Forcing a Pro-Choice Crisis: What About Third Trimester Abortions?

Fr. Frank Pavone
National Director, Priests for Life


What do LeRoy Carhart, Warren Hern, and George Tiller have in common? They are among an unknown number who perform abortions in the third trimester of pregnancy (the third 

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trimester being the seventh, eighth, and ninth month!)


For two decades I have been proclaiming from the pulpits of America that abortions happen in the third trimester. Many Americans find it hard to believe. Now, in the aftermath of the death of George Tiller, this fact is getting a bit more attention.


The Associated Press reported on June 2 in an article by Eric Olson that physician LeRoy Carhart of Nebraska wants to continue performing abortions at this late stage, but he, as well as Warren Hern, also want to make sure enough physicians are trained in how to do so.


How many are we talking about? The AP story reported, "Carhart said 75 to 100 of the "several thousand" abortions he performs annually are in the third trimester."


Stanley K. Henshaw, a senior fellow at the Guttmacher Institute, the research division of Planned Parenthood, and the best source of these statistics, is quoted in a June 5 Washington Post article as saying, "The information just isn't available...This is an area that we just don't know much about."


The Guttmacher Institute does report in its official statistics, however, that some 13,310 abortions each year are at 21 weeks or more of pregnancy (that is, 1.1% of the 1.21 million abortions per year). Of the 40 states that reported in 2005 to the Centers for Disease Control, 32 states reported abortions of babies 21 weeks or older.


This means that every day, 37 babies the size of a large banana are dismembered and decapitated - and these include healthy babies of healthy mothers...and it's happening legally.


These are babies that the mother can already feel moving. According to MedlinePlus, a service of the U.S. National Library of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health, these babies are storing fat on their bodies, their heartbeat can be heard with a stethoscope, they can hear, they have eyebrows, eyelashes, fingernails and toenails. Incidentally, MedlinePlus calls them "babies." (See   www.nlm.nih.gov/MEDLINEPLUS/ency/article/002398.htm ).


Many people wonder how they can get some traction in the seemingly intractable abortion debate. How can they get people to listen, or make pro-choice people believe that pro-life people have good reason to be against abortion?


My suggestion: start by discussing the facts I just mentioned.
It's morally legitimate to focus on late-term abortion; that doesn't deny that all abortion is wrong; it's simply a way to get the ball rolling, a pedagogical method of going from the most obvious to the less obvious, of starting with what people know and leading to what they don't know.


When people are astonished by these facts, as they will be, they are forced to re-evaluate just how much priority "privacy" and "choice" have over life. If they are "pro-choice," they are forced to figure out when in pregnancy the line is drawn - and why.
And now you're talking.


The text and audio of this column can be found online at www.priestsforlife.org/columns/columns2009/09-06-15-pro-choice-crisis.htm



Fr. Frank's columns are podcast. Click here for more information.
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As promised, here is a sneak preview of what’s in my upcoming book,

 Pro-life Reflections for Every Day:

January 1

"I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End" (Revelation 21:6).

Reflection: God gives us the gift of life, in units of years and months and days, and we likewise give it back to him, in days and months and years of faithful service. In the New Year, let us put the defense of the unborn at the top of our priority list.

Prayer: Lord, enable me to devote more time, more energy, more resources to the greatest human rights movement of our day, the pro-life movement. May I speak up more vigorously, act more decisively, and be even more confident about the victory of life.

January 2

"When you have a reception, invite beggars and the crippled, the lame and the blind. You should be pleased that they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid in the resurrection of the just." - Lk. 14:13-14

Reflection. Jesus calls us to the purest form of love, that is, love of those who cannot repay us. The unborn children, whose lives we seek to protect, cannot repay us and do not even know we are fighting for them. Pro-life work is motivated by pure love.

Prayer. Lord, increase my love for the children in the womb, who cannot acknowledge or repay me. May you be my only reward.

January 3

"Anyone who does not take up his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple." - Lk. 14:27

Reflection. To stand up for what is right means we stand against what is wrong, and that means that those who love what is wrong will oppose us, just as they opposed Christ. Taking up the cross means we continue speaking and standing for the right even when that opposition comes.

Prayer. Lord, thank you for the grace of being pro-life, and of standing strong when others may ridicule or oppose me. May your peace fill my soul, and may I become more like your crucified and risen Son.

January 4

"We need now more than ever to have the courage to look the truth in the eye and to call things by their proper name, without yielding to convenient compromises or to the temptation of self-deception." (Evangelium Vitae, 58)

Reflection: Some call abortion "termination of pregnancy." But so is birth. The fact is that every pregnancy terminates. The issue is how. Abortion supporters are simply masking an act of violence with their language. It's like a man killing his wife and saying, "I terminated our marriage."

Prayer: Spirit of truth, keep us free from the power of deception. Give us clear minds to know truth, and courageous tongues to speak it. Amen.
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