Why This? Why Now?
Part Six: Now What?

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.

But their opponents aren't likely to budge either. It's hard, after a quarter century of trying to convince people that abortion kills babies, to let go of the chance to shine the light on your opponents while they're sticking babies in the head with scissors.

So now what do we do? That's something we as a society are going to have to decide. National Right to Life has painted it as choosing between Ana Rosa Rodriguez and Abu Hayat. The National Abortion Federation has painted it as choosing between bomb-throwing anti-abortionists and the weeping mothers of moribund babies. So how do we sort it out?

There are some questions we can ask:

1. If a woman's life is really endangered by the pregnancy, why would any doctor reject the option of an emergency c-section, which ends the pregnancy within the hour, in favor of an extraction abortion, which takes three days?

2. If the shoulders -- which are the widest part of the baby -- are delivered already, why is it necessary to stab the baby in the head and vacuum his brain out?

3. If the baby is going to die anyway, why not approach the problem with pain management? Why stop in the middle of the delivery to stab her in the head?

4. If the baby might not die anyway, shouldn't we give him a chance? Shouldn't we see if he's really as sick as we think he is?

5. If dismemberment abortions are known to cause damage to the cervix, what does it do to a woman's cervix to forcibly dilate it enough to drag the baby out whole?

6. 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?

7. Haven't abortion proponents been telling us for a quarater of a century that Roe legalized abortion "in the first trimester?" How come all of a sudden it turns out late abortions have been going on all this time?

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

Related Links:

• Abortion Law Homepage: Overview
  
• ALL Talking Points for PP Press Conference
  
Baby Parts For Sale: The Documentation
"The Dreaded Complication"
Canadian Researchers Named In Report On Baby Parts Market

The Why This? Why Now? Series:

Part 1 - Inventors on the Bench
Part 2 - New Invention Put Into Practice
Part 3 - Addressing The Problem
Part 4 - New Opportunities
Part 5 - NAF and NRC Collide
Part 6 - Now What?

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