When it comes to the abortion debate, optics play a big role. Typically speaking, the more developed a baby is, the more people find the idea of killing him or her to be troubling. That, along with new information about fetal pain, is probably why there’s strong support for banning abortions after twenty weeks.
In fact, late-term abortions are so disturbing that even some abortion supporters assume they must already be illegal.
Well, they’re not.
Federal law imposes no gestational limits on when an abortion can take place; seven states don’t impose one either. And as a report from the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute shows, aborting a fetus close to viability is legal in most of the country. Here’s what that looks like…
Abortions done in the second trimester typically use a procedure called Dilation & Evacuation (D&E), and it involves pulling the fetus apart one piece at a time. That’s not exactly a pleasant thought, but it gets worse when you consider evidence that he or she can feel pain. It’s true that the child is sometimes killed first via lethal injection, but according to Dr. Cassing Hammond, the objective isn’t to prevent suffering.
Hammond directs the Center for Family Planning and Contraception at Northwestern University. He spoke last year at a National Abortion Federation meeting, an event that was secretly recorded by the Center for Medical Progress. Although the footage is subject to a gag order, it was recently leaked to Got News – presumably by a Capitol Hill staffer.
At 20:20 in the video clip above, Hammond states,
We do recommend feticidal injections after a certain gestational age, but interestingly, only because we can’t guarantee at the extremes of certain gestational ages that they won’t be subject to resuscitation against the patient’s wishes.
In other words, the only reason for injecting a fetus with poison is to keep her or him from being accidentally delivered alive–something that happens from time to time.
If this doesn’t sit right with you, you’re not alone, as pro-lifers are supporting legislation to protect pain capable children. They also want to redirect over half a billion dollars in federal funding from Planned Parenthood (America’s largest abortion chain) to community health centers nationwide. You can tell your elected officials that they need to get behind those moves.
Unfortunately, there’s often a difference between how things should be and the way they really are. The good news is that when it comes to late-term abortion, that’s a problem you can help fix.
