ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, October 15, 1996 TAG: 9610150073
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: FIONA GIVENS
ACCORDING to your Sept. 27 editorial (``The partial-birth abortion vote''), partial-birth abortions are ``rare'' and only performed in cases of grave fetal abnormality and when there's a threat to the mother's life or health.
Yet, a recent article in The Record (New Jersey) shows that at least 1,500 partial-birth abortions are performed in New Jersey alone each year.
A Dayton, Ohio, doctor wrote that he performs these abortions ``routinely outpatient method that can be performed on a scheduled basis under local anesthesia.''
``Of course I use it, and I've taught it for the past 10 years,'' said a gynecologist at a New York teaching hospital who spoke on conditions of anonymity. ``So do doctors in other cities.''
Moreover, The Washington Post published the results of an investigation by Barbara Bovejda and Dr. David M. Brown who interviewed several doctors (not those in New Jersey), and concluded:
``It is possible - maybe even likely - that the majority of these [partial-birth] abortions are performed on normal fetuses, not on fetuses suffering genetic or other developmental abnormalities. Furthermore, in most cases where the procedure is used, the physical health of the woman whose pregnancy is being terminated is not in jeopardy ...'' Instead, the ``typical'' patients tend to be young, low-income women, often poorly educated or naive, whose reasons for waiting so long to end their pregnancies are rarely medical.''
Regarding the small minority of cases involving babies who have been diagnosed as having severe disorders, the Physicians' Ad Hoc Coalition for Truth, a group of more than 300 physician-specialists including former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, said that even in cases involving such severe fetal disorders, ``partial-birth abortion is never medically necessary to protect a mother's health or her future fertility.'' Further, the Supreme Court stated that ``health'' must encompass ``all factors - physical, emotional, psychological, familial and the woman's age - relevant to the well-being of the patient (Doe vs. Bolton, 1973).
President Clinton taught constitutional law at the University of Arkansas. He knew that adding a ``health'' exception would render the ban meaningless.
Physicians also have testified that undergoing this procedure is extremely painful for the infant. Dr. Jean A. Wright, associate prefessor of pediatrics and anesthesia at the Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, testified that an unborn child at this stage (41/2 to 51/2 months) ``is more sensitive to pain than a full-term infant would be if subjected to the same procedure'' because they ``have a much higher density of pain receptors'' than older humans.
We urge the editorial board to read the readily available, solid statistical evidence before making such extraordinary, unsubstantiated generalizations.
Fiona Givens is communications director for the Virginia Society for Human Life in Richmond.
LENGTH: Medium: 60 linesby CNB