Lately, numerous ethical, congressional and moral debates have been raging nationwide over the legality of partial-birth abortion (PBA). The number of people who oppose this method of aborting unborn children is growing every day because of its gut-wrenching brutality. Indeed, partial-birth abortion is completely wrong because the true reasons behind it are disgustingly corrupt.

Partial-birth abortion is described in the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 1995 as "an abortion in which the person performing the abortion partially vaginally delivers a living fetus before killing the fetus and completing the delivery" (H.R. 1333). A more graphic description is provided by an article in the June 16, 1995 Los Angeles Times: "The procedure requires the physician to extract a fetus, feet first, from the womb and through the birth canal until all but its head is exposed. Then the tips of surgical scissors are thrust into the base of the fetus' skull, and a suction catheter is inserted through the opening and the brain is removed."

Partial-birth abortions are most often performed during the second trimester of pregnancy, but are also legally performed all the way up to the time of birth. In fact, many doctors have admitted to performing them outside the "age of viability" (six months), when a fetus could survive outside of the woman as a living, breathing human being. Ron Fitzsimmons, the director if the National Coalition for Abortion Providers, estimates that up to 3,000 to 4,000 PBA's are performed every year.

Thus far, two PBA ban bills have passed through the Senate and the House, but have been vetoed by Clinton. Unfortunately, the latest ban bill, passed just this year, exceeded the two-thirds majority needed for an override in the House, but missed it by two votes in the Senate. Both Senators from Connecticut voted to keep PBA legal.

The indefensibility of this procedure is indicated by the transparent reasons given by many abortionists for their actions and the true economic reasons behind PBA's that have been uncovered. In fact, some of the country's leading partial-birth abortionists have indirectly publicly admitted to performing these abortions close to or after the sixth month of pregnancy. For instance, on Sept. 15, 1996, The Record of Bergen County, N.J. interviewed doctors from an abortion clinic in Englewood that acknowledges performing over 1,500 PBA's a year for largely non-medical reasons (Padawer). One doctor at the clinic was quoted as saying "…most are for elective, not medical reasons: people who didn't realize, or didn't care, how far along they were." It is obvious, because this doctor still went through with the procedure, that he did not care how far along they were either.

Dr. Martin Haskell, the man who literally "wrote the book" on PBA's in his step-by-step paper on how to perform one, told American Medical News in 1993 that most of his more than 1,000 PBA's "are elective in that 20 to 24-week range." Unborn children, close to or at the point where they could survive on their own, are being aborted for reasons of convenience, and that is inexcusable.

In addition to these unjustified procedures that are admitted to by many abortionists, there has been a new motivation discovered: money. Partial-birth abortion's relationship to the sale of fetal tissue for research was first disclosed in the May issue of the video magazine Life Talk produced by the Denton, Texas-based Life Dynamics Inc. In this documentary, an abortion worker with the alias "Kelly" talks candidly about harvesting baby parts for sale to laboratories and universities. Celeste McGovern states in an article commenting on the revelations of Life Dynamics, "Typically, Kelly harvested tissue from 30 to 40 'late' fetuses each week."

As if the implications of such a practice were not obvious enough, McGovern's article goes on to point out the blunt observances of Mark Crutcher, the president of Life Dynamics, about the obvious correlation between the PBA method and the fetal tissue sales. He says, "This is about maximizing profits. First you sell the woman an abortion. Then you turn around and sell the dead baby you take out of her. But you have to take it out whole or you don't have anything to sell."

In agreement is Dr. J.C. Willke, author of the HLA Action News article "Baby Parts For Sale," who states, "This is the one method that gives them intact fetal bodies from which they can obtain organs for research."

You do not need a medical degree to understand that partial-birth abortion is fundamentally wrong. Even advocates of the method have admitted that the reasons behind it are "elective," and the new unethical motivation of fetal tissue sales has been recently exposed.

In the words of Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA), the senates greatest advocate for banning the practice, said, "Once again, we as a country will be forced to evaluate our sense of right and wrong…even pro choice supporters of the ban have called this infanticide."

Copyright © 2000 The Catholic Transcript, Hartford, Connecticut

Joseph A. Stramondo is a 17-year-old senior at Wolcott High School who first addressed the topic of partial-birth abortion in a research paper for his English class. He lives in Wolcott Connecticut and is a parishioner at Sacred Heart Parish in Waterbury Connecticut.

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