Analysts of public opinion widely acknowledge that the public debate on
partial-birth abortion, beginning in 1995, caused many Americans to
re-evaluate their assessment of whether abortion should be legal in all
circumstances. A key element of the public debate was the fact that
illustrations of the procedure were shown on national
television and in print ads.
Since then, Priests for Life has engaged in educational efforts to show
diagrams of the most common second-trimester abortion procedure, dilatation
and evacuation (D&E).
The
diagram you see on this page was developed by medical
illustrators with the advice and input of physicians. (The images were
obtained through
Nucleus Medical Media, Inc. and may only be reproduced with their
permission.)
With the help of our own medical advisor,
Dr. Tony Levatino, who used to perform D&E abortions before he
was converted to the pro-life position, Priests for Life will publicize and
explain this chart. Dr. Levatino
provides here a description of the D&E.
Following are some quotes from medical and legal sources about the D&E
procedure, which is legal throughout the United States.
"Dilatation and evacuation has become one of the two most frequently used
methods of abortion in the second trimester" (Berger et al, ed., Second
Trimester Abortion: Perspectives After a Decade of Experience, Martinus
Nijhoff Publishers, 1981, p.120). [Note: According to the
Alan Guttmacher institute, 11% of abortions are performed at 13 weeks or
more, by any procedure, which would translate into approximately 116,600 per
year.]
"Second-trimester D&E abortions are performed on an outpatient basis in both
hospitals and free-standing clinics…Most surgeons rely on large forceps to
evacuate the products of conception" (Berger, op cit.,
p.121-128).
The following account of D&E is part of sworn testimony given in US District
Court for the Western District of Wisconsin (Madison, WI, May 27, 1999, Case No.
98-C-0305-S), by Dr. Martin Haskell, an abortionist:
"And typically when the abortion procedure is started we typically know that
the fetus is still alive because either we can feel it move as we're making our
initial grasps or if we're using some ultrasound visualization when we actually
see a heartbeat as we're starting the procedure. It's not unusual at the start
of D&E procedures that a limb is acquired first and that that limb is brought
through the cervix and even out of the vagina prior to disarticulation and prior
to anything having been done that would have caused the fetal demise up to that
point."
"When you're doing a dismemberment D&E, usually the last part to be removed
is the skull itself and it's floating free inside the uterine cavity…So it's
rather like a ping-pong ball floating around and the surgeon is using his forcep
to reach up to try to grasp something that's freely floating around and is quite
large relative to the forcep we're using. So typically there's several
misdirections, misattempts to grasp. Finally at some point either the
instruments are managed to be place around the skull or a nip is made out of
some area of the skull that allows it to start to decompress. And then once that
happens typically the skull is brought out in fragments rather than as a unified
piece…"