Washington D.C., Apr 26, 2004 / 22:00 pm
As activists prepared for a pro-choice march April 25, which organizers called the March for Women’s Lives, federal courtrooms coast-to-coast heard graphic testimony, with little media coverage, about exactly what happens during partial-birth abortions, said Cathy Cleaver Ruse.
The director of Planning and Information for the Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities of the U.S. bishops’ conference said “seasoned abortion doctors, have taken the stand to describe in astonishingly frank terms how they crush the skulls and dismember the bodies of infants in the fifth and sixth months of pregnancy.”
Pediatric pain specialists have testified to the “excruciating pain” experienced by unborn children during partial-birth abortions, and other medical experts have testified that the procedure is “never necessary.”
Lawsuits were filed against the federal ban on partial-birth abortions when it was enacted last November, and trials began March 29 in federal courts in Nebraska, New York, and California. The Nebraska and California trials recently ended, though no rulings have been issued. The New York trial is still underway.