Washington D.C., May 4, 2004 / 22:00 pm
Medical doctors continue to testify to the atrocities committed during partial-birth abortions in three federal court cases currently being heard in New York, Nebraska and California. An official with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops issued excerpts from the trial transcripts, in which doctors recount in frank terms how fetuses in their fifth and sixth months are killed with forceps or scissors.
When the ban on partial-birth abortions became federal law last November, Planned Parenthood, the National Abortion Federation, and the American Civil Liberties Union filed lawsuits in three federal courts – in New York, Nebraska and California – claiming that the ban takes away a fundamental constitutional right. Pro-life groups and the U.S. Catholic Church firmly disagree.
“The transcripts, while not easy reading, should be required reading for politicians who voted against the ban,” said Cathy Cleaver Ruse, Esq. director of Planning and Information for the USCCB’s Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities.
Dr. Carolyn Westhoff, testifying in the New York trial, spoke of how it is "necessary to insert our forceps, open them as wide as possible to try to capture the head within the opening of the forceps and then crush the head using external force applied against the head." She admitted there is "usually a heartbeat" when she performs a partial-birth abortion, and that even when she collapses the skull, the baby is still "living."