Women who are pregnant, by definition, are carrying a baby. Being pregnant is different from having cancer or some other disease. Abortion terminates a pregnancy which in turn terminates (i.e. kills) a baby. Abortion is not the same as removing a cancerous growth. Abortion is more than the termination of a pregnancy, it's the termination of a life!

Each year hundreds of women die from complications due to abortions. This includes only those cases that are reported. Most deaths due to abortion related consequences are NOT reported as being abortion related. Don't forget that for every death related to abortion, there are hundreds of women who suffer irreparable physical damage

Some argue that abortion is safer than childbirth. The truth is, abortion is not safer than child-birth, especially if done in the later stages of pregnancy. Abortion in the later stages is much more life threatening than actually giving birth. Also, one factor often neglected in this argument is not only death rates, but consequences after an abortion that do not lead to death. After abortion, a woman has a greater possibility of being sterile, needing a hysterectomy, and a host of other "women’s" medical problems.

In addition, it must be stressed that the popular assumption that legal abortions are safe (for the woman; they are obviously deadly for the child) while illegal abortions are dangerous does not stand up against the facts. Legal abortions kill women! Reardon reports that "though the odds of any particular woman suffering ill effects from an abortion have dropped, the total number of women who suffer and die from abortion is far greater than ever before." The myth of safe legal abortion persists largely because "the reported rate of deaths due to legal abortion is being deliberately kept low through selective underreporting."

They are done more often than reported and rarely to save the mother’s life. In fact, most are elective abortions. Dr. James MeMahon, a proponent of the partial-birth abortion procedure said, "The Guttmacher Institute [an arm of Planned Parenthood] and the CDC estimate only about 100 3rd trimester abortions are done in the United States per year. In 1991, we performed 65. All 3rd trimester abortions are, of course, non-elective." If he did 65, then can we really believe that only 35 were done elsewhere. His rational behind for performing late term abortions is that the later you perform the abortion, the more time the fetus has to develop. This gives the parents longer to decide and more information as to whether the child is "deformed" or not. The reasoning being that the parents would elect to terminate a deformed child.

Next, consider the testimony of the man who "invented" the partial-birth abortion technique. "The author routinely performs this procedure on all patients 20 through 24 weeks LMP with certain exceptions. The author performs the procedure on selected patients 25 through 26 weeks LMP." (LMP means "since last menstrual period".) How many is this? "The author has performed over 700 of these procedures with a low rate of complications." This paper was written in 1992, so he’s probably done more since then.

So, is 26 weeks the latest this is done? Perhaps the inventor does not commit any abortions later than that, but he notes in a section entitled "Third Trimester: The author is aware of one other surgeon who uses a conceptually similar technique. He adds additional changes of Dilapan and/or lamineria in the 48 hour dilation period. Coupled with other refinements and a slower operating time, he performs these procedures up to 32 weeks or more."

Consider the following facts taken from John Wilkey of Ohio Right to Life. "First, the National Abortion Federation claimed the procedure didn't exist. Oops. The federation must have forgotten that this was featured at its own convention in 1992 by an Ohio abortionist who presented a written report. Once the child is delivered to the neck he said, ‘the surgeon then forces the scissors into the base of the skull. Having safely entered the skull, he spreads the scissors to enlarge the opening. The surgeon ... introduces a suction catheter into this hole and evacuates the skull contents.’"

Darned NAF report.

Then the NAF, the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League, and Planned Parenthood claimed that such procedures were "so rare, they are almost never done."

Oops. The Ohio abortionist himself admitted to performing more than 1,000 of them in this state alone. And then The Record of Hackensack N.J., reported that a single clinic in that state performed 1,500 partial-birth abortions in one year alone -- three times as many as the NAF had said occur annually nationwide.

Then the infamous Ohio abortionist said, "They're done for medical necessity." He must have forgotten about his interview with the American Medical News in July 1993, in which he said, "80 percent are purely elective."

He denied saying it, insisting he'd been misquoted -- until the American Medical News informed him that the interview had been taped. Darned tape recorders.

What of those who keep screaming about "partial-birth abortions to save the life of the mother?" That exception is already in the bill, and they know it.

What about the "health of the mother" argument? Health, as the courts define it in the context of abortion, means virtually anything that has to do with a woman's overall "well-being." This includes such reasons as a woman's being "too young," "emotionally upset by pregnancy" or "unmarried." More than 300 doctors, including former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, have joined to state the medical fact that "partial-birth abortion is never medically necessary to protect the health of a woman or her future fertility." The pro-abortion gang even tried to claim that the child was killed by the anesthesia, until the American Society of Anesthesiologists called them on that one, too. Darned experts.

NOTE: How does it save the life of the mother to deliver the baby part way and then kill it? It would seem that once you have delivered all of the baby but the head, removing the head is not going to cause any more harm to the mother than ha already been done!

Finally, the defenders of partial-birth abortion tried to discredit Brenda Pratt Shafer, a nurse who assisted with the procedure and told Congress what she witnessed. They said Shafer never worked for the Ohio abortionist -- until she delivered the canceled check and pay stub. Oops. (See a trend?)

If people are so extreme as to lobby for a procedure that most closely resembles infanticide -- a procedure appropriately referred to as a crime against humanity -- what makes us think they are not going to lie?

Shafer testified to law makers: "The baby's body was moving -- his little fingers clasping together. He was kicking his feet. The doctor took a pair of scissors and inserted them into the back of the baby's head, and the baby's arms jerked out in a flinch, a startled reaction, as a baby does when he thinks that he might fall. Then the doctor opened the scissors up ... and sucked the baby's brains out. I am still haunted by the face of that little boy. It was the most perfect, angelic face I have ever seen."

As Rep. Henry Hyde (R-Ill) put it on the House floor, "People who say, 'I feel your pain,' can't be referring to that little infant.

To begin, as we have shown, the baby is not part of her body. As Dr. Bernard Nathanson says, "the modern science of immunology has shown us that the unborn child is not a part of a woman's body in the same sense that her kidney or her heart is." From the moment of conception the baby is a unique individual, a separate person.

Second, a woman’s right to privacy is not greater than the child’s right to life. Since the child’s right to life supersedes her right to privacy, then it is wrong to kill the child. Everyone has certain rights. There are times, however, when rights clash. For example, a conflict occurs between my right to privacy and the public’s right to safety when I am being asked to submit to a drug test in order to get a job as a city bus driver. In this instance, one right has to take precedence over another right.

This situation occurs in pregnancy. There is a conflict between the woman’s right to do with her body as she chooses, and the child’s right to life. In this case, the "greater" right takes precedence over the "lesser" right. It is obvious that the right to life is greater than the right to choose.

If you doubt this, then consider the following. If my right to choose is greater than your right to life, then I can go ahead and kill those whom I choose to kill. The reason that I can’t is that their right to life is more important than my right to choose. For example, I am free to choose to do anything that I want with my fist as long as it does not infringe on your right. My right to do as I please with my fist ends where your nose begins. I cannot punch your nose without some other justifiable reason giving my right to use my fist priority over your right to live a peaceable life.

Third, what about the child's right over his body? If there is a right over one's body, then two very significant features pertain to it. One, it is a right everyone has; and two, it includes the right not to have one's body destroyed (e.g., by dismemberment), the right not to be killed. On both these counts, the appeal to a woman's right over her body as a justification for abortion backfires, and provides an argument against abortion. Thus if a woman has a right over her body, then the child has that right too. "For after all the child's body is the child's body, not the woman's.... The child, like his mother, has a ‘just prior claim to his own body,’ and abortion involves laying hands on, manipulating, that body."

During an abortion no part of the woman's body is removed . Abortion advocates love to wax eloquent on the woman's right to do with her body what she pleases. This ignores two facts. First, there are two bodies involved (hers and the childs). While she has a right to her body, this right does not supercede the child's right to life. Second, abortion does not remove any part of her body except for her blood (unless there are complications caused by the abortion procedure that require the removal of some part of her body).

This is the quality of life concept that abortionists like to use. It has many forms. Abortion is legitimate in order to protect the mother’s quality of life, or the family’s quality of life, or society’s quality of life (too great a financial burden), or the child’s quality of life. Kathy Spillar states, "What is at issue for women who have abortions is the quality of their lives. They are deciding how many children they will have, and how quickly after one child they will have another. They consider the financial support that they can provide. They weigh the risks to their health and life." She is promoting the idea that the woman’s quality of life is more important than the child’s right to life. Taken to its logical extreme, this means that I can kill my 7 year old child if at some point in time it interferes or adversely affects my quality of life.

For example, I have had the opportunity to talk with a couple of woman who were considering having an abortion. Usually they were being pressured into it because of a boyfriend, parents, or finances. If the woman already has kids I usually ask the facetious question, "Why not go ahead and kill your three year old and keep the baby?" She usually responds, "I could never kill my child." "Don’t you understand that you are considering killing a child in you?" They usually get the point.

Furthermore, I suggest that they bring to me their three year old. I tell her that I will then take their three year old into another room and dismember it with a chainsaw, dispose of the body parts, and make it so that no one will ever question her on the disappearance of her child. Only she will know (or a few close friends). Of course, this is unspeakable. Yet it is analogous to an abortion. The baby is dismembered, disposed of, and no one says anything, and the only ones who know are the mother, the abortionist, and a few close friends. (This, by the way, does not remove or relieve guilt)

Barbara Bergmann is another example of this viewpoint. She writes, "My mother’s abortions (she had three) were performed half a century ago. Today’s abortions are very different, virtually painless and posing minimal risk. However, the reasons women choose abortion have not changed. It is still an operation that a woman chooses if she believes that it will improve her life.

"There is no doubt in my mind that those abortions did improve my mother’s life, and that the millions of abortions every year to married and unmarried women do improve the lives of those people in their own eyes."

Notice three problems with this. First, is it legitimate to improve my life at the expense of another? Or, put more forcefully, Can I improve my well being by killing another person? Again, can I kill my seven-year-old in order to improve my life? No, because he is a life protected by law. Now, if the fetus is a life, and science says it is, then it should be granted the same protections as the seven-year-old. If the fetus is a life, then killing it would be equivalent to killing any born life.

Second, I wonder how Barbara would have felt if she were the one aborted instead of her three siblings? Of course, we will never know. As Ronald Reagan said, "The only one’s who can argue for abortion are those who are have already been born!"

Third, notice the last phrase "improve the lives of those people in their own eyes." Does this mean that I am free to do whatever is right in my own eyes? Can I kill whenever it suits my purposes? Can I at any time do whatever is right in my own eyes? There are limits to this. I can’t do what is right in my own eyes if it involves breaking the law. Hitler, during the holocaust, was only doing what was right in his own eyes. Of course, the rest of the world looks back and condemns the holocaust. A woman, in her own eyes, may feel that there is nothing wrong with abortion. This, in itself, however, does not make it right. Just because she feels it is right does not make it right. Just because a child is unwanted by the mother does not make it completely unwanted. There are enough couples wanting to adopt to handle all of the aborted children. Taken to its logical conclusion, the argument of the unwanted child would lead to infanticide. What if, after having my child, I decide that I do not want it? Can I kill it then? No!

Another consideration is that many "unwanted" pregnancies become "wanted" pregnancies once the mother realizes that the "thing" inside her is a child and not just some unwanted tissue interfering with her life. How many fretful women, upon seeing and holding the child, have changed their minds? Maternal instinct is a powerful force. Of course, we have many that are "without natural affection."

This is another way of saying that the fetus is a child, not a glob of tissue. Consider the following synopsis of the development of the fetus (I mean baby!)

First Month

• conception: all human characteristics are present
• heart muscle pulsates at three weeks
• head, arms, and legs begin to appear

Second Month

• brain waves can be detected (40-42 days)
• nose, eyes, ears, and toes appear
• heart beats and blood (her own type) flows
• skeleton develops
• unique fingerprints
• sensitive to touch on lips and has reflexes
• all bodily systems are present and functioning

Third Month

• swallows, squints, and swims
• grasps with hands, moves tongue
• sucks thumb
• feels organic pain (8 to 13 weeks)

Fourth Month

• weight increases six times
• grows up to eight to ten inches long
• hears her mother's voice

Fifth Month (Viability)

• skin, hair, and nails develop
• dreams
• can cry if air is present
• can live outside the womb