Abortion in Australia

It would seem that the 'cart is before the horse' when it comes to abortion legislation and that some of our medical "experts" in Australia are just a little too passionate about late term abortion than the public are aware or likely to approve of.
 
One in particular, Dr Lachlan De Crespigny, has quite the abortion portfolio! Featured in media reports about late term abortion, his claims, research and practice have gone relatively unchallenged and have not been given the scrutiny required.

Dr. De Crespigny is perhaps best known for his involvement in the abortion of a 32 week old baby girl, Jessica Jane, that had suspected dwarfism.  Endeavour Forums Babette Francis wrote about how this late term (and illegal) abortion influenced the 2008 decriminalisation of abortion in Victoria.

To say that this case caused outrage from the community would be an understatement. Andrew Bolt's coverage of this story in the article 'We kill Babies'  has resulted in a surge within the pro life movement (including the beginning of LNA!). 
Incredibly, some media outlets now sympathise with Dr De Crespigny for the scrutiny he faced over the abortion of Jessica Jane (who "did not appear to be so small afterall")!

Many attribute the change of legislation in Victoria to the 'Jessica Jane' case - which became about the protection of doctors like Dr. De Crespigny, who perform late term abortions. It did not appear at all to be about the health and welfare of women and their babies (which was evident in the amendments designed to offer women and babies at least some protection - that were all outrightly rejected by the Brumby government). 

Dr De Crespigny's reach is not limitted to Australia. An article by Michael Cook, (Oct, 2009, republished June, 2011) stated that in Britian, "studies have shown that about 92% of women who are told that their child will have Down syndrome go on to have a termination". In his writing in the blog of 'Oxford University's Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics', Lachlan de Crespigny says that "this is not a bad thing", although he "acknowledges that Down syndrome children often have sunny dispositions"!!
Dr De Crespigny stated that "Few people choose to have a Down syndrome child. It is hard to find adoptive parents for a DS child. Couples with a previous DS child usually have prenatal testing to minimize the risk of having another disabled child and they proceed to abortion of an affected fetus." He also said that "risk-free prenatal tests should be celebrated". Dr de Crespigny is described in the article, as "a distinguished Australian expert in prenatal testing".  

While the notion of aborting babies with disabilities is abhorrent to many of us, it seems that Dr. De Crespigny and his colleague Prof Julian Savulescu may have used examples of terminal illnesses to justify all late term abortions to the public- even if many of these babies are, in fact, healthy.

In Australia, an article by David van Gend reveals that Dr Lachlan De Crespigny  made the claim that late term abortions are done "for major problems as a last resort", and they gave the example of an abnormality of a baby's heart. However, at the time that they made this claim, the data from the Health Department's 2005 survey of perinatal deaths revealed a very different story.

According to the Herald Sun, it showed that: ""The majority of late abortions were for psychosocial reasons, not fetal abnormality" and that  "At 23-27 weeks of pregnancy, when other premature babies are being cared for in the hospital nursery, the records for 2005 show that 108 healthy babies were terminated for psychosocial reasons, which is five times as many as those terminated for congenital abnormality."
Mr. van Gend said that "abortion for psychosocial reasons is by far the biggest single cause of "stillbirth" in Victoria" and that "In 2005, the deliberate ending of these healthy lives accounted for one in every three stillbirths".
He also asked the question: "Is late abortion merely a tragic response to grave fetal abnormality or risk to the mother's life?", then responded: "No. Late abortion is done for any reason that sufficiently stresses the parents and its numbers are climbing fast." Another Herald Sun article reported that in 2005, 180 late term abortions were performed for 'psycho social' reasons.
The argument provided by Dr De Crespigny to convince the public, is inconsistent with state government statistics.

Louise Mulligan  reported a 600% increase in late term abortions, at the Royal Women's Hospital in Melbourne, since the decriminalisation of abortion in 2008. Ms Mulligan consulted with Dr De -Crespigny and provided a comment from him in her report. Ms Mulligan repeated his earlier claim that the majority of these late term babies were aborted because they "were going to die anyway or have a devastating disability." 
We do not have Victorian Department of Health's report to refute this information, but given the unreliability of this claim previously, it can certainly not be accepted 'as Gospel'.   
   
Dr De Crespigny and Prof Julian Savulescu were also authors of a survey about late term abortion, the results of which were published by the Australian Medical Association and in newspapers all around Australia. This research claimed that Australians support the decriminalisation of late term abortion. Life Network Australia critiqued the survey, which raises many questions.

One might reasonably ask "Why do Dr. De Crespigny and Professor Prof Julian Savulescu appear to have such a vested interest in / passion for late term abortion?"  This commitment (to abortion up until birth) is enough to send chills down ones spine - not unlike those I felt when watching 'Silence of the lambs'.  

Then there are the babies being born alive and left to die on shelves or thrown into a bucket of -formaldehyde.  Indeed this situation is playing out as quite a horror story! The rhetoric of  "between a woman and her doctor" and "my body my choice" is grossly inadequate and inappropriate.

The Health Department's current report on infant mortalitity and morbidity was supposed to be released at the end of 2010. Given the 600% increase in late term abortions at the Royal Women's Hospital in Melbourne, we anticipate the information with dread. When asked about the delay, MP Bernie Finn said that the ALP government (who was in power at the time) did not want the public to know what has happened in Victoria.
We are awaiting greater transparency from the new Liberal Goverment of Victoria.
Life Network Australia has submitted an FOI request for this report and are currently pursuing the ombudsman to appeal the recent rejection (of the FOI request).

It would appear that medical experts and research that Australians depend on and trust are not objective, transparent or reliable when it comes to abortion.
The downward acceleration of abortion legislation has resulted from a lack of transparency from health departments, research based on questionable surveys (by doctors seemingly 'hell bent' on late term abortion) and a media more than happy to publish their claims without any objective assessment.
Australian babies must be protected from such bias and incompetence - their lives depend on it!

From the Australian Christian Lobby.

In Victoria, the DLP Member of the Upper House, Peter Kavanagh, has courageously challenged the status quo on abortion by calling upon a Parliamentary committee to inquire into the post-natal deaths of babies born alive in Victoria after failed abortions.

In Parliament recently Mr Kavanagh called upon “the Family and Community Development Committee to inquire into, consider and report on the post-natal deaths of babies born alive in Victoria after failed abortions, with particular reference to the 2007 Annual Report of the Consultative Council on Obstetric and Paediatric Mortality and Morbidity”.

Mr Kavanagh noted that on 20 May 2010 the Herald Sun reported on the recently released 2007 annual report of the Consultative Council on Obstetric and Paediatric Mortality and Morbidity which showed that 54 out of 181 late term foetuses who were aborted for “abnormalities” (at around 26 to 28 weeks) survived late term abortions but all of them in the period studied died “post-natally”.

He further noted that babies born after 26 to 28 weeks of gestation have a very high chance of survival if given even minimal care, and that the death of every one of these babies in the period studied therefore suggests that they were neglected to death, if not deliberately killed.

Recent media reports suggest that the number of late-term abortions in Victoria have sky-rocketed since abortion was decriminalised in the State. ACL is concerned about how many more babies are being born alive after botched abortions and left to die – and denied even basic care.

You may recall that during the 2008 abortion debate in Victoria, Gianna Jessen, an abortion survivor, spoke at Queens Hall in Parliament House in an event organised by the Ad Hoc Interfaith Committee and supported by the ACL. She told how she was saved from certain death by a nurse who, in the absence of the doctor, called for an ambulance to revive her after she arrived alive after a botched abortion in a US abortion clinic.

It is galling to discover in 2010, through a government report, that in 2007 – even before the new ‘open-slather’ abortion laws were passed - 54 babies in Victoria survived late term abortions but were not given any chance at life. We commend Mr Kavanagh for pursuing this issue. 

by Bill Muehlenberg

The mainstream media is quite good at using its powers of influence to push agendas. The image-heavy MSM can create news and affect public opinion simply by the images that are shown, and how those images are presented.

For example, when green stories are being covered, and the MSM wishes to push a particular point of view (eg., that industry is bad and global warming is about to destroy planet earth), then it will use countless shots of chimneys billowing smoke (although often these pics in fact show harmless steam being poured into the skies), and melting icebergs with cute polar bears looking for a place to stand on.

Emotions can be manipulated by creative use of imagery, and our mental faculties can be bypassed altogether. The MSM can skip the facts of the story while manipulating out heart strings by the images it uses. This happens all the time in the MSM.

Consider another example. If the MSM thinks we should stop whaling or hunting baby seals (which may in fact be worthwhile aims – but I leave the pros and cons for another time), then it show pictures of bloodied whales being dragged up onto cold, hard steel ships, or is shows wide-eyed baby seals which have been clubbed to death in a sea of red blood.

Of course who wouldn’t respond to such visceral imagery and such powerful shots? Most people would be ready to join Greenpeace or take part in a protest march after seeing such graphic images. So the media has tremendous power to influence the public debate, corralling public opinion in various directions.

Of course if the MSM can push along social agendas by its use of imagery, it can do the same by not using certain images. I refer here to the most obvious example of this: abortion. When was the last time you saw a graphic image of the “product of abortion” in the MSM?

Have you ever seen pictures of aborted babies in full colour in the MSM? Have you ever seen the burnt-out remains of a baby after a saline poisoning abortion? Have you ever seen the dismembered bodies of unborn babies after being cut up in a Dilation and Curettage abortion?

I suspect that you haven’t. And there is a very good reason for this. The MSM is overwhelmingly left of centre, including on the abortion issue. Because most people in the MSM are pro-abortion, then of course they don’t want the dirty little secrets of the abortion industry to get out.

They want to help perpetuate the myth that abortion simply removes a clump of cells or a bit of tissue, not a real live baby. That is why they refuse to show abortion aftermath images. They don’t want to give the game away. They want to keep pushing their pro-death agenda and keep the masses in the dark

While the MSM is managing this grand con job, by censoring out images it does not want you and me to see, things are not as easy in the abortion mills themselves. It seems that numerous abortion workers have been getting out of the business, exactly because they can see this is no clump of tissue they are dealing with.

Because of new techniques, as well as ultrasound technology, the reality of what is being killed in the abortion mills is taking a toll on workers there, and more and more workers are leaving this blood-stained work. An intriguing article on all this recently appeared entitled “Mugged by Ultrasound”.

David Daleiden and Jon Shields inform us about how these changes are causing so many abortion workers to become pro-life. They begin their important article in this fashion:

“Abortion rights activists have long preferred to hold themselves at some remove from the practice they promote; rather than naming it, they speak of ‘choice’ and ‘reproductive freedom.’ But those who perform abortions have no such luxury. Instead, advances in ultrasound imaging and abortion procedures have forced providers ever closer to the nub of their work. Especially in abortions performed far enough along in gestation that the fetus is recognizably a tiny baby, this intimacy exacts an emotional toll, stirring sentiments for which doctors, nurses, and aides are sometimes unprepared. Most apparently have managed to reconcile their belief in the right to abortion with their revulsion at dying and dead fetuses, but a noteworthy number have found the conflict unbearable and have defected to the pro-life cause.”

They show how studies are revealing that abortion workers are having real problems performing their “duties”. Consider for example the Dilation and Evacuation (D&E) method of abortion. D&E abortions are used later in pregnancy, in which under general anaesthesia, the baby is torn to pieces with a forceps, and removed from the womb. Larger babies must have their heads crushed. The pieces are then reassembled.

“One early study, by abortionists Warren Hern and Billie Corrigan, found that although all of their staff members ‘approved of second trimester abortion in principle,’ there ‘were few positive comments about D&E itself.’ Reactions included ‘shock, dismay, amazement, disgust, fear, and sadness.’ A more ambitious study published the following year, in the September 1979 issue of the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, confirmed Hern and Corrigan’s findings. It found ‘strong emotional reactions during or following the procedures and occasional disquieting dreams’.”

The authors include personal stories as well. For example: “In 1990 Judith Fetrow, an aide at a Planned Parenthood clinic, found that disposing of fetal bodies as medical waste was more than she could bear. Soon after she left her position, Fetrow described her experiences: ‘No one at Planned Parenthood wanted this job. .  .  . I had to look at the tiny hands and feet. There were times when I wanted to cry.’ Finally persuaded to quit by a pro-life protester outside her clinic, Fetrow is now involved in the American Life League….

“Other converts were driven into the pro-life movement by advances in ultrasound technology. The most recent example is Abby Johnson, the former director of Dallas-area Planned Parenthood. After watching, via ultrasound, an embryo ‘crumple’ as it was suctioned out of its mother’s womb, Johnson reported a ‘conversion in my heart.’ Likewise, Joan Appleton was the head nurse at a large abortion facility in Falls Church, Virginia, and a NOW activist. Appleton performed thousands of abortions with aplomb until a single ultrasound-assisted abortion rattled her. As Appleton remembers, ‘I was watching the screen. I saw the baby pull away. I saw the baby open his mouth. .  .  . After the procedure I was shaking, literally’.”

The authors conclude, “Pro-choice advocates like to point out that abortion has existed in all times and places. Yet that observation tends to obscure the radicalism of the present abortion regime in the United States. Until very recently, no one in the history of the world has had the routine job of killing well-developed fetuses quite so up close and personal. It is an experiment that was bound to stir pro-life sentiments even in the hearts of those staunchly devoted to abortion rights.  Ultrasound and D&E bring workers closer to the beings they destroy. Hern and Corrigan concluded their study by noting that D&E leaves ‘no possibility of denying an act of destruction.’ As they wrote, ‘It is before one’s eyes. The sensations of dismemberment run through the forceps like an electric current’.”

Exactly. Now if we can only get the MSM to offer some courage and honesty here, and run these stories – complete with all the horrible images – like they do the whaling stories, or the seal-hunting stories. Somehow, I don’t expect we will be seeing this very soon. But we must keep the pressure up until they do.

Warning - This article contains graphic descriptions of abortion procedures. Note that while the article was written in the US, the 'dilation and evacuation' (D&E) method is also used in Australia.

MUGGED BY ULTRASOUND
Why so many abortion workers have turned pro-life.
By David Daleiden and Jon A. Shields*

Abortion rights activists have long preferred to hold themselves at some remove from the practice they promote; rather than naming it, they speak of “choice” and “reproductive freedom.” But those who perform abortions have no such luxury. Instead, advances in ultrasound imaging and abortion procedures have forced providers ever closer to the nub of their work. Especially in abortions performed far enough along in gestation that the fetus is recognizably a tiny baby, this intimacy exacts an emotional toll, stirring sentiments for which doctors, nurses, and aides are sometimes unprepared. Most apparently have managed to reconcile their belief in the right to abortion with their revulsion at dying and dead fetuses, but a noteworthy number have found the conflict unbearable and have defected to the pro-life cause.

In the aftermath of Roe v. Wade, second-trimester abortions were usually performed by saline injection. The doctor simply replaced the amniotic fluid in the patient’s uterus with a saline solution and induced labor, leaving it to nurses to dispose of the expelled fetus. That changed in the late 1970s, when “dilation and evacuation” (D&E) emerged as a safer method. Today D&E is the most common second-trimester procedure. It has been performed millions of times in the United States.

But although D&E is better for the patient, it brings emotional distress for the abortionist, who, after inserting laminaria that cause the cervix to dilate, must dismember and remove the fetus with forceps. One early study, by abortionists Warren Hern and Billie Corrigan, found that although all of their staff members “approved of second trimester abortion in principle,” there “were few positive comments about D&E itself.” Reactions included “shock, dismay, amazement, disgust, fear, and sadness.” A more ambitious study published the following year, in the September 1979 issue of the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, confirmed Hern and Corrigan’s findings. It found “strong emotional reactions during or following the procedures and occasional disquieting dreams.”

Another study, published in the October 1989 issue of Social Science and Medicine noted that abortion providers were pained by encounters with the fetus regardless of how committed they were to abortion rights. It seems that no amount of ideological conviction can inoculate providers against negative emotional reactions to abortion.

Such studies are few. In general, abortion providers have censored their own emotional trauma out of concern to protect abortion rights. In 2008, however, abortionist Lisa Harris endeavored to begin “breaking the silence” in the pages of the journal Reproductive Health Matters. When she herself was 18 weeks pregnant, Dr. Harris performed a D&E abortion on an 18-week-old fetus. Harris felt her own child kick precisely at the moment that she ripped a fetal leg off with her forceps:

Instantly, tears were streaming from my eyes—without me—meaning my conscious brain—even being aware of what was going on. I felt as if my response had come entirely from my body, bypassing my usual cognitive processing completely. A message seemed to travel from my hand and my uterus to my tear ducts. It was an overwhelming feeling—a brutally visceral response—heartfelt and unmediated by my training or my feminist pro-choice politics. It was one of the more raw moments in my life.

Harris concluded her piece by lamenting that the pro-choice movement has left providers to suffer in silence because it has “not owned up to the reality of the fetus, or the reality of fetal parts.” Indeed, it often insists that images used by the pro-life movement are faked.

(Pro-choice advocates also falsely insist that second-trimester abortions are confined almost exclusively to tragic “hard” cases such as fetal malformation. Yet a review of the literature in the April 2009 issue of the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology found that most abortions performed after the first trimester are sought for the same reasons as first-trimester abortions, they’re just delayed. This reality only intensifies the guilt pangs of abortion providers.)

Hern and Harris chose to stay in the abortion business; one of the first doctors to change his allegiance was Paul Jarrett, who quit after only 23 abortions. His turning point came in 1974, when he performed an abortion on a fetus at 14 weeks’ gestation: “As I brought out the rib cage, I looked and saw a tiny, beating heart,” he would recall. “And when I found the head of the baby, I looked squarely in the face of another human being—a human being that I just killed.”

In 1990 Judith Fetrow, an aide at a Planned Parenthood clinic, found that disposing of fetal bodies as medical waste was more than she could bear. Soon after she left her position, Fetrow described her experiences: “No one at Planned Parenthood wanted this job. .  .  . I had to look at the tiny hands and feet. There were times when I wanted to cry.” Finally persuaded to quit by a pro-life protester outside her clinic, Fetrow is now involved in the American Life League.

Kathy Sparks is another convert formerly responsible for disposing of fetal remains, this time at an Illinois abortion clinic. Her account of the experience that led her to exit the abortion industry (taken from the Pro-Life Action League website in 2004) reads in part:

The baby’s bones were far too developed to rip them up with [the doctor’s] curette, so he had to pull the baby out with forceps. He brought out three or four major pieces. .  .  . I took the baby to the clean up room, I set him down and I began weeping uncontrollably. .  .  . I cried and cried. This little face was perfectly formed.

A recovery nurse rebuked Sparks for her unprofessional behavior. She quit the next day. Sparks is now the director of a crisis pregnancy center with more than 20 pro-life volunteers.

Handling fetal remains can be especially difficult in late-term clinics. Until George Tiller was assassinated by a pro-life radical last summer, his clinic in Wichita specialized in third-trimester abortions. To handle the large volume of biological waste Tiller had a crematorium on the premises. One day when hauling a heavy container of fetal waste, Tiller asked his secretary, Luhra Tivis, to assist him. She found the experience devastating. The “most horrible thing,” Tivis later recounted, was that she “could smell those babies burning.” Tivis, a former NOW activist, soon left her secretarial position at the clinic to volunteer for Operation Rescue, a radical pro-life organization.

Other converts were driven into the pro-life movement by advances in ultrasound technology. The most recent example is Abby Johnson, the former director of Dallas-area Planned Parenthood. After watching, via ultrasound, an embryo “crumple” as it was suctioned out of its mother’s womb, Johnson reported a “conversion in my heart.” Likewise, Joan Appleton was the head nurse at a large abortion facility in Falls Church, Virginia, and a NOW activist. Appleton performed thousands of abortions with aplomb until a single ultrasound-assisted abortion rattled her. As Appleton remembers, “I was watching the screen. I saw the baby pull away. I saw the baby open his mouth. .  .  . After the procedure I was shaking, literally.”

The most famous abortion provider to be converted by ultrasound technology, decades ago, is Bernard Nathanson, cofounder of the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws, the original NARAL. In the early 1970s, Nathanson was the largest abortion provider in the Western world. By his own reckoning he performed more than 60,000 abortions, including one on his own child. Nathanson’s exit from the industry was slow and tortured. In Aborting America (1979), he expressed anxiety over the possibility that he was complicit in a great evil. He was especially troubled by ultrasound images. When he finally left his profession for pro-life activism, he produced The Silent Scream (1984), a documentary of an ultrasound abortion that showed the fetus scrambling vainly to escape dismemberment.

This handful of stories is representative of many more. In fact, with the exception of communism, we can think of few other movements from which so many activists have defected to the opposition. Nonetheless, the vast majority of clinic workers remain committed to the pro-choice cause. Perhaps some of those who stay behind are haunted by their work. Most, however, find a way to cope with the dissonance.

Pro-choice advocates like to point out that abortion has existed in all times and places. Yet that observation tends to obscure the radicalism of the present abortion regime in the United States. Until very recently, no one in the history of the world has had the routine job of killing well-developed fetuses quite so up close and personal. It is an experiment that was bound to stir pro-life sentiments even in the hearts of those staunchly devoted to abortion rights.  Ultrasound and D&E bring workers closer to the beings they destroy. Hern and Corrigan concluded their study by noting that D&E leaves “no possibility of denying an act of destruction.” As they wrote, “It is before one’s eyes. The sensations of dismemberment run through the forceps like an electric current.”

*Jon A. Shields is assistant professor of government at Claremont McKenna College. David Daleiden is a student there.

This article is reprinted with permission of The Weekly Standard, where it first appeared on Jan 25 2010, Vol. 15, No. 18. For more information visit www.weeklystandard.com.

Thanks to Lachlan Dunjey who brought this article to our attention. Lachlan is an Australian medical doctor and key member of Choose Life Australia and Medicine With Morality.