Earlier this week as I walked from the upstairs of our home to the family room downstairs, something happened that got me to thinking. See if it makes sense to you.
There was music playing in the upstairs kids’ rooms, and so, too, as it happened, from the computer which we installed two floors down in our basement. As I reached the main floor the music emitting from the computer one floor down began to compete with the dominating sound blasting from the upstairs' stereos.
A few feet further I reached that exact spot where I could hear the music equally well from both sources. With a couple more steps I could barely hear the music from my kids’ rooms.
In a real sense that is the situation we find ourselves in now as it relates to the cacophony of voices in the abortion debate. For years the loudest voices-–because the media powers-that-be handed the microphones over to them–-came from the pro-abortionists.
Gradually, for many reasons, our voices (never absent, only ignored) have begun to be heard. Powered by a more sophisticated media strategy, the rise of alternative sources (such as NRL News, the NRLC web page, and the Internet), and the appearance of news sources more willing to give both sides a chance to be heard, the competing case for life is no longer a faint whisper.
It is as if the abortion debate has now reached the main floor. Pro-abortion hegemony, long an unpleasant fact of life, has fallen on hard times as the public begins to hear the intelligent alternative to their anti-life gibberish.
To carry the metaphor forward, the question is, how do we move the discussion forward yet a few more feet? For as long as I have been in the Movement, I’ve argued that there is a catalyst that holds the potential to decisively move the debate in a life-affirming direction.
It is something that I believe will first challenge and then eventually drown out the static about “choice” “and “potential life” and other drivel. And that is the soul-chilling reality of fetal pain.
Last Friday, U.S. District Judge Richard Conway Casey ruled that a world famous expert on pain in unborn babies and newborns will be allowed to testify in a case brought by pro-abortionists who are challenging the constitutionality of the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act. The potential importance is hard to exaggerate.
A little background. Once the law passed last November Planned Parenthood, the National Abortion Federation, and several individual abortionists immediately took the law to court, maintaining it was unconstitutional because it has no “health” exception. It doesn’t. After extensive hearings, Congress concluded that a partial-birth abortion is never medically necessary to preserve the health of the mother.
The pro-abortion side says the opposite: there were and are instances where a partial-birth abortion is appropriate. Defending the law, the Justice Department said, in effect, “Prove it.”
To that end the Justice Department proposed to Judge Casey to have all personal information removed [“redacted”] and then have the medical records passed along to him. This will allow us to determine if the use of the gruesome partial-birth abortion technique was needed or was merely the abortionists' preference.
Put on the spot, the pro-abortion side has tried a number of stalling techniques. It appears as if they may have painted themselves into a corner.
As government attorneys explained in another courtroom on the same question, those challenging the act contend that partial-birth abortions are sometimes medically necessary. “[A]nd, critically, they base their contention not merely on general knowledge or expertise, but on their clinical experience based on actual and specific medical procedures [abortions] that they have performed. Because the plaintiff-physicians in the underlying case have themselves placed the medical necessity of their past procedures squarely at issue, because medical necessity is central to the constitutional question in that case, and because the Government has a duty to defend the constitutionality of federal statutes, the Government sought the redacted medical records at issue to test the assertions made by the New York plaintiffs forming the centerpiece of their constitutional challenge.”
But it got worse for the pro-abortion side. The Justice Department also asked Judge Casey to allow the testimony of Dr. K. S. Anand, a renowned expert in the area of pain and stress in fetuses and newborns. Dr. Anand, a pediatrician, co-authored a famous article in the Journal of the American Medical Association that concluded, among other things, that newborn babies are not only capable of feeling pain, but may possess a short-term "pain memory.”
More to the point, as Judge Casey summarized it, “Dr. Anand will likely opine that a fetus ‘possesses the ability to experience pain from 20 weeks of gestation.’” Representing the National Abortion Federation [NAF], the ACLU maintained that Dr. Anand’s testimony is not sufficiently reliable because “he will testify only that it is likely that a fetus experiences pain during a partial-birth abortion.” Judge Casey disagreed.
He wrote that Dr. Anand’s opinion on fetal pain is based on twenty years of work in the field and on “research involving anatomical, functional, physiological and behavioral indicators,” as the Associated Press (in a remarkably accurate and balanced story) summarized Judge Casey’s remarks.
In rejecting NAF's motion, Casey noted that Congress “concluded that a fetus can feel pain during a partial-birth abortion procedure.” Because of these findings, “Congress determined that its interest in prohibiting partial-birth abortion was ‘compelling,’” he wrote.
“Despite this conclusion, Plaintiffs assert that the Act furthers no legitimate state interest,” according to Judge Casey. “Accordingly, evidence regarding fetal pain—including Dr. Anand’s testimony on the matter–is relevant to a claim at issue in this action.”
In other words, Dr. Anand’s testimony will help him assess "Congress's factual findings that partial-birth abortion is a 'brutal and inhumane procedure' and that 'during the partial-birth abortion procedure, the child will fully experience the pain associated with piercing his or her skull and sucking out his or her brain."'
The trial before Judge Casey is one of three that are set to begin March 29 in New York, Omaha, and San Francisco.
Whatever the outcomes, a horrific reality that has been smothered in silence for more than 30 years will at last get a public hearing.
Stay tuned to this space and to the April issue of National Right to Life News. If you are not receiving NRL News, call us at 202-626-8828 and we’ll get your subscription started immediately.
Earlier this week as I walked from the upstairs of our home to the family room downstairs, something happened that got me to thinking. See if it makes sense to you.