Pro-abort supports National Safe Haven Day: “Show your concern over real babies”
Pro-abort Chicago Sun-Times columnist Neil Steinberg ran into a problem yesterday.
Steinberg wanted to promote National Safe Haven Day, today, which “raise[s] awareness of… local Safe Haven laws, with the intention of saving the lives of mothers and babies,” according to its website.
Safe haven laws allow mothers to abandon their newborn babies (in IL up to 30 days old), no questions asked, at specified safe havens like fire stations and hospitals.
Why Steinberg supports safe haven laws…
You never forget seeing a dead baby. This one was maybe a month old, perfect features, mouth slightly open, bluish skin, swaddled in a blanket, waiting its turn on a stainless steel table at the Cook Co. Medical Examiner’s office….
Nearly 20 years later, I can see the baby as if it were in front of me now. My buddy… and I were doing a profile of the first Cook Co. medical examiner, Dr. Robert Stein….
I mention this, because when young women abandon their babies, it often means not only a slow, painful death for the baby – which would be bad enough – but also a grisly discovery for whatever poor person stumbles upon the baby too late. A dead baby is hard enough to see in the morgue, where you expect it. I can’t imagine what it does to a person who opens a trash can and finds one.
Stein realized his rationale for supporting safe haven laws for born babies was inconsistent with his opposition to safe haven laws for preborn babies, so he tried to shut pro-lifers up at the pass:
The clattering sound you hear is dozens of anti-abortion activists pounding away at their keyboards. “Dear Stinkberg,” they write, “how can you even pretend to care about babies when you approve of women murdering their children in the uterus?? Please see the attached 12 color photographs of aforementioned diced children….”
And the answer – not that they are interested in an answer, but let’s pretend – is that I, like most Americans, differentiate between actual, born-and-alive-in-the-real-world-now babies and the fertilized egg the size of the period at the end of this sentence that typically gets aborted…. [JLS note: Photo of 8-wk-old aborted baby at left.]
Caring for actual babies is hard, and the state struggles to find enough foster homes to park them in. That’s another reason why people gin up this outsized concern for other people’s non-babies: It’s easy. You can stand in the street holding a 5-foot photo of a tiny bloody foot, call it a day, tell yourself you’ve saved a lot of babies, when in reality you haven’t changed one diaper. Merely professed your undying concern for proto babies, which hardly exist, and ignored a bunch of baby babies, who most certainly do exist and could use your help. And you felt morally superior to boot. Congrats.
Just wanted to put in my two cents, because these people act as if nobody else thinks about these things except them. Most people give this matter careful consideration, even those who are dismissed as hell-bound whores murdering their infants.
Respect for life means respecting those who are actually alive, even if they make decisions that go contrary to your personal religious scruples. It’s a tough-to-grasp concept, I know, particularly if you don’t even try to understand.
I responded to Steinberg in a comment:
You never forget seeing a dead baby. This one was maybe 21-22 weeks old, perfect features, mouth slightly open, bluish skin, swaddled in a blanket, in my arms in a soiled utility room in the labor and delivery department at Christ Hospital on the southwest side.
This baby had been aborted and survived. He was fully formed but his lungs weren’t mature, so he died a slow, painful, 45-minute death of asphyxiation, while I held him and helplessly watched.
Neil, you couldn’t imagine what finding a dead baby does to the person who opens a trash can and makes the discovery. Imagine what it does to the person who witnesses the death.
That was me, as I’m sure you’ve figured out by now. I’m a registered nurse who stumbled on the late-term abortion procedure called induced labor abortion at Christ Hospital in 1999.
The abortion procedure, still practiced there and in many other hospitals and abortion clinics throughout the country, sometimes results in babies being aborted alive. Survivors are shelved to die or outright killed (http://ow.ly/1xONP) in such cases.
State and federal Born Alive Infant Protection Act laws are meant to protect them, like Safe Haven laws, but they aren’t being enforced. Will you help, Neil?
I expect you won’t. And that’s ok. Just be honest with yourself, because you haven’t been thus far. If you had actually ever looked at a photo of an aborted baby you couldn’t possibly dismiss her as “the fertilized egg the size of the period at the end of this sentence that typically gets aborted.” You’re frankly ignorant, Neil.
Since visuals appear to impact you so much, take time to educate yourself.
Watch beautiful videos of babies the age that are often aborted, 6-8 weeks, at the Endowment for Human Development website, which has been approved by National Geographic: http://ow.ly/1xOQF.
And for a dose of reality, view photos of 7-week-old aborted babies here: http://ow.ly/1xORs.
The photos of aborted babies look an awful lot like the dead born baby you saw, Neil – hands, fingers, feet, toes.
The videos show babies this age have beating, 4-chamber hearts. They’ve had detectable brainwaves for a week.
Be my guest to continue to spout pro-abort rhetoric, Neil.
But debate the topic from an informed viewpoint, not one so obviously obtuse.
[HT: Fran Eaton at IL Review]
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
He says that an aborted baby is the size of the period at the end of a sentence, then talks about our photos of a “bloody foot”. How can something be the size of a dot, and then in the next sentence have a bloody foot? HUH?
Hey pro-aborts….THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A FERTILIZED EGG. Theres this thing called COLLEGE and you can take a class in this silly little area of study called BIOLOGY and you can ACTUALLY LEARN SCIENTIFIC FACT. Its amazing….you pro-aborts should try it!
Excellent response, Jill!
The language hoops Neil has to jump through to reassure abortion doesn’t kill a “baby baby” are tiring. His first segment- where he had a real point- was easy to read and written passionately. Then he goes into his pro-abortion rant and everything he says becomes incoherent and infacutal. I was thinking, “What are you really wanting to say? Spit it out already.”
BRAVO JILL! What a fantastic response. Also, his whole premise is crap: I have never met a pro-lifer who didn’t fully support safe haven laws, and the idea that we wouldn’t because we don’t care about “real” babies is beyond insulting.
I also find it so sad that this man cannot focus one whole article on saving babies without having to take the time to justify abortion. And why?
Cause he’s afraid he’ll get some letters from pro-lifers? I bet he gets lots of letters, both positive and negative, on every subject he writes.
If abortion is not about killing children then why is it that every time a pro-abort discusses helping or saving children they have to bring up abortion and explain how those two are not contradictory?
Way to go, Jill !!
I really don’t understand the mindset of this so-called pro-abort “journalist”.
Can I just ask two questions:
Where do pro-choicers keep getting this, “They dismiss them as hell-bound whores” position? While I’m sure that some pro-lifers are idiots and judge, most don’t. Most pro-lifers I know are like Carla or Bethany or Sydney and, while we don’t agree on a whole lot, we agree that treating people like crap doesn’t work. I learned this the first day I read Carla’s comments because I remember being surprised that more people where hoping that the woman who had an abortion was okay. Anytime that I read an article on abortion it was always about how the pro-lifers hate women who have abortions yet now that I think of it there was never any pro-lifer to quote to back that up. Where do they keep getting this, “They call them hell-bound whores” stuff? I genuinely want to know who’s saying this.
Sadly, I used to say it (well, I never called them hell-bound whores, but I was a lot more jaded) because I was ignorant. When I studied the history and cause of abortion, I changed my mind. But still, where are these pro-lifers calling them hell-bound whores? Why do you never have actual quotes?
And second, it’s not easy being on either side of this debate. He said that it was easy being pro-life and I speculate that the moment that you mention abortion, whether you’re pro-life, pro-choice, or don’t inject any opinion into your statement, you get a lot of heat. Trust me: I got odd looks from people when I started studying this topic (and other civil justice issues, too, admittedly) and one of my friends from class hasn’t spoken to me as much since she found out- people see this as the dirty subject but it is unfortunately one that has dominated American debates.
What I wish that I could do is found a group that could work for peace in this debate. That would be nice- where pro-choicers and pro-lifers come together to discuss what needs to be done and how to hear each other out and come to a solution which benefits women and children from every walk of life.
Niel:
On one hand you express your own humanity and compassion with regards to see “alive” human beings being murdered.
Well, are you telling me that babies in the womb are not alive? If they are not alive, how to they grow from an egg/sperm (zygote) to a 6 or 7 pound fully developed child? If life does not begin at conception, when does it begin? When does the “it’s alive” switch get turned on? If a 15 or 20 week old gestational human being can survive outside the womb, who “turned on” the switch?
C’mon Niel, you know they are alive, you just let your ideological bent toward abortion skew the truth. I think that’s called willful self-deception and a whole bunch of other things I won’t mention here.
Is this any different to those who during the Nazi regime, were surely against any type of human atrocity, but allowed themselves to turn a blind eye toward what Hitler was doing? Perhaps they thought there might be a personal cost to admitting this and shrunk back in fear thinking that denying it would just make it disappear? I think this is called cowardice.
Jill, your response was very well said.
I can’t fathom this man pretending to care about babies and refusing to be concerned with the ones in the womb. Calling them “fertilized eggs”…. How ignorant his statements were. Like Sydney said, he could learn quite a bit by taking a biology course or two.
Let’s just look at a couple of sentances.
“I, like most Americans…”
Here we see an appeal to popular opinion. I don’t see how the beliefs of “most Americans” dictate moral reality.
“…differentiate between actual, born-and-alive-in-the-real-world-now babies and the fertilized egg the size of the period at the end of this sentence that typically gets aborted”
“fertilized egg the size of the period at the end of this sentence”? Is this an example of sound moral thinking? What is the syllogism that the author has in mind:
If you are the size of a period, then you do not have dignity and moral worth.
A zygote is the size of a period.
Therefore, a zygote does not have inherent dignity and moral worth.
How does size constitute one’s moral worth? How does size change WHAT you are? If the zygote was the size of a golf ball or a basketball would it THEN have inherent dignity and moral worth and be protected from being killed?
“Respect for life means respecting those who are actually alive…”
Does this imply that the unborn are not alive? Is a zygote dead? The fact that a zygote is a living human being is basic biology.
“…even if they make decisions that go contrary to your personal religious scruples”
Typical straw man argument. Chalk up an anti-abortion stance to religion and then you don’t have to worry about thinking. Don’t bother looking at websites like http://secularprolife.org/ Just finish your columns with snide, self-fulfilling remaks like
“It’s a tough-to-grasp concept, I know, particularly if you don’t even try to understand.”
Hey Vannah.
“Can I just ask two questions: Where do pro-choicers keep getting this, “They dismiss them as hell-bound whores” position?”
Let me take a stab at this one. I believe your answer can be found quoted in the article above:
“It’s a tough-to-grasp concept…particularly if you don’t even try to understand.”
What’s so ridiculous about this “fertilized egg the size of a period” business is that people have known for DECADES now exactly how big unborn babies are at various stages of development. Unfertilized eggs are the size of a period. Once the sperm hits the egg, cells start multiplying at a rapid rate. Does this guy really think that by the time a woman figures out she’s pregnant and goes in for an abortion, the embryo/fetus is STILL the EXACT SAME SIZE it was the split second after conception? It’s not even the exact same size ten minutes after conception.
“Where do pro-choicers keep getting this, “They dismiss them as hell-bound whores” position? While I’m sure that some pro-lifers are idiots and judge, most don’t. Most pro-lifers I know are like Carla or Bethany or Sydney and, while we don’t agree on a whole lot, we agree that treating people like crap doesn’t work. I learned this the first day I read Carla’s comments because I remember being surprised that more people where hoping that the woman who had an abortion was okay. Anytime that I read an article on abortion it was always about how the pro-lifers hate women who have abortions yet now that I think of it there was never any pro-lifer to quote to back that up. Where do they keep getting this, “They call them hell-bound whores” stuff? I genuinely want to know who’s saying this.”
Very few people if anyone. Pro-choicers think if they repeat it enough times, it’ll become true.
I’ve been thinking of the pro-choice idea of preborn development as the “Frankenstein’s monster mindset” – the monster has a body, but isn’t alive until Frankenstein gives him life – but I think there’s also a “Velveteen Rabbit mindset.” You only become “real” when someone loves you. Sad, sad, sad.
If you admitted the truth Neil and became “pro-life” what would be the cost?
Would you lose friends? Would you lose your job? Perhaps you’d lose that nice house on the lake, those two cars in the garage, private school tuition for your kids, perhaps that annual two week vacation to the Caribbean?
What exactly do you fear Neil? Do you believe in God?
And tell me, how do you think you will escape responsibility for turning a blind eye to the atrocities being committed against the most vulnerable “actual, born-and-alive-in-the-real-world-now babies”?
“Romans 1:20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.”
This means you will have no defense for yourself Neil when you stand to make account to a holy God.
@Sydney: In the United States, college often makes kids dumber.
“Show your concern over real babies”… and not the fake, unreal, virtual proto-babies.
Another pro-abort windbag who has only denial to rely on for composing a weightless column.
Vannah,
Anyone who calls a woman a hell-bound whore has their own issues, ya know? I know there are some that call themselves prolife and HATE the women that abort. They are angry at them and blame them. I have met them. They do not represent all prolifers.
Do not waste another thought on that kind of hatred. Proaborts want to believe that all of us hate women. Which you have found out for yourself is not true.
Love wins. :)
This guy should appear on the show “Are you smarter than a Fifth Grader?” Even THEY are taught that a baby is alive and human and growing from conception. He would be made at the end of the show to look into the camera and say “I’m Neil Steinberg. I’m a journalist, but I am NOT smarter than a Fifth Grader!” :)
“I, like most Americans, differentiate between actual, born-and-alive-in-the-real-world-now babies” -Neil Steinberg, MSM Colmnist
I, like most Christians, would remind Neil that his clever “differentiation” will submit to his conscience before God in the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ.
Romans 2:15-16
“What I wish that I could do is found a group that could work for peace in this debate”–Vannah
————————
I am reminded of a quote from John Paul II:
“If you want peace, work for justice”
Now, the big question is: does the “other” side want justice? And we all know the answer to that one, right?
Vannah: “Where do they keep getting this, “They call them hell-bound whores” stuff? I genuinely want to know who’s saying this.”
Marauder: “Very few people if anyone. Pro-choicers think if they repeat it enough times, it’ll become true.”
Well, yeah, because people can be like lemmings, and they also choose to believe what they want to believe…what makes them comfortable. What justifies their own beliefs.
This reminds me of something humorous that happened to me yesterday with my son, who is incredibly strong-willed. He did something right in front of me which I witnessed, and then he tried to deny it.
I said, “But I *saw* you do it.” He continued to insist that I not believe my own eyes, but instead believe what he was telling me.
After discussing how serious lying is, I ended the conversation by saying “It doesn’t matter how loudly (and repeatedly) you make your claim…what matters is the *truth*.”
Brings to mind the pro-choice arguments. Very similar to those of an 8-year-old boy trying to save his own skin… :D
First, how can something “hardly exist”? It either exists or it doesn’t.
Is a “baby” baby like “rape” rape? Saying it twice changes the definition somehow?
Steinberg’s argument: preborn babies “hardly exist” and are not “actually alive”. Does that mean when people find them in trash cans it doesn’t harm them or shock THEM at all?
Now Bobby.
You can be as logical as Plato, but we’re dealing with a different mentality.
MSM, that is.
By virtue of Steinberg’s illogic, the game’s over before it even started.
But I still love you for it anyway.
“If you want peace, work for justice…If you want justice defend all human life” John Paul II
True justice defends human life in all its stages – from conception to natural death.
For Neil to say that pro-lifers don’t care for born-and-alive-in-the-world babies is not so. We truly care about all humans – born and pre-born…
That is true justice – that is why we care for Anna and her unborn child, why we care after her child is born, we care how her child grows up and lives in the world.
Justice is caring for the poor, the disabled, the young and old alike.
It matters not your functionality, size, level of dependency or anything else.
Justice is protecting all humans and giving all humans the dignity that they deserve.
Do we need to do better? of course.
But every bit helps. Work at a soup kitchen, help a neighbor, spend time visiting a lonely person, give abundantly, defend every life in all its stages.
That is the heart of the Gospel, that is the heart of being fully human.
Thank you Joy, well said.
Actually, I think Mr. Steinberg is an atheist.
And if unborn babies aren’t real, does this mean they are “unreal?”
Why is it that pro-aborts must justify themselves by saying that pro-lifers don’t care about “real” babies, as if claiming that a child not yet born is a real baby, too, is somehow claiming that those who are born are not? They aren’t mutually exclusive, people. Extending the protections guaranteed to those who are born to those who are not yet born does not neglect those who are. Anything to make themselves feel better, I guess. Those pesky consciences!!
Oh I know, Carder. But what irks me is that HE is the one who thinks he is using sound logic and argumentation to put forward his point when in reality, it is simply sloppy thinking. And the sad thing is, there are plenty of arguments in FAVOR of abortion that at least make sense as arguments (flawed premises, but nonetheless…) There are arguments out there in favor of abortion that actually require some work to refute; why didn’t the author put those forward instead of popular level, brains-off arguments? It again shows how little the author knows about what he is talking about.
You can stand in the street holding a 5-foot photo of a tiny bloody foot, call it a day, tell yourself you’ve saved a lot of babies, when in reality you haven’t changed one diaper. Merely professed your undying concern for proto babies, which hardly exist, and ignored a bunch of baby babies, who most certainly do exist and could use your help. -Neil Steinberg
Just who is it that is trying to limit the effectiveness of crisis pregnancy centers that give away free maternity clothes, diapers, cribs, etc. for “real babies”?
“You never forget seeing a dead baby. This one was maybe a month old, perfect features, mouth slightly open, bluish skin, swaddled in a blanket, waiting its turn on a stainless steel table at the Cook Co. Medical Examiner’s office”….
“Nearly 20 yars later, I can see the baby as if
it were in front of me now.”
————————————————–
Starts out like a the testimony of a post abortent mom.
Point of information the dead baby was almost 10 months old.
If you have to have possess a birth certificate to qualify as really being alive and really being human, then America has it first dead human serving as president.
The place usually reserved for dead presidents is american currency, not the White House.
Behold B.O. stinketh. Now we now why.
yor bro ken
Outstanding piece by Mr. Steinberg. I agree with everything he wrote 100%. I hope he doesn’t let the antagonists (such as our host at this site) get to him. May he be blessed with the integrity to continue standing up for mothers and babies.
I also detect a certain undercurrent of antisemitism at work here with some of the attitudes I’m seeing exhibited towards Mr. Steinberg. I guess some people still can’t judge others by the content of their character and not their heritage.
I also detect a certain undercurrent of antisemitism at work here with some of the attitudes I’m seeing exhibited towards Mr. Steinberg. I guess some people still can’t judge others by the content of their character and not their heritage.
Posted by: Anne at April 13, 2010 5:02 PM
Um, some of us are JEWISH. Way to see what is in your own heart… not others. Precisely what comment here is anti-semitic?
Uh…yeah…Anne, the “antagonists,” the correct definition of the word “antagonist” being, *of course,* everyone who disagrees with you, wrote racist comments…because that’s all that I’ve been reading…
I haven’t read a single word on his scientifically inaccurate statements. Nope. Not a one. I’m like you- I only said, “Okay, whatever they said, they actually said something racist.” And then when I saw the comments discussing his piece (littered with poor science) and not his background I thought, “Crap. Oh well. I’ll try and sound smart and accuse them of racism anyway.”
Posted by: Elisabeth at April 13, 2010 5:10 PM
I’m seeing people citing the words of Pope John Paul II, books from the New Testament, veiled suggestions that Mr. Steinberg is going to hell–Jews don’t believe in these things, and yet some Christians still see it as perfectly acceptable to talk down to Jews rather than respecting the fact that their religious beliefs are quite different. It’s soft antisemitism; the kind that treats Jews as though they are “junior Christians” who need to be brought up to speed. And that’s to say nothing of the constant, gratuitous, and disgusting comparisons of abortion to the Holocaust.
That was lame, Anne. Really. Find another thing to attack us on. You can do better than that.
“And that’s to say nothing of the constant, gratuitous, and disgusting comparisons of abortion to the Holocaust.”
3000 American children are killed every day. The Holocaust is an understatement of the horror of abortion.
Posted by: Lauren at April 13, 2010 5:26 PM
Yup. Nothing antisemitic there at all. Someone who lost grandparents and aunts and uncles at Auschwitz would probably be overjoyed to see that the Holocaust is actually less awful than a safe, modern, legal medical procedure according to many Christians.
Where are you even getting these abortion numbers from anyway? It’s like you’re just drawing these numbers from a hat. Sometimes it’s 3000 per day, sometimes it’s 30000, I once saw someone post that over 40 billion abortions (or roughly 7 times the number of people currently living on earth) have happened since 1973.
Math lesson time: Once the egg is fertilized, the zygote begins rapid cell division at an exponential rate. In 20 minutes, it’s 2 cells, in 40 minutes, it’s 4, in 60 minutes we are 8 cells large, and keep calculating because less than 14 hours after conception, the developing human is already more than one TRILLION cells large. 24 hours after conception, I calculated but don’t know the word to express how many millions of millions of millions of cells big it is. Do the math and then tell me if those ‘morning after pills’ are really so harmless.
As a grown up former fetus, abortion offends me.
Anne,
According to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, a pro-choice research organization affiliated with Planned Parenthood, in 2002 there were approximately 1.29 million abortions performed in the U.S. This translates to over 3500 abortions performed daily and over 40 million occurring in America since Roe v Wade legalized abortion in 1973. In 2005, 1.21 million abortions were performed, down from 1.31 million abortions in 2000. Source
Quoting popes and the New Testament are not anti-Semitic actions. If you don’t believe me, ask the Anti-Defamation League.
Given how obviously uninformed Mr. Steinberg is about fetal development, I understand why you feel you need to resort to baseless attacks in order to quiet the prickings of your own conscience after you read his article. It’s embarrassing, frankly, and if I were in your shoes I might try to deflect attention from the facts too.
It’s an old trick and one we’re used to, so maybe you should spend some time learning about fetal development yourself so you won’t one day humiliate yourself as thoroughly as Mr. Steinberg has done.
Again… I’m JEWISH.
I’m also Polish. How precisely does one claim that Pope John Paul II, also known as Karol Wojtyla, who lived through the German occupation of Poland and then fought against Communism (which IS anti-semitic)… the pope who defended the Jewish people during his ENTIRE life, who denounced anti-Semitism as a “sin against God and humanity,” normalized relations with the Jewish people and the Jewish State of Israel, and paid homage to the victims of the Holocaust in the Vatican and at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Israel is anti-semitic????
That’s just to address your FIRST idiotic claim.
Second idiotic claim:
The New Testament was written by Jewish men who never stopped being or turned away from Judaism. (The sole exception being Luke, who was Greek.)
Oh, and *I* lost relatives in Auschwitz. I have been to Auschwitz, have you? Or do you just wave it to justify your hardened, shriveled heart?
I have walked through the killing chambers of both Auschwitz and Dachau. I have sat in Anne Frank’s attic.
And there are two differences between the Jewish Holocaust and the abortion holocaust.
The Jewish Holocaust had survivors that helped to put a face to the tragedy. The aborted, dismembered, burned, destroyed babies have only us (and Gianna Jessen). And there have been more murdered by the abortion holocaust.
Both are evil and horrible. Only one has been stopped.
Elisabeth,
That was awesome.
Posted by: Anne at April 13, 2010 5:00 PM
“May he be blessed with the integrity to continue standing up for mothers and babies.”
—————————————————-
Anne,
Integrity- 1 firm adherence to a code of especially moral or artistic values : incorruptibility.
If Steinberg possessed ‘integrity’ he would not have written off pre-natal children as coldly and as casually as the Nazi’s dispensed with the Jews.
Steinberg would not have gone out of his way to insult people who have a broader view of humanity than he does.
Steinberg is a bigot who picks and chooses the mothers and babies for whom he will ‘stand up’ based on his own relativistic assessment of who is human and who is not.
Steinberg shares the same disdain for prenatal children that muslim anti-semites have for him.
That may be consistency, but it is not ‘integrity’.
So Anne when your mother was pregnanct with you what species of embryo/fetus was present in her uterus?
Hint: Same species as Steinbergs mother when she was pregnant with him.
yor bro ken
Anne, I use numbers from the CDC’s yearly abortion counts divided by 365 and averaged since 1973. 3000 is a low estimate. It’s really closer to 4000, but I round down to avoid being dragged into some snarky abortion peddlers claim that “Oh my gosh, it’s really only 3,827 abortions/day. You are totally lying by using 3,900!”
Oh, and see Elizabeth’s comments for my response to your little diversion into antisemetic claims.
My husband’s grandparents are Jewish, btw, and also as pro-life as anyone I’ve ever met.
Under oath in July 1997, late term abortionist Leroy Carhart comments on how he performs abortions. Here he is questioned by his attorney:
Question: Are there times when you don’t remove the [human] fetus intact?
Carhart: Yes, sir.
Question: Can you tell me about that, when that occurs?
Carhart: That occurs when the tissue fragments, or frequently when you rupture the membranes, an arm will spontaneously prolapse through the oz. I think most…statistically the most common presentation, we talk about the forehead or the skull being first. We talked about the feet being first, but I think in probably the great majority of terminations, it’s what they world call a transverse lie, so really you’re looking at a side profile of a curved [human] fetus. When the patient…the uterus is already starting to contract and they are starting to miscarry, when you rupture the waters, usually something prolapses through the uterine, through the cervical os, not always, but very often an extremity will.
Question: What do you do then?
Carhart: My normal course would be to dismember that extremity and then go back and try to take the [human] fetus out either foot or skull first, whatever end I can get to first.
Question: How do you go about dismembering that extremity?
Carhart: Just traction and rotation, grasping the portion that you can get a hold of which would be usually somewhere up the shaft of the exposed portion of the [human] fetus, pulling down on it through the os, using the internal os as your counter-traction and rotating to dismember the shoulder or the hip or whatever it would be. Sometimes you will get one leg and you can’t get the other leg out.
Question: In that situation, are you, when you pull on the arm and remove it, is the [human] fetus still alive?
Carhart: Yes
Question: Do you consider an arm, for example, to be a substantial portion of the [human] fetus?
Carhart: In the way I read it, I think if I lost my arm, that would be a substantial loss to me. I think I would have to interpret it that way.
Question: And then what happens next after you remove the arm? You then try to remove the rest of the [human] fetus?
Carhart: Then I would go back and attempt to either bring the feet down or bring the skull down, or even sometimes you bring the other arm down and remove that also and then get the feet down.
Question: At what point is the [human] fetus…does the [human] fetus die during that process?
Carhart: I don’t really know. I know that the [human] fetus is alive during the process most of the time because I can see fetal heartbeat on the ultrasound.
The Court: Counsel, for what it’s worth, it still is unclear to me with regard to the intact D&E when [human] fetal demise occurs.
Question: Okay, I will try to clarify that. In the procedure of an intact D&E where you would start foot first, with the situation where the [human] fetus is presented feet first, tell me how you are able to get the feet out first.
Carhart: Under ultrasound, you can see the extremities. You know what is what. You know what the foot is, you know, what the arm is, you know, what the skull is. By grabbing the feet and pulling down on it or by grabbing a knee and pulling down on it, usually you can get one leg out, get the other leg out and bring the [human] fetus out. I don’t know where this…all the controversy about rotating the [human] fetus comes from. I don’t attempt to do that. I just attempt to bring out whatever is the proximal portion of the [human] fetus.
Question: At the time that you bring out the feet in this example, is the [human] fetus still alive?
Carhart: Yes.
Question: Then what’s the next step you do?
Carhart: I didn’t mention it. I should. I usually attempt to grasp the cord first and divide the cord, if I can do that.
Question: What is the cord?
Carhart: The cord is the structure that transports the blood, both arterial and venous, from the [human] fetus to the back to the [human] fetus, and it gives the fetus its only source of oxygen, so that if you can divide the cord, the [human] fetus will eventually die, but whether this takes five minutes or fifteen minutes and when that occurs, I don’t think anyone really knows.
Question: Are there situations where you don’t divide the cord?
Carhart: There are situations when I can’t.
Question: What are those?
Carhart: I just can’t get to the cord. It’s either high above the [human] fetus and structures where you can’t reach up that far. The instruments are only 11 inches long.
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 [human] fetus feet first. What happens next after you have gotten the feet removed?
Carhart: We remove the feet and continue with traction 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 [human] fetal … the base of the [human] 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 [human] fetal skull to some extent and aspirate the contents out.
Question: At what point in that process does [human] fetal demise occur between initial remove…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 [human] fetal demise is. I mean, I honestly have to share your concern, your Honor. You can remove the cranial contents and the [human] fetus will still have a heartbeat for several seconds or several minutes, so is the [human] 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 of 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 they don’t die immediately from that, if they are going to die at all, so that probably is not sufficient to kill the [human] fetus, but I think removing the brain contents eventually will.
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Anne,
You may have missed this part so I will repeat it for you:
Question: Do you consider an arm, for example, to be a substantial portion of the [human] fetus?
Carhart: In the way I read it, I think if I lost my arm, that would be a substantial loss to me. I think I would have to interpret it that way.
Later under cross examination from the AG’S counsel, Carhart stated:
“My intent in every abortion I have ever done is to kill the [human] fetus and terminate the pregnancy.”
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Notice the order of the procedure.
Carhart’s stated intent in EVERY abortion he has ever done is to
“KILL the [human] fetus and terminate the pregnancy.
The reason Carhart had to get this into the record is that he had been accused of killing premature infants who had survived his first attempt on their life when they were still enutero.
It is called homicide in most jurisdictions.
From Washington State
RCW 9A.32.010
Homicide defined.
Homicide is the killing of a human being by the act, procurement, or omission of another,
death occurring at any time,
and is either (1) murder, (2) homicide by abuse, (3) manslaughter, (4) excusable homicide, or (5) justifiable homicide.
RCW 70.58.150
“Fetal death,” “evidence of life,” defined.
A fetal death means any product of conception that shows no evidence of life after complete expulsion or extraction from its mother. The words “evidence of life” include breathing, beating of the heart, pulsation of the umbilical cord, or definite movement of voluntary muscles.
RCW 18.71.240
Abortion — Right to medical treatment of infant born alive.
The right of medical treatment of an infant born alive in the course of an abortion procedure shall be the same as the right of an infant born prematurely of equal gestational age.
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Anne,
I hope that clears things up for you as far as definitions and biases and such.
I can assure pro-lifers did not write these statutes in a left coast enclave like Washington State.
yor bro ken
i agree with Steinberg and most things said.
i also think that Jill did a fantastic job :)
It’s great that more people are supporting safe havens, but it is sad that people like Steinberg become hateful when it comes to giving the unborn a safe haven, too.
Though personally opposed to abortion, I’ve always felt there’s an argument used against pro-lifers that gets ignored, and I was hoping the comments section would take this up… There are 100,000 children in the US on an average day waiting to be adopted, and overseas there are tens of thousands… We say we value life, but I often feel we don’t ‘put our money where our mouth is’ and adopt the children who are not aborted.
How do we explain why the millions of pro-life citizens in this country haven’t shut down the foster care system and orphanages by creating a network to adopt every single saved child?
Something else I never see addressed is fertility treatments. If we know that children are a gift from Him, then isn’t it possible those who are not able to have children without medical intervention have another calling? E.g., are called to take in the children others could not care for?
When you say your vows in the Catholic church, you agree you will *accept* children… but there’s no promise they will be given – we can’t know His life plan for us. Somehow, forcing one’s body to create life through medical intervention feels as alien as taking one out of one’s body.
I’d appreciate any thoughts you all have on these issues.
Hey Becca.
“I’ve always felt there’s an argument used against pro-lifers that gets ignored, and I was hoping the comments section would take this up”
The answer to the question you bring up is very simple- it is a non sequitur. In other words, it simply does not follow that because there are children who need homes that we therefore should be allowed to kill unborn children.
Consider the following analogous situation. Suppose I am a doctor who only specializes (and frankly only CARES about, for the sake of argument) in first stage cancer. In other words, I will only see patients and treat patients who are in their first stage of cancer. If their cancer is any further along than its initial stages, I ignore them. In fact, suppose I belong to a large group of MDs who only care about initial cancer and that we all completely ignore all people who have cancer that has progressed past the initial stages. Would it then be correct to argue that because our entire group ignores later cancer stage patients that we as society should ignore those with cancer in teh initial stages? Is there an argument there against those with initial stage cancer? No, of course not. The only argument lies in teh CONSISTENCY of the individuals themselves, not with the ontological and moral reality of teh situation.
Thus, at the very best, supposing not a single pro-lifer has ever or will ever do anything to help out a single born child, all that shows is that pro-lifers ignore born children. But how does it follow from this that abortion is therefore a moral choice or at least should remain legal? How does the behavior of a pro-lifer (or a group) determine moral reality?
“Somehow, forcing one’s body to create life through medical intervention feels as alien as taking one out of one’s body.”
Agreed, and I think you’ll find teh consitancy of this teaching within teh Catholic Church as well as other solid Christian groups (and atheist organizations as well).
Hope that makes sense, Becca. God love you.
Excellent response Jill. You have done such a great job for the prolife movement. May God bless you for your work.
I think some pro-aborts need to be strapped down Clockwork Orange style and be forced to attend a high school biology class, or at least read the dictionary for certain words such as “alive” and “exist”.