Reflections on the Carhart Case
Part Six: Now What?

Dateline: 10/12/99
Revised: 4/26/00

The story so far:

Abortionists found the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Call it what you will -- "intrauterine cranial decompression," "entact extraction," "D&X," "Partial Birth Abortion" -- dragging the baby out by the feet and stabbing him in the head with a siscors solved a lot of problems for abortionists and opened a lot of doors financially. Pro lifers had banned late abortions before, without so much as a squeak out of the abortionists. From a public relations standpoint, it wasn't worthwhile to champion late abortions when all they produced was mangled fetuses that you had to get rid of somehow. But when the fetuses became a gold mine instead of a slag pile, defending late abortions became a worthwhile risk. And, of course, late abortions now generate enough money for the expensive public relations campaigns necessary to make them palatable to the public.

On the other hand, abortion opponents had finally latched onto something the public could readily grasp -- the mean-spiritedness of stopping in the middle of an induced forceps breech delivery to stab a mostly-born baby in the head.

The battle lines are drawn.

The people who benefit from late entact abortions have developed a strategy of recruiting symbolic women. A very late abortion to save the mother's life is a no-brainer -- these cases have been treated successfully with inducing labor or emergency c-sections for generations now. Clearly, dragging the process out for three days so that you can stab the baby in the head is unnecessary if the woman's life is endangered by the pregnancy. That leaves entact extraction enthusiasts with women whose babies had horrible and life-threatening conditions. They're rare, their circumstances are tragic, and it's hard to attack late abortions without seeming to attack these women.

Clever folks, those late abortion enthusiasts. They get to go about their business, selling late abortions (which are much bigger money-makers than delivering live babies), slurping lots of money through loopholes in human tissue donation laws, and painting themselves as heroic figures reaching out to women in tragic circumstances. They have reached Abortion Utopia, and they're not about to budge.

Carhart and his cohorts also came up with a new angle: complaining that the laws would also ban all other abortions.

These claims are patently fraudulent. Any physician who can't distinguish between dragging the baby out whole and chopping him into little bits before extracting him has no business practicing medicine at all. Would you really want somebody that clueless sticking sharp instruments into your body?

Part of the problem the Court is going to have is the fact that the drive to gather fetal tissue has led abortionists to use entact extraction at earlier and earlier gestational ages in order to have more tissue to sell. The bans on entact extraction would forbid the procedure regardless of whether or not it was performed after viability. Thus the Court must confront the viability issue.

There are some questions we can ask:

1. If the matter really is one of allowing a doctor to choose the safest abortion method, why would a doctor choose an untested method -- entact extraction -- over the tried and true methods they've been proclaiming as ever so safe for the past twenty years?

2. If the greater the dilation of the cervix, the greater the risk of injury to the cervix, why would an abortionist choose a method that requires excessive dilation?

3. Why were abortionists willing to roll over and play dead through all the previous late abortion bans, but are standing their ground on this particular practice?

4. If these late abortions are so rare, and aren't generating profits from the sale of fetal tissue, where is all the money coming from to challenge the laws? And why would so much money be devoted to preserving what is, after all, only one of many abortion techniques?

What's going on here? Good question. The answers aren't pretty.

The Latest Links:

Justices Under Scrutiny
National Abortion Federation's spin
Abortion Case Draws Few Public Displays in Nebraska
National Review Commentary on Carhart Case
Supreme Court Abortion Case Quotes
Nebraska Abortion Case Before Supreme Court
Court Hears Arguments on Partial Birth Abortion
Debate Continues Outside Court
Justices Ask Sharp Abortion Questions
Abortion Case Spurs Spirited Inquiries