Sen. Rick Santorum, Republican, Pennsylvania
May 14,1997
What I would like to do in starting the debate is to fill in for those Members who may not have been involved in the partial-birth abortion debate--and we have a lot of new Members this year--to fill in the who, what, when, where, why, how and how many. All of the questions that normally would be asked about anything, let's ask them about the issue of partial-birth abortion.
This has been an interesting topic of discussion only because of the fabrications that have been built around what this procedure is about, when it is used, how often it is used, who it is used on, where it is used, how many there are. Those have been the subject of a lot of publications and debate about how the people who oppose this legislation have constructed a fantasy, if you will, as to what this procedure is all about.
So today, as I tried to in the previous debate, I am going to attempt to lay out the truth as we know it. I say as we know it, because a lot of the truth is based upon what the opponents of this legislation tell us is the truth. An example of that is how many of these abortions are performed. The Centers for Disease Control do not track how many partial-birth abortions are done. They only track the abortions and when they are done. They do not track the procedure that is used to perform the abortion. The only people who track that, at least we are told the only people who track that, are the abortion clinics themselves who oppose this legislation vehemently. They are the ones that those of us who have to argue for its passage have to rely upon for the number of partial-birth abortions that are done. That is hardly a comforting position when you have to rely on your opponent for the information that you are to use in challenging the procedure.
But let me, if I can, walk through first what is a partial-birth abortion. I caution those who may be listening, this is a graphic description of this procedure. I just want to alert anyone who might be watching who might feel uncomfortable with that.
A partial-birth abortion is, first, an abortion that is used in the second and third trimester, principally in the second trimester. It is used at 20 weeks gestation and beyond by most practitioners of partial-birth abortion. So, by definition, it is later term, you are into the fifth and sixth month of pregnancy.
The procedure is done over 3 days. You will hear comments by Members who come to the floor of the Senate and suggest this procedure needs to remain legal to protect the life and the health of the mother. First, there is a life-of-the-mother exception in the bill. Very clear. It satisfies any definition of what life-of-the-mother exception needs to be.
Second, health of the mother. I just question anyone, just on its face, not as a medical practitioner, which I am not, but on the face of it, if the health of the mother is in danger, particularly if there are serious health consequences, why would you do a procedure that takes 3 days? That is what this procedure takes. It is a 3-day procedure. You have a mother who is at 20 weeks, or more, gestation, who has to have her cervix dilated. In other words, they have to create the opening through which the baby can come in the womb, in the uterus. And so it takes 2 days of drugs given to the mother. She does not stay at the hospital. It is not an inpatient procedure. She takes the drugs and goes home. If there are complications they happen at home, not anywhere else.
The cervix is dilated. When you dilate the cervix, that opens the womb up to infection, but for a 2-day period, the cervix is dilated. On the third day, after a third day of dilation, the mother comes into the abortion clinic. The procedure then proceeds as follows.
The doctor is guided by an ultrasound, and the abortionist reaches up with forceps and grabs the baby, which is normally in a position head down, grabs the baby by its foot, turns the baby around in the uterus, in the womb, and then pulls the baby out feet first in what is called a breech position. You may have heard of breech birth and the danger of birthing in a breech position.
Here we have a doctor who deliberately turns the baby around and delivers it in a breech position.
You may want to ask the question, why do they go through the trouble of pulling the baby out feet first? Why do they not simply deliver the baby head first and do what I will describe later? The reason they pull the baby out feet first and deliver the baby, as the next chart will show, all but the head--they deliver the baby out of the mother, with the exception of the head.
Why do they leave the head? Why do they not take the head out first, which would be a normal delivery, a safer delivery? The reason they do not deliver the head first is because once the head exits the mother, it has constitutional protection and it cannot be killed, because once the head exits the mother, it is considered a live birth and you cannot kill the baby. So they take the baby out feet first so they can then take a pair of scissors, puncture the back of the baby's skull to create a hole, open the scissors up to create a hole large enough for a suctioning tube to be put in the baby's head, and the brains suctioned out, thereby completing the murder of this baby and then having the baby delivered.
I just remind you the reason they do not do it head first is because if they did it head first, which would be safer than reaching in with forceps and grabbing the baby out from a breach position, if they did it head first, they could not do this, because once the baby is outside the mother they could not kill the baby.
Who is this procedure used on? It is used on fully formed babies from 20 weeks on. Now, we will discuss what has been said in the past about who this has been used on. The abortion industry has made claims that this procedure was a rare procedure that was just used--and I will read some quotes--quoting from the Feminist Majority Foundation, `A procedure used less than 600 times a year, and in every case, to protect the life or health of the woman.' `The procedure is used only,' according to the Feminist News, `600 time a year to save the life, health, or future fertility of the woman and in cases of severe fetal abnormality.' Here is another feminist news article, `used less that 500 times a year when necessary to protect the health of the woman facing severe problems due to the pregnancy.' This is the National Abortion Federation factsheet on February 26, 1997: `This particular procedure is used in about 500 cases per year, generally after 20 weeks of pregnancy, and most often when there is severe fetal anomaly or a maternal health problem detected late in pregnancy.'
The Alan Guttmacher Institute, as well as Planned Parenthood, the National Organization for Women [NOW] Zero Population Growth Fund, Population Action International, and the National Abortion Federation sent a letter October 2, 1995, to the Congress that said, `This surgical procedure is used only in rare cases, fewer than 500 per year. It is most often performed in the cases of wanted pregnancy gone tragically wrong, when a family learns late in pregnancy of severe fetal anomalies or a medical condition that threatens the pregnant woman's life or health.'
Kate Michelman, President of NARAL, on June 2, 1996: `These are rare terminations. They occur very rarely. They occur under the most difficult of circumstances. As I said, these are pregnancies that have gone awry.'
Let me tell you what Members of the Congress said. From Pat Schroeder, `There are very, very, very few of these procedures. These procedures are heart-break procedures.' Senator Kennedy, the Senator from Massachusetts, said, `The procedure involved in this case is extremely rare. It involved tragic and traumatic circumstances late in pregnancy, in cases where the mother's life or health is in danger.' Senator Feingold, `In fact, these abortions take place only when the life or health of the mother is at risk.' Senator Daschle, `This is an emergency medical procedure reserved for cases where the life and health of the mother could be endangered or where severe fetal abnormalities are a major factor in the decision made by a woman and her physician.' Senator Carol
Moseley-Braun, `Partial-birth abortion is a rare medical procedure used to terminate pregnancies late in the term of when the life and health of the mother is at risk or when the fetus has severe abnormalities.'
That is what we were told over and over. That is what the media bought. That is exactly how they covered this issue. They covered this issue as a very tragic, rare procedure used only in cases of life, health, and fetal abnormality--in only a few hundred cases.
Now, we knew different. I argued it. Check the record from the last debate, that this was not as rare as they suggested. In fact, I entered into the Record an article written last fall by the Bergen County Sunday Record in New Jersey, where a reporter who took the time to do something reporters usually do not do on debate, particularly when it has to do with checking people in the abortion industry on their facts. She actually checked the facts. This reporter checked at an abortion clinic in northern New Jersey how many of the procedures were performed, and the reporter talked to two doctors, two abortionists, who said that they performed 1,500 partial-birth abortions every year, and not on fatally defective babies or not on unhealthy mothers or unhealthy babies, but usually in the fifth and sixth month for no health reasons at all--healthy moms, healthy babies, healthy pregnancies.
We had that article already printed. That did not deter the President from saying what he said. We have quotes from the President here. `I came to understand that this is a rarely used procedure, justifiable as a last resort when doctors judge it is necessary to save a woman's life or to avert serious health consequences to her.'
Now, the President knew better when he said that. That information was available to the President. It is available to him now. But what happened between now and then that has caused such a stir? Well, I can tell you, unfortunately, the media has not done a very good job of exposing this. I do not know of any other reporters who made calls to their abortion clinics. They will not tell me or National Right-to-Life when they call, but they might. Sometimes they do not. I know of a reporter at the Baltimore Sun who tried to contact abortion clinics in Baltimore, and at least what she related to me was they would not talk to her, they would not tell her. I do not know of any reporters who have taken the time to actually check the facts.
What are the facts as we know them now? Well, thanks to Ron Fitzsimmons, who heads up an organization of abortion clinics--let me repeat this, a man who runs an association here in the Washington area--that represents some 200 abortion clinics all over the country, came out just a couple of months ago and said that he had lied through his teeth and he could not live with it anymore. He had lied through his teeth about what had been said by the abortion industry about the issue of partial-birth abortions. He said that this was not, in fact, a rare procedure, used only in the late term for unhealthy pregnancies and for maternal health reasons or because of a severe fetal abnormality, but this was a procedure used principally in the fifth and sixth month on healthy babies and healthy mothers. In fact, I think the figure 90 percent was used. Then he said, `We estimate the number of these procedures that are done at between 3,000 and 5,000, not 500.' He said, `We have known this all along.' He said as soon as the bill was introduced he called some of his providers, and he knew this from day one of this debate, of, now, I think, 2 or 3 years ago. Yet the industry, knowing this, up until literally the day before, and in fact on the Web page of some of the abortion rights groups, you still find claims that this is a rare procedure used only in the cases of fetal abnormality. So they continue to try to perpetrate the lie, and they certainly did until Ron Fitzsimmons blew the whistle.
So what do we know now? I am not too sure we know too much. We know from the Abortion Provider Organization that they are willing to admit to 3,000 to 5,000. There is no check on what that number is. It could be 3,000 to 5,000, 5,000 to 10,000, 10,000 to 20,000, 20,000 to 30,000. There is no independent verification of that number, and we have to rely on the organization that is here fighting this bill to give us the information which we want to fight over. So we know of at least 3,000 to 5,000, but we also know that in one abortion clinic alone 1,500 were performed last year, and the doctors who were interviewed for that story in the Bergen County Sunday Record said they had trained other abortion doctors in the New York area who also performed the procedure. The other people who were known to perform the procedure and teach it do not reside in the New York area. And we also have reports from a doctor in Nebraska who said that he has performed 1,000 of these abortions.
So I just caution, as we begin the debate here, that we are debating on some very soft ground when it comes to how many of these abortions are performed, when we make this claim that it is only a few thousand. Maybe I am making too much of the fact that it is a few thousand as opposed to a few hundred. I guess I make the point because it points out the inaccuracy of the opposition's information. Frankly, if it was one, it is as much of a crime, in my mind, and I hope in most Americans' minds. If we subject one baby unnecessarily to this barbarism, is that not enough? Do we need 500? Do we need 1,000? Do we need 3,000 to 5,000? Is that the threshold where Americans will look up and say maybe we should do something about it? One is not enough. It does not stir up moral outrage if it is only 1, 2, 200, or 500.
Why is this procedure used? As I said before, they suggested that this procedure was used to protect the life and health of the mother. That was the argument being used. As I said before, 90 percent of the abortions, according to the people who oppose this bill, 90 percent of the abortions, are performed electively, for no reason other than the mother decides late in pregnancy that she does not want to carry the baby.
The question is, is it ever medically necessary to use this? Because that is the argument, that we need to keep this procedure legal because it is medically necessary to protect, as the amendment from the Senator from California, Senator Boxer, which we anticipate being offered, it is necessary to keep this procedure legal to protect the life and health of the mother.
But we have the life-of-the-mother exception in the bill. So we have taken care of the first issue. Although, as I said before, I cannot imagine--and I have asked on the floor this question, and I ask it again--any circumstance where a mother presents herself in a life-threatening situation where you would then conduct a procedure that takes 3 days in which to abort the child. Again, I am a lay person here, not a physician. I have talked to physicians, and they say there is no such situation. But as a lay person, you don't have to be a doctor to figure this one out. You are rushed and presented to a doctor with a life-threatening situation and they say, let me give you medicine and come back, and then give you medicine again and come back, and they give you more medicine and send you home. That isn't going to happen. But to take care of those who have an objection, we put a life-of-the-mother exception in there.
Now they want a health-of-the-mother exception. Let's first look at whether this would be used to protect the health of the mother. I have talked to a lot of physicians, obstetricians who have stated very clearly to me that a partial-birth abortion is never necessary to protect the life or health of a mother. That is a group of more than 400 obstetricians, principally obstetricians and gynecologists, and some other physicians, including C. Everett Koop, former Surgeon General of the United States, who, prior to his fame as Surgeon General, was a well-respected and well-known pediatric surgeon who dealt with children shortly after birth, trying to fix some of the problems that they were born with. So we have clear medical judgment that this procedure is never necessary to protect the health of the mother. In fact, they make the argument that it is contraindicated, that it, in fact, threatens the health of the mother for a variety of different reasons. So we have doctors who say that this is not necessary to protect the health of the mother.
Now, I will ask--and I have asked Members on the other side of this issue--when would this procedure be used to protect the health of the mother? Remember, it is a 3-day procedure. I have talked to physicians who say there are times when the life of the mother is in danger or the health of the mother is in danger and they need to separate the child from the mother. But in none of those cases is it necessary to deliberately kill the baby. They can induce labor, deliver the child vaginally and give it a chance to live. They can do a Cesarean section and deliver the child that way and give the child a chance to live. At no time is an abortion necessary that kills the baby in order to protect the health of the mother. And so why is it performed?
The answer is very simple. It was given by the person who designed the procedure, who is not an obstetrician. He is a family practitioner who does abortions. He designed this procedure, very candidly, because this was a procedure that he could do on an outpatient basis. The woman would present herself after 3 days of having her cervix dilated, and he would be able to quickly do this procedure, so that he could do more in one day. It is done for the convenience of the abortionist. That is why. It is not done to protect anybody's life or health. It is done to make it easier on the abortionist. And it is used, again, on healthy moms, healthy babies in the fifth and sixth month of pregnancy, in almost all cases.
Where is this procedure done? Will you find this procedure done in the finest hospitals in this country? Will you find it even described in a medical book? Will you find it taught at any school in this country? The answer to all of those questions is `no.' This is not taught anywhere. This has not been peer-reviewed anywhere. This is not used in any major medical center. It is used in abortion clinics exclusively. No hospital will get near this procedure. It is not a peer-reviewed procedure. It is not an accepted medical procedure. It is not in any textbooks or in any kind of educational literature. It is a fringe procedure by someone who wanted to make it easy on themselves to do more late-term abortions and do more of them in 1 day.
So that sort of sums up the who, what, when, why, where, and how many of this procedure.