In 2004, the National Abortion Federation sued to block the enforcement of the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban in New York State. While testifying under oath before the District Court, several abortionists revealed that they knew exactly what they were doing when they committed abortions: killing undelivered babies. They rejected the euphemisms commonly used when speaking about abortion such as “fetuses” or “tissue,” instead actually calling their victims “babies.”
The ‘partial-birth’ (D&X) abortion procedure is carried out by delivering the living baby in the breach position while leaving the child’s head still inside the mother. The abortionist then inserts scissors into the base of the skull and suctions the child’s brain out of the skull, killing her. This procedure is now federally banned, although there are indications that some abortionists may still be using it.
Dr. Amos Grunebaum was asked about the so-called “benefit” of using ‘partial-birth’ abortion rather than a different procedure. Essentially, a ‘partial-birth’ abortion leaves the child’s remains mostly intact, while the alternative procedure, a D&E (dilation and evacuation) abortion, dismembers the baby. Grunebaum apparently wanted to offer mothers the chance to hold their baby after the baby was killed and delivered. Former abortionist Dr. Kathi Aultman explains a D&E abortion in the video below:
Some of Grunebaum’s patients were having late-term abortions because the baby was ill or disabled, or because doctors thought the baby would not survive. His facility provided the “service” of dressing the dead aborted baby and showing him or her to the mother, who was encouraged to say goodbye to the baby she just had killed. Abortion workers took pictures of the aborted baby for the mother, so she could remember her child. Of course, this could be done much more easily with an intact body than with a dismembered one.
Grunebaum said, “We have been told by grieving counselors to take pictures of all dead fetuses and babies — specifically babies, but also fetuses — so there is a memory of the baby by the mother.”
READ: Abortion workers admit abortion is killing: ‘If you’re not okay with that, you can’t work here’
It’s unclear how Grunebaum made the distinction between “fetuses” and “babies.” But he seemed to acknowledge that at least some of the children he aborted were “babies.”
Dr. Timothy Johnson was asked if, when he committed a ‘partial-birth’ abortion, the baby’s body was outside the mother. He responded, “[I]t depends on where the cervix is. It depends on where the uterus is. It depends how long the baby is.”
Later, Johnson described a D&E abortion. The Court took an interest in whether he told the patient details about the D&E beforehand:
COURT: So, you tell [the mother] the arms and legs are pulled off. I mean, that’s what I want to know, do you tell her?
JOHNSON: We tell her the baby, the fetus is dismembered as part of the procedure, yes.
Again, Johnson used the term “baby,” making it interchangeable with “fetus.”
Then he was asked if he thought a preborn baby felt pain during an abortion. He replied, “[I] think that the baby feels it but I’m not sure how pain registers on the brain at that gestational age. I’m not sure how a fetus at 20 weeks or 22 weeks processes and understands pain.” However, research has shown that preborn babies as young as eight weeks may feel pain, and when doctors perform surgery on preborn babies or on prematurely born babies, anesthesia is provided.
READ: Allowing babies with disabilities to live is not ‘grotesque’ or ‘cruel’
Another abortionist, Cassing Hammond, was also asked about fetal pain. This led him to discuss various abortion methods, including injecting poison into the child’s heart before dismemberment. He wasn’t sure which would be least painful for the baby:
[T]he honest truth is, how do we know that taking this huge instrument and poking it into the baby’s heart and injecting a poison hurts any less than my rapidly cutting the umbilical cord or transecting the spinal cord with my scissors?
Or how do we know that poisoning the environment that the baby is in with digoxin is any more painful or less painful than my doing a very rapid D&E?
And if the baby delivers and is living in the sense of a medical induction, we’re assuming because nature takes it course that it’s not painful. But if the baby slowly tires and stops breathing and dies by asphyxiation it is reasonable to assume that even for a normally born fetus, a normally formed fetus, that this may also involve pain.
Hammond clearly knew that these acts (lethal injection into the heart, dismemberment through D&E, cutting the spinal cord, poisoning, or suffocation through neglect) were being committed on “babies.”
Even though many pro-abortion activists deny that abortion is killing children, these abortionists admitted the truth under oath.
“Like” Live Action News on Facebook for more pro-life news and commentary!
