YOU WON'T BELIEVE WHAT THE

NEW YORK TIMES SAW "FIT TO PRINT"

The procedure at issue--what doctors now call intact dilatation and extraction, or intact D&X--involves pulling the fetus's legs and torso out of the uterus and then crushing its skull before removing it entirely.

In 2000, the Alan Guttmacher Institute, a research organization that supports abortion rights, surveyed abortion providers nationwide and estimated that 2,200 such [partial-birth abortion] procedures were done that year, by 31 physicians.

One aspect of the debate has changed. When it began, some opponents of the ban [on partial-birth abortions] said the targeted form of abortion was used only when a fetus had extreme abnormalities or a mother's health was endangered by pregnancy. [In other words, the pro-abortionists had been lying.] Now, both sides acknowledge that abortions done late in the second trimester, no matter how they are conducted, are most often performed to end healthy pregnancies because the woman arrived relatively late at her decision to abort. [One side, the pro-lifers, has nothing to "acknowledge now." We told the truth from the very beginning. A correct statement would be: "Now, some opponents of the partial-birth abortion ban admit that"]

A Guttmacher study from 1987 [!] indicates that only 2 percent of abortions done after 16 weeks of pregnancy are done because of fetal abnormalities. [In other words, the truth about that was out years before our campaign to ban partial-birth abortions.]

A vast majority of second-trimester abortions are done using a technique called dilatation and evacuation, or D&E, in which the cervix is dilated, the fetal sac is punctured and drained, and the fetus's head is crushed. Then the body is dismembered and removed.

Dr. [Warren] Hern [of Boulder, Colorado] kills the fetus with an injection of the heart drug digoxin a few days ahead of [inducing labor resulting in expulsion of the dead child].

Dr. George R. Tiller of Wichita, Kan., who uses a labor-and-delivery technique, injects the fetus with digoxin one to four days ahead of time.

The [intact D&X] technique was designed for abortions done 18 to 20 weeks, when the fetus's head has grown too large to fit through the cervix easily. By 20 weeks, a fetus is typically about eight inches long.

The physician reaches into the uterus to turn the fetus into a feet-first position. The fetus is pulled through the cervix up to the neck. The doctor then pierces the fetal skull with an instrument and drains some of its content. This causes the skull to collapse and fit through the opening.

"The goal of any abortion procedure is the destruction of the fetus," said Dr. Felicia H. Stewart of the University of California at San Francisco.

--Mary Duenwald, New York Times ("Likely Ban on Abortion Technique Leaves Doctors Uneasy"), April 22, 2003. [Bracketed comments added.]

The article from which the above quotes are taken doesn't tell pro-lifers anything that they don't already know. But imagine how this looks to the ordinary reader of the New York Times, America's "newspaper of record" that supposedly prints "all the news that's fit to print." For years, the New York Times misrepresented Roe v. Wade as legalizing abortion "during the first trimester of pregnancy." For years, the paper gave full coverage to the propaganda of the pro-abortionists, while giving short shrift to facts presented by the "anti-abortion" side.

Now, after years of tireless educational effort by pro-lifers, there is something new at work: The New York Times alludes to the pro-abortionists' propensity to lie ("one aspect of the debate has changed"--as it is delicately presented in the above excerpt). One week before NRLC's Proudly Pro-Life Awards Dinner in New York City (which the Times ignored), the paper published an article that actually uses the honest language of pro-lifers that it previously considered not "fit to print." The Times' subscribers read of fetal heads being "crushed" and "pierced" and made to "collapse," of the bodies in the womb being "dismembered and removed," of fetuses being "killed." The partial-birth abortion procedure is described not once--but twice (though under the sanitized term "intact D&X"). And in the last paragraph it is plainly stated that "the goal of any abortion procedure is the destruction of the fetus."

Let's not overestimate what has happened here. The New York Times hasn't suddenly become pro-life. There is no reference to the right to life, nor is the term "pro-life" used. The article for the most part gives abortionists an opportunity to attack the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act (although the correct name of the proposed law is avoided). And the New York Times persists in clumsy attempts to appear evenhanded: "now, both sides acknowledge"--implying that both sides had lied about the reasons and frequency of partial-birth abortions. It wasn't "news that's fit to print" that we had spoken the truth all along and the pro-abortionists had lied persistently--"through [their] teeth," as Ron Fitzsimmons, executive director of the National Coalition of Abortion Providers, once admitted on national TV. Maybe the editors of the New York Times simply thought it too unseemly to keep repeating those lies. Maybe the impending passage and signing of the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act "clarified their mind." Or maybe there is a defiant resolve to admit that abortion kills--and so what, it's a woman's "choice," period. It could be just an angry growl from the inhabitants of the culture of death.

Two things need to be said here: One, our campaign to ban partial-birth abortions has had a profoundly positive effect on the abortion debate. And two, we must press our advantage. We cannot rest and be satisfied with our success to date. We must become even better informed about our cause. We must draw sustenance from each other. To that end let's gather in large numbers at NRLC 2003, the 31st Annual National Right to Life Convention, July 3-5, 2003, in St. Louis, Missouri. Go to page 16 now and make your reservation.

"Meet you in St. Louis!"