The abortion lie in America is so big that it hardly comes as a surprise when one of the builders of that lie now admits that he and his colleagues deceived the country about partial-birth abortion.
What Ron Fitzsimmons, director of the National Coalition of Abortion Providers, admitted in an interview with the American Medical News (March 3), is nothing that pro-lifers have not said all along—that these abortions are so common that some clinics perform as many as 1,500 a year. And, almost exclusively, these abortions are done in the last four months of pregnancy for reasons of preference, not medical necessity.
But to understand the lie about partial-birth abortion, it needs to be understood that the whole history of abortion in this country is built upon a foundation of mendacity and distortion. It began when “Jane Roe”—poor, uneducated, addled by addiction, pregnant and desperate—came to a lawyer claiming that she had been gang-raped (a lie), and pleading for the name of an abortionist she could go to.
The lawyer said she did not know of one (another lie, because she herself had had an abortion), and with ambition in her eye pressed Roe to sue for her “right” to abortion.
In Roe vs. Wade (1973), the U.S. Supreme Court itself, working from some distorted historical testimony, based its decision on more half-truths. The high court said that 19th-century American anti-abortion laws were aimed not at defending the unborn, but only at protecting the women from unscrupulous doctors.
The truth was that there is a long history of anti-abortion sentiment and legislation in the country and that many states had outlawed it by the turn of the century, with some calling it “child murder.”
Since Roe vs. Wade, politicians, the courts and the media have all labored to keep up the lie by telling new lies, such as the one about partial-birth abortion.
There is the lie about pro-lifers being terrorists. Laws have been passed, court injunctions and federal probes ordered, and pro-life groups have been shaken down, wiretapped, hounded and harassed. Incredibly, prayer vigils and silent witnesses have been labeled as acts of violence.
In keeping up the lie, the nation’s founding and hallowed tradition of nonviolent citizen disobedience and protest have been trampled.
Then there is the lie that abortion is safe. To keep that one up, a blind eye has to be turned to the evidence that most abortionists have shady medical and legal histories and that hundreds of women, especially poor and minority women, are defrauded, maimed or sometimes killed each year at their hands.
Evidence that abortion produces mental traumas similar to “shell shock” and increases the odds of breast cancer must be scuttled and “spun” the other way.
The truth is that abortion is killing. It is used to kill kids in utero at any time and for any reason, whenever a pregnancy is thought to be inconvenient or ill-advised. Even the man who now admits he lied about partial-birth abortion says it: “You’re ending a life.”
The abortion lie and all the little lies needed to prop it up have corrupted almost every area of American life.
And if you do not think these lies have corroded each and every one of our consciences, consider the fact that we are actually debating the morality and legality of delivering a baby halfway down the birth canal, stabbing it to death with scissors, and sucking out its brain. That is no lie.
Originally published in Our Sunday Visitor (March 16, 1997)
© David Scott, 2009. All rights reserved.
