On November 26, 2003, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer published a “guest editorial” attacking the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, and attacking President Bush and the Congress for enacting it. The essay was written by Monica J. Casper, a Seattle sociologist who has written a book titled The Making of the Unborn Patient: A Social Anatomy of Fetal Surgery (Rutgers University Press, 1998).
In her essay, Casper — then 27 weeks pregnant — argued that the bill could jeopardize her life and the lives of other pregnant women. Enactment of this bill meant that Congress felt “that my one-pound, non-voting, non-taxpaying fetus has more value than I do,” Casper asserted.
In response, Carolyn A. Johnson, who is married to NRLC Legislative Director Douglas Johnson, submitted her own account, which appears below. It was published in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer on December 5, 2003, in slightly different form.
Life, Death, and Partial-Birth Abortion
by Carolyn A. Johnson
In her guest column [Nov. 26], Monica J. Casper told readers that she is 27 weeks pregnant (just past six full months) with a “deeply wanted” baby. The recently enacted Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, Casper argued, would force her to sacrifice her own life or health if she develops a serious illness, such as “severe preeclampsia.”
Acute medical crises certain can occur during pregnancy, forcing life and death decisions to be made quickly. I know — it happened to me.
During my first pregnancy in 1990, like Casper I was just a few days past the 27 week point when without warning I developed the most severe form of pre-eclampsia (called “HELLP syndrome”). My blood pressure rose steeply. My kidneys and liver began to fail. Doctors told us that unless the pregnancy was ended immediately, I would die — and with me, our unborn son, Thomas.
At that point, Casper thinks I needed the legal option of a partial-birth abortion. In this procedure, Thomas would have been deliberately delivered alive, feet first and tummy down, until only his head remained lodged just inside my womb. A surgeon would have firmly wrapped his fingers over Thomas’s shoulders, penetrated the base of his skull with seven-inch surgical scissors — medical authorities say this is excruciatingly painful — and removed his brain with a suction machine.
Yes, that is unpleasant to read — but what I have just described is precisely the method described by an Ohio abortion practitioner in the 1992 instructional paper that touched off the debate over partial-birth abortion.
The bill explicitly allows a partial-birth abortion to be performed if “necessary to save the life of a mother whose life is endangered by a physical disorder, physical illness, or physical injury, including a life-endangering physical condition caused by or arising from the pregnancy itself.” Yet, Casper suggested at least six times that the bill would force her “life” to be sacrificed for the benefit of “my one-pound, non-voting, non-taxpaying fetus.”
But in reality, as former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop and other eminent medical authorities told Congress, “partial-birth abortion is never medically necessary to protect a mother’s health or her future fertility. On the contrary, this procedure can pose a significant threat to both.”
In fact, the overwhelming majority of partial-birth abortions do not involve medical issues at all. Even the executive director of the National Coalition of Abortion Providers, Ron Fitzsimmons, acknowledges that the method is used thousands of times annually, and that “in the vast majority of cases, the procedure is performed on a healthy mother with a healthy fetus that is 20 weeks or more along.”
Fortunately, our doctors knew that they had two patients in crisis, not just one. The pregnancy was indeed immediately terminated — Thomas was delivered by emergency caesarian.
My condition immediately improved, but for weeks Thomas had to struggle for life. At birth, he weighed just one pound, 12 ounces. Days after birth, his grandfather — a Wisconsin outdoorsman — saw our baby in his neonatal incubator and thought to himself that Thomas had the size and hairless appearance of a “skinned squirrel.”
Yet, today Thomas is an eighth-grade honor student. He has many interests and enthusiasms, including acting in plays and writing short stories.
On November 5, Thomas sat next to me in a room as President Bush signed the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act. We were among the hundreds present because Thomas’s father happens to work for National Right to Life.
Although Caster seeks to cast the bill as an attack on women, there were many approving women in that room, including some of the dozens of female members of Congress who voted for the bill. Polls show that the overwhelming majority of American women favor the ban.
The President told us, “For years, a terrible form of violence has been directed against children who are inches from birth, while the law looked the other way.” Some people later criticized this statement because they said that the phrase “inches from birth” implied that partial-birth abortions are usually performed near full term.
But Thomas and countless others are living testimony that that “birth” and “full term” are two radically different things nowadays. Thomas was born 13 weeks before full term — and there are many children alive today who were born a full month earlier than that.
Partial-birth abortions are performed beginning early in the fifth month. Even at that point, preemies who are expelled through spontaneous premature labor are usually live births — so this abortion method is literally a partial live-birth, and the baby is indeed pulled to within “inches from birth,” just as the President said.
Thomas read Casper’s column today. He succinctly observed that there is one big difference between the act that Casper wants available and the approach we took:
“I am alive.”
2003年11月26日，西雅图邮报刊登了一篇抨击半生产堕胎禁令的“特邀社论”，这篇社论批评了布什总统和国会制定这部法律的行为。这篇社论是由西雅图的社会学家莫妮卡 J. 卡斯帕所写的，在此之前，她已经完成了《堕胎的成因：从社会学角度分析人工流产》(罗格斯大学出版社，1998)一书。在这篇文章中，卡斯帕作为一个27周的孕妇，她认为这条法案会危及到她和其他孕妇的生命。卡斯帕宣称，这条法案的颁布意味着国会认为我那一磅重的、没有选举权的、不纳税的胎儿比我更重要。
对此，NRLC(国家生命权利联合会)立法主任道格拉斯·约翰逊的妻子卡罗琳 A. 约翰逊，提出了自己的观点(见下文)。文章形式稍加修改后,发表在了2003年12月5日的西雅图邮报上面。
生命，死亡和半生产堕胎
作者：卡罗琳 A. 约翰逊
莫妮卡 J. 卡斯帕在11月26日，通过特邀专栏告诉读者，她是一个有着27周身孕的(刚过了6个月)、非常想要宝宝的母亲。卡斯帕认为如果她得了严重的疾病，比如重度子痫前期，最近颁布的半生产堕胎禁令会迫使她牺牲她自己的生命或健康。孕期是有可能患上急症的，这时就要做出生与死的抉择，我知道，是因为这在我身上就发生过。
1990年，我第一次怀孕，像卡斯帕一样，我刚刚过了27周的孕期，然而，毫无征兆地，我居然患上了先兆子痫最严重的病(HELP综合症)。我的血压直线上升，我的肾脏和肝脏开始衰竭。医生告知我们，除非立即堕胎，不然我和我那个还没出生的儿子托马斯都会死去。
在这个时候，卡斯帕认为我需要半生产堕胎这个合法的选择。在这个过程中，外科医生将会先把托马斯的脚拉出来，肚子朝下，最后把头留在了子宫内。接着会再用他的手指紧紧抓住托马斯的肩膀，用七英寸的手术刀刺穿他的头骨底部——据医务界说这是难以忍受的痛苦，然后用抽吸器吸出他的大脑。
是的，这读上去让人很不舒服，但是我描述的恰恰是在1992年版教材中俄亥俄州堕胎医生使用的堕胎方法，这种方法当时还引发了对于半生产堕胎的争论。这个法案明确说明，如果一个母亲身体机能失调、生病或者受伤，包括由于怀孕导致或者引起的身体异常，从而危及了生命，那么就可以做半生产堕胎来拯救母亲的性命。卡斯帕至少暗示了六次:这个禁令会让她为那个一磅重的、没有选举权的、不纳税的胎儿牺牲生命。
但实际上，正如前卫生局局长C. 埃弗里特·库普和其他医学权威人士告知国会的内容一样，半生产堕胎对于保护一个母亲的健康和她今后的生育能力在医学上是没有必要的。“恰恰相反，这个做法可能会对一个母亲的健康以及生育能力都有着很大的威胁。实际上，绝大多数半生产堕胎和身体问题无关。”
甚至全国流产服务提供者协会的执行主任罗恩·菲茨西蒙斯都承认，每年有无数次的流产手术，绝大多数情况下，是对20周及以上孕期的怀着健康胎儿的健康的母亲做的。
幸运的是，我们的医生知道他们面对的是两个生命，而不是一个。妊娠确实立即被终止了，之后托马斯成了急救剖腹产接生婴儿。
我的身体很快恢复过来，但是几周过去了，托马斯仍旧艰难地活着。刚出生时，他的体重只有1英镑12盎司。在他出生后几天，他的祖父(威斯康星州一位喜欢户外活动的人)看到婴儿培养箱里面的托马斯以后，觉得他的大小和没有头发的样子跟一个没有毛的松鼠一样。
然而，今天的托马斯是一个八年级优等生。他有很多兴趣爱好，包括演话剧和写短篇小说。
11月5日，当布什总统签署半生产堕胎禁令的时候，托马斯就坐我旁边。因为托马斯的父亲恰好为国家生命权利联合会工作，我和托马斯就得以与数百人在场见证了这一时刻。
尽管卡斯帕把这个法案当做对女性的攻击，在场仍然有很多女性认同这个法案，包括数十名女国会成员投票支持该法案。民意调查表明，绝大多数美国女性赞同这个禁令。
总统告诉我们，多年来，我们一直对那些离出生咫尺之遥的胎儿使用了一种可怕的暴力。后来一些人批评这种说法，因为他们说离出生咫尺之遥意味着半生产堕胎通常是妊娠将近足月时做的。
但是托马斯和无数其他的人都是活生生的证据，证明在当今分娩和足月是两件截然不同的事情。托马斯比足月早13周，今天还有很多活下来的孩子比这还早了整一个月。
半生产堕胎是从第五个月初开始做的。即使是这个时候，通过自发早产的早产儿通常仍然活着，因此这种流产方法是名副其实的半活产，胎儿确实被拉至正如总统说的“离出生咫尺之遥”。
他清楚地看到了卡斯帕想要的法案和我们对待这个问题的巨大差别：那就是，“我活着”。