Writing on behalf of his colleagues, Steve Brinn wrote a letter to the editor of the Cincinnati Enquirer to express dismay over Haskell's move next door to their practice in Sharonville, Ohio.
"Imagine our shock and disbelief, when we learned that an abortion clinic was opening in the building 50-feet from our front door," Brinn said in his letter, which was published Nov. 27. "Why would a clinic performing abortions be so insensitive to a group practice treating children for 31 years?
"To have a group of OB/GYN doctors terminating fetuses just outside our door, to force our mothers and their babies drive through a common driveway, driving by the front of an abortion clinic, in order to park in our lot to have their babies cared for is an atrocity. We are here to prevent infant diseases, and they are here to end infant lives. We may not have the legal right to get them to move but we will do anything in our power to vocalize our personal disgust with their mission."
Haskell shut down his Cincinnati clinic and moved next door to Liberty Sharonville Pediatrics, according to LifeNews.com.
In the 1990s, Haskell became identified with a gruesome procedure that came to be known as "partial-birth abortion." He described it in a 1992 paper he presented at a seminar sponsored by the National Abortion Federation.
The procedure typically consisted of the delivery of an intact baby feet-first until only the head is left in the birth canal. The doctor pierced the base of the infant's skull with surgical scissors, then inserted a catheter into the opening and suctioned out the brain. The collapse of the skull provided for easier removal of the baby's head. This method typically was used during the fifth or sixth month of pregnancy.
The National Right to Life Committee obtained Haskell's paper in early 1993 and initiated a campaign to outlaw the procedure. After President Clinton twice vetoed legislation to ban the method, President Bush signed it into law in 2003. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the law in 2007.
Compiled by Tom Strode, Washington bureau chief of Baptist Press.
Copyright (c) 2010 Southern Baptist Convention, Baptist Press www.BPNews.net
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