[Lady Sidhe]

Well, for those women who feel the need to stay off birth control while they're having sex, and thus get pregnant when they don't want a child, there is something called Menstrual Extraction. It's basically going in there and sucking out the uterine lining, and any egg that may be there. It can be done if you think you've screwed up, and don't want to get pregnant. It was originally developed by a female gynecologist who didn't want to go through her period every month.

Anyway, one can go to any free clinic to get a year's worth of birth control for free, plus the morning after pill (at least in La.), so there's no excuse for waiting until the child is almost ready to be born, then sucking its brains out.

We treat our criminals better than that.

And as the doctor who developed the procedure said, he has never seen a situation where it was necessary.

There's no sense waiting that long. I completely agree with the following:


(H) Based upon Roe v. Wade (410 U.S. 113 (1973)) and Planned Parenthood v. Casey (505 U.S. 833 (1992)), a governmental interest in protecting the life of a child during the delivery process arises by virtue of the fact that during a partial-birth abortion, labor is induced and the birth process has begun. This distinction was recognized in Roe when the Court noted, without comment, that the Texas parturition statute, which prohibited one from killing a child "in a state of being born and before actual birth," was not under attack. This interest becomes compelling as the child emerges from the maternal body. A child that is completely born is a full, legal person entitled to constitutional protections afforded a "person" under the United States Constitution. Partial-birth abortions involve the killing of a child that is in the process, in fact mere inches away from, becoming a "person". Thus, the government has a heightened interest in protecting the life of the partially-born child.

(I) This, too, has not gone unnoticed in the medical community, where a prominent medical association has recognized that partial-birth abortions are "ethically different from other destructive abortion techniques because the fetus, normally twenty weeks or longer in gestation, is killed outside of the womb". According to this medical association, the " 'partial birth' gives the fetus an autonomy which separates it from the right of the woman to choose treatments for her own body".

(J) Partial-birth abortion also confuses the medical, legal, and ethical duties of physicians to preserve and promote life, as the physician acts directly against the physical life of a child, whom he or she had just delivered, all but the head, out of the womb, in order to end that life. Partial-birth abortion thus appropriates the terminology and techniques used by obstetricians in the delivery of living children -- obstetricians who preserve and protect the life of the mother and the child and instead uses those techniques to end the life of the partially-born child.

(K) Thus, by aborting a child in the manner that purposefully seeks to kill the child after he or she has begun the process of birth, , partial-birth abortion undermines the public's perception of the appropriate role of a physician during the delivery process, and perverts a process during which life is brought into the world, in order to destroy a partially-born child.

(L) The gruesome and inhumane nature of the partial-birth abortion procedure and its disturbing similarity to the killing of a newborn infant promotes a complete disregard for infant human life that can only be countered by a prohibition of the procedure.

(M) The vast majority of babies killed during partial-birth abortions are alive until the end of the procedure. It is a medical fact, however, that unborn infants at this stage can feel pain when subjected to painful stimuli and that their perception of this pain is even more intense than that of newborn infants and older children when subjected to the same stimuli. Thus, during a partial-birth abortion procedure, the child will fully experience the pain associated with piercing his or her skull and sucking out his or her brain.

(N) Implicitly approving such a brutal and inhumane procedure by choosing not to prohibit it will further coarsen society to the humanity of not only newborns, but all vulnerable and innocent human life, making it increasingly difficult to protect such life.

(O) For these reasons, Congress finds that partial-birth abortion is never medically indicated to preserve the health of the mother; is in fact unrecognized as a valid abortion procedure by the mainstream medical community; poses additional health risks to the mother; blurs the line between abortion and infanticide in the killing of a partially-born child just inches from birth; and confuses the role of the physician in childbirth and should, therefore, be banned.


So basically, what partial-birth abortion is, is infantcide, which IS a crime.


edited to add bold...forgive me, I know this is a lot, but I think it's important.