In 1996, registered nurse Brenda Pratt Shafer told the House Subcommittee on the Constitution about a partial birth abortion she’d witnessed.
A woman was six months pregnant with a baby diagnosed with Down Syndrome. She chose death for the child. Shafer testified that she saw the baby’s beating heart on the ultrasound monitor. The so-called doctor pulled the baby into the birth canal with forceps, partially delivering his body while leaving the head inside.
“The baby’s little fingers were clasping and unclasping, and his feet were kicking. Then the doctor stuck the scissors through the back of his head, and the baby’s arms jerked out in a flinch, a startle reaction, like a baby does when he thinks that he might fall …The doctor opened up the scissors, stuck a high-powered suction tube into the opening and sucked the baby’s brains out. Now the baby was completely limp. I was really completely unprepared for what I was seeing. I almost threw up as I watched the doctor do these things.”
Shafer added that the abortionist pulled the baby out and threw him into a pan. She continued, “I saw the baby move in the pan. I asked another nurse and she said it was just ‘reflexes.’” Shafer, who is now pro-life, said two other partial birth abortion procedures she’d witnessed involved healthy women and healthy babies.
Congress attempted to end this gruesome procedure. (See illustrations) Both houses passed bans on partial birth abortion, but former President Bill Clinton twice vetoed the measures before President George Bush signed the Partial Birth Abortion Ban into law in 2003. Several federal judges ruled it unconstitutional and contended that it provided no exception for a woman’s health.
Last week, the Supreme Court disagreed, upholding the ban.
Despite the-sky-is-falling proclamations from feminists and mainstream media, women still may have legal abortions in this country. The court upheld a ban on a specific procedure – “intact dilation and extraction,” the procedure Brenda Pratt Shafer described. Pursuant to Roe v. Wade, women retain the “right” to have their babies killed, but the abortionist can’t extract a live baby and then kill him. He may rip the child apart in the womb first and remove body parts, or he may kill the baby in the womb with a poisonous solution, then remove the intact corpse.