[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 135 (Thursday, September 26, 1996)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1709-E1710]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




PARTIAL-BIRTH ABORTION BAN ACT OF 1995--VETO MESSAGE FROM THE PRESIDENT 
               OF THE UNITED STATES (H. DOC. NO. 104-198)

                                 ______
                                 

                               speech of

                          HON. PHILIP M. CRANE

                              of illinois

                    in the house of representatives

                      Thursday, September 19, 1996

  Mr. CRANE. Mr. Speaker, opponents of H.R. 1833, the Partial-Birth 
Abortion Ban Act, justified their support of this form of infanticide 
by stating that the procedure was medically necessary in some cases. In 
fact, President Clinton, as he vetoed the bill, ensured that his photo-
ops included women who had survived this gruesome procedure.
  As my distinguished colleague Henry Hyde mentioned in his closing 
remarks of the veto override debate, proabortion forces are disturbed 
by our attempt to outlaw these acts because the legislation shifts the 
focus from the woman's choice to the brutal and fatal act of the 
abortion procedure. In their attempt to justify all abortions, abortion 
advocates have fully exposed their agenda by lobbying to protect this 
form of baby murder. Apparently, they are ignoring the health risks to 
women who have been or could be subjected to the medically necessary 
procedure we seek to outlaw.
  In fact, supporters of H.R. 1833 included many trained in the medical 
profession. Our colleague, Dr. Tom Coburn, a practicing obstetrician, 
assisted in writing the bill. Other well-trained physicians, true to 
their Hippocratic oath, lent their support to outlaw partial-birth 
abortions and exposed the serious health dangers inherent in such a 
brutal procedure.
  Four physicians, all of whom are experts in obstetrics or fetal 
health, explained their support for H.R. 1833 in the September 19, 1996 
Wall Street Journal article entitled, ``Partial-Birth Abortion Is Bad 
Medicine''. As our colleagues in the other body this week attempt to 
override the veto of this most humane legislation, I commend the 
article to their attention and urge them to follow the lead of the 
House, override the President's veto and make H.R. 1833 law.

             [From the Wall Street Journal, Sept. 19, 1996]

                 Partial-Birth Abortion Is Bad Medicine

  (By Nancy Romer, Pamela Smith, Curtis R. Cook, and Joseph L. DeCook)

       The House of Representatives will vote in the next few days 
     on whether to override President Clinton's veto of the 
     Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act. The debate on the subject has 
     been noisy and rancorous. You've heard from the activists. 
     You've heard from the politicians. Now may we speak?
       We are the physicians who, on a daily basis, treat pregnant 
     women and their babies. And we can no longer remain silent 
     while abortion activists, the media and even the president of 
     the United States continue to repeat false medical claims 
     about partial-birth abortion. The appalling lack of medical 
     credibility on the side of those defending this procedure has 
     forced us--for the first time in our professional careers--to 
     leave the sidelines in order to provide some sorely needed 
     facts in a debate that has been dominated by anecdote, 
     emotion and media stunts.
       Since the debate on this issue began, those whose real 
     agenda is to keep all types of abortion legal--at any stage 
     of pregnancy, for any reason--have waged what can only be 
     called an orchestrated misinformation campaign.
       First the National Abortion Federation and other pro-
     abortion groups claimed the procedure didn't exist. When a 
     paper written by the doctor who invented the procedure was 
     produced, abortion proponents changed their story, claiming 
     the procedure was only done when a woman's life was in 
     danger. Then the same doctor, the nation's main practitioner 
     of the technique, was caught--on tape--admitting that 80% of 
     his partial-birth abortions were ``purely elective.''
       Then there was the anesthesia myth. The American public was 
     told that it wasn't the abortion that killed the baby, but 
     the anesthesia administered to the mother before the 
     procedure. This claim was immediately and thoroughly 
     denounced by the American Society of Anesthesiologists, which 
     called the claim ``entirely inaccurate.'' Yet Planned 
     Parenthood and its allies continued to spread the myth, 
     causing needless concern among our pregnant patients who 
     heard the claims and were terrified that epidurals during 
     labor, or anesthesia during needed surgeries, would kill 
     their babies.
       The latest baseless statement was made by President Clinton 
     himself when he said that if the mothers who opted for 
     partial-birth abortions had delivered their children 
     naturally, the women's bodies would have been ``eviscerated'' 
     or ``ripped to shreds'' and they ``could never have another 
     baby.''
       That claim is totally and completely false. Contrary to 
     what abortion activists would have us believe, partial-birth 
     abortion is never medically indicated to protect a woman's 
     health or her fertility. In fact, the opposite is true: The 
     procedure can pose a significant and immediate threat to both 
     the pregnant woman's health and her fertility. It seems to 
     have escaped anyone's attention that one of the five women 
     who appeared at Mr. Clinton's veto ceremony had five 
     miscarriages after her partial-birth abortion.
       Consider the dangers inherent in partial-birth abortion, 
     which usually occurs after the fifth month of pregnancy. A 
     woman's cervix is forcibly dilated over several days, which 
     risks creating an ``incompetent cervix,'' the leading cause 
     of premature deliveries. It is also an invitation to 
     infection, a major cause of infertility. The abortionist then 
     reaches into the womb to pull a child feet first out of the 
     mother (internal podalic version), but leaves the head 
     inside. Under normal circumstances, physicians avoid breech 
     births whenever possible; in this case, the doctor 
     intentionally causes one--and risks tearing the uterus in the 
     process. He then forces scissors through the base of the 
     baby's skull--which remains lodged just within the birth 
     canal. This is a partially ``blind'' procedure, done by feel, 
     risking direct scissor injury to the uterus and laceration of 
     the cervix or lower uterine segment,

[[Page E1710]]

     resulting in immediate and massive bleeding and the threat of 
     shock or even death to the mother.
       None of this risk is ever necessary for any reason. We and 
     many other doctors across the U.S. regularly treat women 
     whose unborn children suffer the same conditions as those 
     cited by the women who appeared at Mr. Clinton's veto 
     ceremony. Never is the partial-birth procedure necessary. Not 
     for hydrocephaly (excessive cerebrospinal fluid in the head), 
     not for polyhydramnios (an excess of amniotic fluid 
     collecting in the women) and not for trisomy (genetic 
     abnormalities characterized by an extra chromosome). 
     Sometimes, as in the case of hydrocephaly, it is first 
     necessary to drain some of the fluid from the baby's head. 
     And in some cases, when vaginal delivery is not possible, a 
     doctor performs a Caesarean section. But in no case is it 
     necessary to partially deliver an infant through the vagina 
     and then kill the infant.
       How telling it is that although Mr. Clinton met with women 
     who claimed to have needed partial-birth abortions on account 
     of these conditions, he has flat-out refused to meet with 
     women who delivered babies with these same conditions, with 
     no damage whatsoever to their health or future fertility.
       Former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop was recently asked 
     whether he'd ever operated on children who had any of the 
     disabilities described in this debate. Indeed he had. In 
     fact, one of his patients--``with a huge omphalocele [a sac 
     containing the baby's organs] much bigger than her head''--
     went on to become the head nurse in his intensive care unit 
     many years later.
       Mr. Koop's reaction to the president's veto? ``I believe 
     that Mr. Clinton was misled by his medical advisers on what 
     is fact and what is fiction'' on the matter, he said. Such a 
     procedure, he added, cannot truthfully be called medically 
     necessary for either the mother or--he scarcely need point 
     out--for the baby.
       Considering these medical realities, one can only conclude 
     that the women who thought they underwent partial-birth-
     abortions for ``medical'' reasons were tragically misled. And 
     those who purport to speak for women don't seem to care.
       So whom are you going to believe? The activist-extremists 
     who refuse to allow a little truth to get in the way of their 
     agenda? The politicians who benefit from the activists' 
     political action committees? Or doctors who have the facts?

                          ____________________