Monday, May 25, 2009

Feminists run away from explaining how partial birth abortion is not child abuse

And that they are therefore not in the wrong for denouncing abuse by Catholic priests and religious.

Let's refresh our memories as to how a partial birth abortion is performed. In court testimony, Dr. Leroy Carhart describes the procedure in a 1997 hearing that struck down the first PBA ban:

*Question: Let's take the situation where you haven't divided the cord because you couldn't, and you have begun to remove a living fetus feet first. What happens next after you have gotten the feet removed?

Carhart: We remove the feet and continue pulling on the feet until the abdomen and the thorax came through the cavity. At that point, I would try ... you have to bring the shoulders down, but you can get enough of them outside, you can do this with your finger outside of the uterus, and then at that point the fetal ... the base of the fetal skull is usually in the cervical canal.

*Question: What do you do next?

Carhart: And you can reach that, and that's where you would rupture the fetal skull to some extent and aspirate the contents out. [Translation: The skull is punctured with scissors and the contents sucked out]

*Question: At what point in that process does fetal death occur between initial...removal of the feet or legs and the crushing of the skull, or I'm sorry, the decompressing of the skull?

Carhart: Well, you know, again, this is where I'm not sure what fetal death is. I mean, I honestly have to share your concern, your Honor. You can remove the cranial contents and the fetus will still have a heartbeat for several seconds or several minutes, so is the fetus alive? I would have to say probably, although I don't think it has any brain function, so it's brain dead at that point.

*Question: So the brain death might occur when you begin suctioning out the cranium?

Carhart: I think brain death would occur because the suctioning to remove contents is only two or three seconds, so somewhere in that period of time, obviously not when you penetrate the skull, because people get shot in the head and the don't die immediately from that, if they are going to die at all, so that probably is not sufficient to kill the fetus, but I think removing the brain contents eventually will.


Somehow, this isn't child abuse in their eyes. They will go on about how this is all about the "babies" but they never address the "babies". Isn't that interesting?