I wonder if Michaelman and the other Democrat witnesses will repeat undeniably false information like Kate Michaelman has in the past when commenting on abortion?
"The fact is that late term abortions are exceedingly rare. They are performed only when necessary to preserve a woman's health or life, or when a woman is carrying a fetus with lethal anomalies, many of which would die soon after birth. Again, the fact is that these abortions, these terminations are compelled by life and, life and health reasons and grave fetal abnormalities."
- False statement made by Kate Michelman, President, National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League [NARAL], at a news conference, 11/7/1995
"[Late-term abortions] are rare terminations, Tony [Snow]. They occur very rarely. They occur under the most difficult of circumstances, as I said...these are pregnancies that have gone awry."
- False statement made by Kate Michelman, NARAL President, FOX News Sunday, 6/2/1996
"But late-term abortions are only used under the most compelling of circumstances--to protect a woman's health or life or because of grave fetal abnormality."
- False statement made by Kate Michelman, NARAL President, Washington Times, 6/16/1996
Michelman's statement contradicts testimony by Dr. George Tiller who performs thousands of these abortions annually, the statements of the official spokesman for abortion providers Ron Fitzsimmons, and those of Dr. Martin Haskell the inventor of the partial-birth abortion (see below):
"We have some experience with late terminations; about 10,000 patients between 24 and 36 weeks and something like 800 fetal anomalies between 26 and 36 weeks in the past 5 years."
- Dr. George R. Tiller, declaring his pro-choice credentials in a speech to the National Abortion Federation, April 2-4, 1995, New Orleans, LA. Click to listen (
http://www.dr-tiller.com/images/latekills.mp3 )
"When you're a doctor who does these abortions and the leaders of your movement appear before Congress and go on network news and say these procedures are done in only the most tragic of circumstances, how do you think that makes you feel? You know they're primarily done on healthy women and healthy fetuses, and it makes you feel like a dirty little abortionist with a dirty little secret. I think we should tell them the truth, let them vote and move on. In the vast majority of cases, the procedure is performed on a healthy mother with a healthy fetus that is 20 weeks or more along. The abortion-rights folks know it, the anti-abortion folks know it, and so, probably, does everyone else."
- Ron Fitzsimmons, Executive Director of the National Coalition of Abortion Providers, New York Times, 2/26/1997
Reporter: [Is] the fetus . . . dead beforehand...?
Haskell: No, it's really not. . . in my case, I would think probably about a third of those are definitely. . . dead before I actually start to remove the fetus. And probably the other two-thirds are not.
Reporter: Is the skull procedure also done to make sure that the fetus is dead so you're not going to have the problem of a live birth?
Haskell: It's immaterial. If you can't get it out, you can't get it out. . . The point here is to effect a safe legal abortion. I mean, you could say the same thing about the D&E [dilation and evacuation] procedure. You know, why do you do the D&E procedure? Why do you crush the fetus up inside the womb? To kill it before you take it out? Well, that happens, yes. But that's not why you do it. You do it to get it out. I could do the same thing with a D&E procedure...But that's not really the point. The point here is you're attempting to do an abortion. And that's the goal of your work, is to complete an abortion. . .
Reporter: I wanted to make sure I have both you and (Dr.) McMahon saying 'No' then. That this is misinformation, these letters to the editor saying it's only done when the baby's already dead, in case of fetal demise and you have to do an autopsy. But some of them are saying they're getting that information from NAF [National Abortion Federation]. Have you talked to Barbara Radford or anyone over there?
Haskell: Well, I had heard that they were giving that information, somebody over there might be giving information like that out. The people that staff the NAF office are not medical people. And many of them when I gave my paper, many of them came in, I learned later, to watch my paper because many of them have never seen an abortion performed of any kind.
Reporter: Did you also show a video when you did that?
Haskell: Yeah. I taped a procedure a couple of years ago, a very brief video, that simply showed the technique. The old story about a picture's worth a thousand words.
Reporter: As National Right to Life will tell you.
Haskell: Afterwards they were just amazed. They just had no idea. And here they're rabid supporters of abortion. They work in the office there. And...some of them have never seen one performed...And I'll be quite frank: most of my abortions are elective in that 20-24 week range...In my particular case, probably 20% are for genetic reasons. And the other 80% are purely elective..."
- Dr. Martin Haskell, explaining how his late-term abortion method is used to effect safe abortions, to American Medical News (U.S. Congressional Record, 1996, p. H2919)
