Doctors see lies behind reasons for late-term abortions

Web-posted: Friday, February 28, 1997

eading abortion advocates are circling their wagons, and poor Ron Fitzsimmons, once one of them, seems to have been shoved outside the tight circle.

Fitzsimmons is the conscience-stricken head of the National Coalition of Abortion Providers who now admits that he took part in telling Americans the big lie about so-called partial-birth abortions.

During the national debate on the late-term brain-sucking procedure, Fitzsimmons was one of many pro-abortion spokespersons and media dupes who assured the nation that almost all late-term abortions were done to preserve the health of the mother or because the fetus had serious abnormalities.

Now, Fitzsimmons said, ''I lied through my teeth.'' And that most late-term abortions were done for the same reason as early abortions -- because women wanted to end pregnancies.

Fitzsimmons' confession was barely out of his mouth when he was whopped by fellow abortion advocates, who held a news conference to say, in effect, that he was being truthful when, he now says, he was lying. But now he is lying when he says he is finally being truthful.

Typical was Kate Michelman, president of the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League. She said: ''If he thinks he lied, that's his problem to deal with. We have not lied.''

Gloria Feldt, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said Fitzsimmons had been ''mixing up gestation with procedure.''

Whatever the heck that means.

While they squabble about who did or didn't lie, let's listen to someone else for once -- genuine physicians, rather than the pro-abortion lobbyists and other non-medical spin experts who seem to get all the invitations to yap on TV.

One is Dr. Pamela Smith, former director of medical education in obstetrics and gynecology at Mt. Sinai Hospital. She recently resigned that post to do anti-abortion public-health work in the community and practice medicine at the Lawndale Health Center.

The only thing that surprised her about Fitzsimmons' confession was that he made it.

''Most of the time, there is nothing wrong with the baby or the mother (when late-term abortions are performed),'' she said. ''People have known about this for a decade.

''There is a clinic in New Jersey that said of the 3,000 abortions it did last year, 1,500 were late-term.

''So we went from being told that only 200 a year were being done in the entire country to one clinic saying it does 1,500 a year. Obviously, the actual number (of late-term abortions) is in the thousands.

''The media believe what they want to believe. And because a lot of doctors who have testified in support of the partial-birth ban have been pro-life, the knee-jerk response is that it is a pro-life/pro-choice thing.

''There's been all this propaganda that it is done only because women need it. So people said: 'If my wife needs to have this to save her life, she should have it.' The problem is that it is not this procedure versus your wife's life. It's really infuriating to me to hear that women medically need this.''

One of the arguments for the late-term procedure is that it helps a woman preserve her fertility. Smith describes that as ''fantasy.''

The future-fertility risk was one of the excuses offered by President Clinton when he vetoed the bill that would have outlawed the procedure.

Clinton said: ''There are a few hundred women every year who have personally agonizing situations where their children are born or are about to be born with terrible deformities which will cause them to die either just before, during or just after childbirth.

''And these women, among other things, cannot preserve the ability to have further children unless the enormous size of the baby's head is reduced before being extracted from their bodies.''

Which is bunk, according to Dr. Nancy Romer, chairman of obstetrics at Miami Valley Hospital in Dayton and a clinical professor at Wright State University.

''I don't understand that argument about fertility at all,'' she said. ''We have no idea what happens to women who have this procedure down the road. We don't have a clue. There is no scientific evidence that shows that procedure will preserve the fertility of women.''

Dr. Curtis Cook, who specializes in maternal fetal medicine at Butterworth Hospital in Grand Rapids, Mich., said: ''I can't think of any situation where the procedure would be preferable over existing techniques. I question why it is not being taught or performed by the majority of people who specialize in these pregnancies.''

As for the propaganda campaign that led Clinton to veto the bill outlawing the procedure, Romer believes she understands it:

''Those who opposed the legislation have a much broader agenda, and that is to have totally unrestricted access to abortion. They will defend abortion rights blindly, regardless of the facts of the matter. Any legislation, if it's anti-abortion, they are against it.

''They don't think, 'Is this procedure appropriate, who is doing it and why are they doing it?' They don't care about the details. They won't acknowledge the truth of what we are saying because it defeats their larger agenda.''

So the whole battle is going to be fought in Congress one more time. And if a bill passes and gets to Clinton's desk, maybe he can ask the CIA or the FBI to find out who is telling the truth before he makes any more somber pronouncements.

© 1996 Chicago Tribune