| When President Clinton was addressing the abortion issue a number of years ago, he told the American people that he wanted abortions to be safe, legal and rare. Unfortunately, he has not kept that promise in any way, shape or form. In fact, in every single case where he had an opportunity to limit the number of abortions performed this year, he chose not to. Right now, the annual number of abortions performed in a year is running at the rate of 1.5 million, which means that right around half of the children that are resting in their mothers' wombs at this moment will not survive to term because someone will kill them.
On June 10, 1993, after the election, the President signed into law the act that made it legal to use for research the brains of unborn children that were extracted in the process of abortion. On April 10, 1996, the President, in a flagrant disregard for the concerns of 71% of the population of this country, the concerns of the overwhelming majority of the House, and the concerns of the majority of those in the Senate, vetoed a bill that would have made illegal one of the most grotesque medical practices that civilized man has come up with-- partial-birth abortion.
In partial-birth abortion, a child is delivered 85-90% with its head just inside the vulva of its mother. Its cranium is pierced with a pair of scissors, a suction tube is placed inside and its brain is sucked out. The brain can then be used for commercial purposes. Many people don't really know exactly what partial-birth abortions are because they haven't been privy to the details, partly because of the grotesque misinformation that has been handed down through the press and from the President himself.
The day following the veto, I was listening to Jane Chastain's program, " What Washington Doesn't Want You to Know. " She was asking for opinions. I called in and said, "I am angry. I am angry because people lie. People who know better. People who are in positions of high public trust. People who know the truth. Yet they lie for their own purposes and they lie through their teeth."
If you know me at all, you know I believe lying takes more than telling an untruth. You must tell an untruth with an intent to deceive. You must know that what you are saying is untrue and you say it anyway so that people will believe that which is untrue. I think there are a lot of people who are mistaken and tell untruths, but they are not doing it maliciously. They're just wrong. So, I generally don't speak in such a way as my judgment goes to the intent of the person speaking. But once in a while, when I know someone is lying, I do. The President of the United States lied to this country last week and he knew it. He vetoed this legislation under the pretense that this kind of operation, though rare, was necessary to save the life or the health of the mother or to do away with a severely handicapped child that would have suffered and died quickly anyway.
Ladies and gentlemen, that is false. How do I know? Because I got the information from the best source possible. Who? Some pro-life group? No. From the doctors who do the abortions themselves. There are two doctors who are responsible for the great bulk of these partial-birth abortions: the late Dr. McMann from Los Angeles and Dr. Martin Haskell of Ohio. Martin Haskell was specifically asked about this because there is so much misinformation on it. He responded in an article in the American Medical News, the official newspaper of the AMA, "I'll be frank. Most of my abortions are elective in that 20-24 week range. In my particular case, probably 20% of these abortions are for genetic reasons and the other 80% are purely elective." In other words, there is no reason to give this abortion except for the mother wanted it.
If anybody ought to know the basic, fundamental facts about the conditions under which partial-birth abortion is performed, the President of the United States ought to know. Especially when he is responsible for either signing or vetoing a bill.
The President has the audacity to parade five women before the press who had had this kind of abortion, which strikes me as the wrong way to try to argue for the morality of an act. "We know this is moral. Why? Well, because here are five women who had it. Tell your experiences." That isn't the way to answer this kind of question. By the way, these five women, if you trusted their accounts, seemed to have a situation where it was really critical. But the President offered these five women, along with the challenge of "Are you going to judge these women?", as the exception that proves the rule that this grotesque procedure must be allowed to take place. He did this even when the law already had provision for the life of the mother, such that if her life was in jeopardy, she could have this procedure if nothing else would do. The life of the mother was already protected. But, no, he wanted the broader language of health, which means anything according to Doe vs. Bolton. Anything. So he struck down this one law that would have protected at least five or six hundred late term children a year who will be brutally killed by this method.
I'm mad for a good reason. The person in the highest position of trust in this country, the President of the United States, has lied and he knew it. And he's lied about an issue that results in the death of human children. You see, this is the deal with D&X. You can't just argue that it's a piece of tissue or that it's just a piece of the woman's body. In D&X, you see the whole baby. You know its sex, not because of some fuzzy sonogram, but because you can see its sexual organs right there. The child is right there. It is in your arms before it is killed. There's nothing hidden. If anybody ought to know the basic, fundamental facts about the conditions under which partial-birth abortion is performed, the President of the United States ought to know. Especially when he is responsible for either signing or vetoing a bill.
Is anybody going to try to tell me that he doesn't have access to the same facts that I got very easily just by surfing the web? Is anybody going to try to tell me that the statements of the two doctors who are most responsible for the largest number of partial- birth abortions somehow escaped him? Does he get all of his information from the National Abortion Federation which also lies on this issue? I have some of their own material that gives contrary information to the misinformation they have been publishing on partial-birth abortion. Is that where the President gets his information? He is the President for goodness sake! If I can get it, he can get it. If you can get it, he can get it. If we can figure this out, he can figure this out. He did get it. He did figure it out and he lied.
Let me read you a commentary. I don't usually do this but I'm going to read it in its entirety because it is so powerful. This is from the L.A. Times , Friday, April 12, 1996, titled " The Eternity Within Signed Away By Pro-Abortion Veto " by Helen Avari, Director of Planning and Information of the Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops in Washington. Here's what she writes.
"On Good Friday, President Clinton visited the scene of the Oklahoma City bombing where so many children were killed one year ago. There he delivered this message: 'On Easter', he said, 'Christians the world over would bear witness to our faith that the miracles of Jesus and those of human spirits seen in Oklahoma City only reflect the larger miracle of human nature. That there is something eternal within each of us no bomb can blow away. Even from the littlest child, that eternity which is within each of us.' Five days later and Easter past, the President vetoed a bill that would have protected the tiniest child from being killed in the process of delivery by partial-birth abortion. Surrounding himself with five women who had faced tragedy during their pregnancies and condemning those who would use them as political pawns, the President proceeded to use them as just that and fraudulently as well. The President claimed repeatedly that a partial-birth abortion is done only to preserve a woman's life or her future fertility or to end the lives of children so sick they would likely not live long after being born alive. The President chose to ignore what those who perform partial-birth abortions have said again and again--the vast majority of abortions they perform are purely elective. Even those they call non- elective would be considered elective by most people. For example, the late Dr. James McMann called non-elective those partial-birth abortions that were performed because of the mother's youth or because she was depressed. We cannot fail to note the disturbing implications of using the aborted children of the five women as political pawns in their own right. The disabilities these children had, the short lives they might have had, were held up only as reasons to perform the most brutal procedure the abortion industry has ever invented. The President chose to mourn these dead children only in so far as it was useful for evoking sympathy. The President also said over and over again that partial-birth abortions are needed to protect the mother's health. The preponderance of medical evidence supplied by the very people who perform these brutal abortions says the exact opposite. So does common sense. It absolutely defies reason to claim that once a child is almost completely delivered vaginally with only its head remaining inside the mother's body, that it could possibly be essential to her medical health that the child be stabbed and the contents of its head suctioned out. Once delivery is that far along, delivering the child a few more inches does not imperil a woman's health. It does, however, produce a dead child rather than a live child. Even children with hydrocephalus are able to safely be delivered vaginally after excess fluid is removed from their heads with needles designed for that purpose. Many live long and happy lives. Dr. Warren Hurn, a late-term abortionist and author of the most widely-used abortion text book said this about partial- birth abortions and their safety for women: 'I would dispute any statement that this is the safest procedure to use'. Turning the child into the breach position, he explained, is 'potentially dangerous. You have to be concerned about causing amniotic fluid embolism or placental abruption if you do that.' Rather than deal with the facts about partial-birth abortions, President Clinton chose instead to toe the line drawn by the abortion lobby and to confront the nation with women who had experienced personal tragedies regarding their pregnancies. And in so doing, he dared all of us to judge them. It's not our place to judge them, but as citizens of the United States, we have every right and every reason to condemn the veto that puts our nation one step closer to legalized infanticide. Shame on the President! Congress should vote overwhelmingly and quickly to override this inexcusable veto."
I concur. Shame on the President. He's a liar, at least as far as this issue is concerned. His lie puts many children at risk. |
