what we don't need to know

By Diogenes ( articles ) | Mar 14, 2004

The National Abortion Federation and Planned Parenthood are suing to overturn the Partial Birth Abortion Act but slammed shut their doors when the Department of Justice asked them to produce their medical records. Mona Charen has some telling remarks thereon:

While a federal judge in California has obligingly refused to order the plaintiffs to produce the medical records, Judge Richard Casey in New York saw things quite differently. Addressing lawyers for the National Abortion Federation, he said: "They didn't have to be plaintiffs. ... You have brought this lawsuit. I will not -- hear me out loud and clear -- I will not let the doctors hide, not let the doctors hide behind the shield of the hospital. Is that clear?" ...

Laymen may wonder why the procedure is done at all. Consult Dr. Martin Haskell's paper presented to a meeting of the National Abortion Federation in 1992. Haskell was the originator of the procedure. It was designed, he said, because it could be done in a doctor's office under local anesthesia, rather than in a hospital. Second, it was quicker (for the doctor) than dismemberment abortions, which sometimes took "45 minutes." Third, "most surgeons find dismemberment at 20 weeks and beyond to be difficult due to the toughness of fetal tissues at this stage of development."