Are pro-lifers lying through their teeth when they say that abortion dismembers a living human being in the womb? Our critics like to say we’re lying, but today I hope to show you that we are not. Now, what instigated this was an email I got from a critic of our view I’ll call him Mike because that was his name. And he wrote to say, listen, I heard your podcast earlier where you talked about Dr. Warren Hearn and his book, Abortion Practice. And you were quoting Dr. Hearn describing how he does dismemberment abortions. And I’m here to tell you those types of abortions almost never happen. And they’re only done under the most extreme circumstances. Well, I thought that was interesting because that’s not what the medical literature seems to say. So here was the choice in front of me. Do I believe Mike, who by profession is an ICU nurse? Thank you, Mike, for your service and saving lives in that regard. Or do I believe Dr. Warren Hearn, arguably the world’s most known abortionist who’s written a medical text on how to do abortion procedures. Who is telling the truth? Dr. Hearn, who describes abortion dismemberment techniques in riveting detail, Or do I believe an ICU nurse? Well, I decided to go ahead and just not prejudice my instigation here. Let’s go ahead and just look into the facts and see what we can find out. So I went back to Dr. Hearn’s books And I wanted to find out a couple of things. Number one, I wanted to find out are most dismemberment abortions done strictly for medical necessity, meaning the woman’s life is in danger, or the fetus is somehow suffering from severe anomalies. And Dr. Hearn says just the opposite. I’m going to quote right from his book, on page 10, he says that everyone in this debate And I’ll quote him now. He says, everyone in this debate understands that all but a few abortions are done for what we call broadly socioeconomic reasons. reasons, end quote. In other words, these are not being done for medical necessity. They’re being done for lifestyle issues like the emotional health of the woman. The woman is facing economic challenges, socioeconomic challenges, and she goes ahead and has the abortion anyway. And he makes it very clear on page ten of his book that that is the predominant reason why late term abortions are done in his clinic. Now, he’s not the only one that’s going to argue that, but I thought I’d go ahead and look at the next question. Does dismemberment abortion, as pro-lifers describe it, accurately convey what’s really going on? When pro-lifers talk about dismemberment abortions, pulling the limbs off a living fetus in the womb, are they exaggerating for dramatic effect? Well, I don’t think so. Let me start with a few quotes here, and I’m going to spend a good part of today just reading through some quotes that talk about what this is. So I’m going to start with Justice Anthony Kennedy, former Supreme Court Justice. And he was no friend of pro-lifers. In fact, he more often than not sided against us in abortion decisions. But he was honest enough to convey what was going on in a D&E abortion. In other words, a dilatation and evacuation abortion that involves dismembering the child in the womb. And here’s what Anthony Kennedy writes. He says the fetus in many cases dies just as any human adult or child would. It bleeds to death as it is torn limb from limb. The fetus can be alive at the beginning of the dismemberment process and can survive for a time while its limbs are being torn off. Dr. Leroy Carhart, the abortionist who challenged Nebraska’s partial birth ban, has observed fetal heartbeat with extensive parts of the fetus removed. I hope you heard that. Fetal heartbeat with extensive parts of the fetus removed. and justified that mere dismember or testified rather that mere dismemberment of a limb does not always cause death because he knows of a physician who removed the arm of a fetus only to have that fetus go on to be born as a living child with one arm. Wow. At the conclusion of the D&E abortion, says Kennedy, the abortionist is left with a tray full of pieces. Okay, that’s not a pro-life guy. That’s a Supreme Court justice. sympathetic to the abortion license who says that. Now, I’ve had other people say, but okay, but still Most of these abortions that are done, especially late term, are for medical necessity. Well, let’s go back. Let’s see. Has that ever been the case? I’m going to take you back over 40 years. to an article that appeared in Planned Parenthood’s own journal, Family Planning Perspectives, from August of 19 88. So we’re going back a ways. Even back then, here’s what Planned Parenthood’s own medical journal at the time said. 97 percent of abortions are socioeconomic. One percent were due to rape, 6 percent potential health problems of the fetus or mother, not guaranteed health problems, potential. And again, we all know that health is defined so broadly you can drive a Mack truck through it, that health includes emotional reasons, socioeconomic reasons, family reasons. So it’s not life of the mother they’re talking about here, but health of the mother. And then 93 percent, they say, are for social socioeconomic reasons, meaning non hard cases again. This is right out of family planning perspectives. I went ahead and pulled the summary sheet of the study. And you can see the table there when you read it that indicates that most abortions, even back then Planned Parenthood was admitting, were done for socioeconomic reasons. Then, of course, we have Dr. Warren Hearn’s book, where he says essentially the same thing, that most of these abortions—and keep in mind, he’s a late-term abortionist— are done for socioeconomic reasons. Now let’s fast forward a little bit to the late 19 nineties when our nation was having a big debate about partial birth abortion and the question was Were these partial birth abortions done for medical necessity or for other reasons? Now, just to review, a partial birth abortion is where the child is delivered breech, feet first, and with only the head left in the birth canal, the physician, or let’s be more accurate, the abortionist, will puncture the skull of the fetus, open up a wound in the back of the skull, insert a vacuum into the back of the skull and suck out the child’s brains, thus killing the child, then delivering the corpse full after the child’s demise. That’s partial birth abortion. And the question is, is this something that was done strictly for medical necessity the way critics of the pro-life view? say? Well, I want to cite some sources that indicate that’s not the case. In fact, I want to in on one in particular because it involves a court case. This is testimony that was put before Judge Casey in two thousand four, and this involved a New York state Supreme Court case where partial birth abortion was at issue. And Judge Casey, who is not pro-life, was very clear about the findings of the testimony he heard. And I want to summarize the 3 things that he brings out in the testimony that is done here. Number one, partial birth abortion procedure is accurately described by pro-lifers. other words, when they talk about the procedure involving a child delivered breach, the head punctured and the brain vacuumed out, that is accurate. And that held up under testimony in this court case. The second thing he brought out is this procedure was not needed for the life or the health of the mother. It was largely being done for socioeconomic reasons. Number 3, The fetus was delivered alive, but died once its brain was In other words, it was all but delivered with only the head in the birth canal, and then its brain was sucked out. Up till that point, it had been alive. So again, this is not a pro-life site. This is not a pro-life source. This is a judge who eventually ruled in favor of the procedure, even though he admitted the facts were grisly. So this isn’t a pro-life guy saying this. Again, this is one of your guys if you support abortion. Now, there are other things we can point out here about this, and I want to cite a few. Oftentimes I’m told pro-lifers, you’re just being sensational when you describe abortion. Is that really true, though? I don’t think so. And I’m going to find the quotes here in a minute, but here they are. I want to read you some quotes just from people on your side if you support abortion. that are very honest, direct, and I applaud the people for being at least honest about it. first, abortionist Warren Hearn. In a paper entitled What About Us that he delivered to a Planned Parenthood medical conference, he said this. We have reached a point in this particular technology, meaning dismemberment abortions, that’s what he has in view when he says this particular technology, where there is no possibility of denying an act of destruction. It is before one’s eyes. the sensations of dismemberment flow through the forceps like an electric current. And Hearn basically repeats the same idea in his book, Abortion Practice. He’s been very clear on that. Now, lest you think that’s just Hearn, feminist Camille Paglia Pallula, who I’ve come to admire for her candor on the abortion issue, in her essay, Fresh Blood for the Vampire, says this, Hence, I have always frankly admitted that abortion is murder, the extermination of the powerless by the powerful. Liberals for the most part have shrunk from facing the ethical consequences of their embrace of abortion which results in the annihilation of concrete individuals, not mere clumps of insensate tissue. In other words, abortion is intentionally killing a human being. And if you call it anything other than that, you’re not being honest, she says. I agree with her. I think that’s exactly correct. Ronald Dworkin, in his book Life’s Dominion, writes, abortion deliberately kills a developing embryo and is a choice for death. Okay, Dworkin is a political philosopher, very much on the left, very much not a conservative or pro-life. but he is being honest in his book, Life Dominion. Of course, Naomi Wolf is a feminist we’ve talked about before. And in her essay, Our Bodies, Our Souls in Summer of 19 95 in the New Republic. Again, New Republic, not a conservative journal. She writes this, clinging to a rhetoric about abortion in which there is no life and no death, We entangle our beliefs in a series of self-delusions. Fibs and evasions. Wow. Not just delusions, but fibs and evasions. and we risk becoming precisely what our critics charge us with being— Callous, selfish, and casually destructive men and women who share a cheapened view of human life. Okay, again, that’s Naomi Wolf, not a pro-life apologist somewhere. Now, this is not new, this idea that abortion intentionally kills a living human being. As far back as 19 70 in California medicine, right when the abortion debate was hitting high stride here in the U.S., The peer-reviewed medical journal California Medicine, in an op-ed written by 2 doctors favorable toward abortion, says the following. Since the old ethic has not yet been fully displaced, it has become necessary to separate the idea of abortion from the idea of killing, which continues to be socially abhorrent. The result has been a curious avoidance of the scientific fact, which everyone really knows, that human life begins at conception and is continuous whether intra or extra uterine until death. The very considerable semantic gymnastics which are required to rationalize abortion is anything but the taking of human life, would be ludicrous if they were not often put forth under socially impeccable auspices, It is suggested that this schizophrenic sort of subterfuge is necessary because while the new ethic is being accepted, The old one has not yet been rejected. Again, a source favorable to abortion being very candid that number one, The unborn are living human beings from conception. And number 2, abortion is killing, even if we try to kid ourselves into saying it’s not. This is the evidence that’s out there. And to those who say pro-lifers are simply being dramatic or overstating their case, I’m open to that, but I need to see some peer reviewed evidence from you. Simply calling us liars isn’t going to work. Do your homework if you’re gonna come on and say that pro-lifers are lying. Why not try to enter the conversation with evidence rather than just flamboyant drama that says, oh, I don’t like what my critics say, so I’ll call them a liar. These are people on your side of the issue if you’re pro-choice that say abortion involves intentionally killing a human being. That’s not pro-life rhetoric. It’s people on your side of the issue, including America’s leading abortionist, Dr. Warren Hearn. I think he’s worth listening to on his description of what abortion is, even though, of course, I very much disagree with his abortion practice. Hey, I hope you’ll join us on social media. Go like our site, spread these links to these videos if you like them, and I look forward to seeing you next time.