June 15, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) – In the wake of the murder of his close friend and colleague George Tiller, Nebraska late-term abortionist LeRoy Carhart has stated that he will continue offering third-trimester abortions.
In a telephone interview with the Associated Press last week Carhart said, "there will be a place in Kansas for the later second- and the medically indicated third-trimester patients very soon."
Carhart said that he has never performed third-trimester abortions at his facility in Nebraska, but that he has done so at Tiller’s facility in Wichita. Carhart would occasionally perform late-term abortions at Tiller’s facility to avoid Nebraska’s more restrictive laws, which forbid abortions on babies that are viable.
With Tiller dead, however, the number of doctors willing to kill unborn babies in advanced stages of pregnancy, especially when they are capable of surviving outside the womb, has been reduced. Carhart says that he will step up to the plate to continue the practice.
Nebraska’s Attorney General Jon Bruning, however, is not a fan of Carhart’s plan.
“I'm disgusted and I'm saddened and I hate it that he's here in Nebraska, and I hate it that he's in America,” Bruning told KETV7. “I mean, this guy is one sick individual.”
During a preliminary injunction hearing in a US District Court in 1997 on the issue of late-term abortions, Carhart testified that he would sometimes dismember advanced-stage unborn babies during abortions, while the babies were still alive (read the testimony here). Carhart described in detail the process of grasping the limb of the baby to be removed, and then twisting it off. When asked if the babies usually die during the process of dismemberment, Carhart responded, "I don't really know. I know that the fetus is alive during the process most of the time because I can see the fetal heartbeat on the ultrasound."
Operation Rescue has responded to Carhart’s recent statements by saying that it will formally ask the Nebraska Attorney General for an investigation of Carhart’s facility and practices.
“We believe this decision creates a clear and present danger to the public and puts the lives of women at grave risk,” said Operation Rescue President Troy Newman.
“Conditions at Carhart’s run-down abortion mill are gross and appalling. I wouldn’t let my dog be treated in a dump like that. His incompetency has cost at least one mother’s life, and has seriously injured others.”
Operation Rescue has documented Carhart’s participation in a half-dozen abortions that resulted in life-threatening complications that required emergency hospitalization, including the third-trimester death of Christin Gilbert.
Earlier this year, Operation Rescue’s complaints that Carhart was operating his abortion mill, the Abortion and Contraception clinic of Nebraska, illegally and under dangerous conditions prompted the City of Bellevue to temporarily close him down. OR released photos showing Carhart’s abortion business taking abortion patients while running on only an extension cord and a generator.
Carhart recently drew the ire of Martin Luther King Jr.’s niece, Alveda King, for comparing the late abortionist George Tiller to her uncle. Tiller’s death was the "equivalent of Martin Luther King being assassinated ... the equivalent of Pearl Harbor, the sinking of the Lusitania and any other major historic event where we've tolerated the intolerable for too long," said the abortionist.
“For LeRoy Carhart to mention the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who worked through peaceful and non-violent means, in the same breath with that of George Tiller, whose work ended peace and brought violence to babies in the womb, is offensive beyond belief,” she said. “The analogy is just wrong.”
