlc.org/abortion/pba/pbacampaign.html
http://www.nrlc.org/abortion/pba/Shafer%20smeared.pdf
(2) In early 1996, the
two major
professional societies of anesthesiologists denounced the claim (propagated
by NARAL and Planned Parenthood) that anesthesia given to the mother causes
painless death of the unborn child before a partial-birth abortion is performed.
In congressional testimony, medical
experts testified that by the late second trimester, the unborn child is very
responsive to painful stimuli, and that this is not much affected by anesthesia
given only to the mother. See also:
http://www.nrlc.org/abortion/Fetal_Pain/Anesthesia%20Myth%20Memo.pdf
(3) From June 1995, until late 1996, many organs of the news media
accepted as fact the
oft-repeated insistence of pro-abortion
groups that partial-birth abortions were performed only hundreds of times a
year and only or nearly only in acute medical circumstances. But during the
period of September 1996 through January 1997, investigations by major news
outlets -- including the Washington Post, Bergen Record, and
PBS --
demonstrated the falsity of those claims. See:
http://www.nrlc.org/abortion/pba/NRLCmemo022597collapsemisinformationcampaign.pdf
(4) In February 1997, Ron Fitzsimmons, then and now the executive director of
the National Coalition of Abortion Providers, an association of hundreds of
abortion providers, publicly repudiated what he called the "party line," and
explained that the method was used thousands of times annually, mostly on
healthy fetuses of healthy mothers. These statements were consistent with the
findings of the journalistic investigations cited above.
http://www.nrlc.org/abortion/pba/PBA%20NYT%20lied.pdf
http://www.nrlc.org/abortion/pba/AMAFitzimmons1997.pdf
(5) After Fitzsimmons spoke out, other representatives of the abortion industry
also refuted the mythology. For example, Renee Chelian, the president of the
National Coalition of Abortion Providers, said, "The spin out of Washington was
that it was done for medical necessity, even though we knew it wasn't so." For
more such quotes from pro-abortion
advocates, see "Pro-choice advocates admit to deception," by Ruth Padawer
(The Record, Bergen-Hackensack, NJ, Feb. 27, 1997).
(6) In the wake of the revelations described above, the Senate Judiciary
Committee and the House Judiciary Constitution Subcommittee held an unusual
joint hearing on March 11, 1997, at which NRLC presented
testimony that documented in detail the disinformation campaign that had
been waged against the bill.
REVIVAL OF DISCREDITED MYTHS
What new evidence has come to light since 1997 only reinforces the conclusion
that some practitioners use the method routinely during the fifth and sixth
months of pregnancy, and even later, and that the vast majority of partial-birth
abortions do not involve any acute medical circumstances. For example, Kansas
became the only state to enact a law that requires reporting of partial-birth
abortions separately from other abortion methods. The first year the law was in
effect (1999), Kansas abortionists reported that they performed 182
partial-birth abortions on babies who were defined by the abortionists
themselves as "viable," and they also reported that all 182 of these were
performed for "mental" (as opposed to "physical") health reasons. See pages
10-11 of the Kansas Health
Department report.
Nevertheless, in recent months, some advocates and some journalists have
re-asserted the long-discredited claim that partial-birth abortion is performed
only or mostly in medically acute circumstances.
For example, a news story in the San Francisco Chronicle asserted that
partial-birth abortion "is generally performed late in pregnancy after discovery
of damage to or abnormalities in the fetus." Also in a news story, The Guardian
(U.K.) asserted that the method the bill would ban "generally performed in the
second or third trimester of pregnancy if the foetus is so malformed it would
die at birth, or if continued pregnancy puts the woman's life at risk." At
least one newspaper that published such an assertion this year, the Boston
Globe, after examining the evidence, adopted new guidelines to prevent
reoccurrence. For examples, see
http://www.nrlc.org/abortion/pba/PBAmythsmemo01303.html
NOTE: It has also been erroneously reported in recent months by Gannett News
Service, Time magazine, and some others, that the current Supreme Court is
divided 5-to-4 on legal abortion, and that the Supreme Court makes a legal
distinction between first-trimester and second-trimester abortions. For
refutation of those misconceptions, see:
http://www.nrlc.org/abortion/pba/gannett_news_service_again_disse.htm
MEDICALLY ACCURATE ILLUSTRATIONS
The color illustrations of the partial-birth abortion method that were displayed
on the Senate and House floors during the debates this year, along with
documentation of their accuracy by eminent medical authorities, are here:
http://www.nrlc.org/abortion/pba/PBA_Images/PBA_Images_Heathers_Place.htm
Medical drawings of a "dilation and evacuation" (D&E) abortion, a different
method not covered by the bill, appear here:
http://www.nrlc.org/abortion/pba/DEabortiongraphic.html
For further information on partial-birth abortion, call (202) 626-8820 or send
e-mail to Legfederal@aol.com.
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