Now that Kansas has enacted the Unborn Child Protection from Dismemberment Abortion Act and Oklahoma is on the doorstep, the abortion industry continues to roll out two of its old warhorses to tell us why it’s perfectly okay to rip heads and legs off of the torsos of living unborn children. I refer to David Grimes and Carole Joffe.
Kathy Ostrowski, Kansans for Life’s legislative director, wrote a post for us about a piece the duo had written for a pro-abortion site. One of their most memorable statements about dismemberment abortions is
“D&E shifts the emotional burden of the procedure from the woman to the physician, and that is entirely appropriate. One of our most important roles as physicians is to ease suffering, both physical and emotional. The specifics of abortion methods can be unpleasant…”
Kathy quite properly concluded, “This is a stunning rebuke of the ‘choice’ slogan! It praises a paternalistic denial of facts as ‘appropriate’ for women considering dismemberment abortion—something physicians wouldn’t dare do with patients facing other invasive medical procedures.”
Joffe brought her threadbare argument to the pages of the New York Times today in the form of a letter to the editor. Let me address just one sentence because the blasé dismissal is at the core of what the debate over dismemberment abortions is all about:
To be sure, in the abstract, the details of dilation and evacuation abortions, as with many other medical procedures, are upsetting to many.
“In the abstract” is, of course, the heart and soul (so to speak) of the pro-abortionist’s response. That along with the equally misleading lots of “medical procedures are upsetting to many” defense.
If we can keep what’s happens and to whom in the realm of the abstract (kind of like “fetus” rather than baby or “disarticulation” rather than tearing a baby apart), then who is going to be bothered? And if eviscerating a defenseless human being is no different than, say, excising tumor, well, who’s against taking out a cancer, even if it is “upsetting”?
But as we have written so many times, what else are they going to say? (The zanies don’t bother with misleading people. They tell you frankly that you kill unborn babies because you want to and because you can.)
One defense you can employ, by the way, is to literally remove the baby from the picture. As we wrote about in February, go to page 19 (which is page 172 of Chapter Eleven) of a National Abortion Federation textbook whose subtitle is “Comprehensive Abortion Care.” (It’s reproduced at www.nrlc.org/uploads/stateleg/NAFChapter11DE.pdf.)
What do you see ? The forceps are opening and closing over….nothing. There is no baby, not even any “pregnancy elements” in sight.
A NAF textbook is showing an abortion but there’s nothing/nobody being aborted.
Lesson? They are so terrified that the visual truth about dismemberment abortions will get out, they won’t even show them to their own kind!
Daniel Miller is responsible for nearly all of National Right to Life News' political writing.
With the election of Donald Trump to the U.S. presidency, Daniel Miller developed a deep obsession with U.S. politics that has never let go of the political scientist. Whether it's the election of Joe Biden, the midterm elections in Congress, the abortion rights debate in the Supreme Court or the mudslinging in the primaries - Daniel Miller is happy to stay up late for you.
Daniel was born and raised in New York. After living in China, working for a news agency and another stint at a major news network, he now lives in Arizona with his two daughters.
