A description of D and E late-term abortions

A while back, I wrote a post about late-term abortion methods. I neglected to write about Dilation and Evacuation, thinking they weren't performed on fetuses past 20 weeks gestation. I was wrong. They're one of the most common methods of late-term abortions. If you're willing to watch an interview with Father Frank Pavone and a former abortionist, in the second half, you will find a demonstration, using models, of how this abortion method is done.

But if you're looking for a quick summary, here it is.

First, the patient is dilated using laminaria. Laminaria is a kind a stick made from dried seaweed, and it's placed in the cervix to make the woman dilate. This can take a day or two. The woman returns to the abortionist's office. Normally some kind of anesthetic is used during the procedure.

Now, according to some, the fetus is injected with a drug to cause fetal demise: sometimes digoxin (known as Digitalis or under other names) or potassium chloride. The pro-aborts will have us believe that late-term abortions are painless affairs because the fetus is already dead by the time the procedure begins in earnest.

There are few problems with that angle.

One is that the injection of digoxin is made through the fetus' heart. Not exactly painless. I'll jab you in the heart and see how painless that is! Secondly, digoxin is a drug that, in adults, is used to regulate the heartbeat. I haven't been able to confirm this, but I suspect the fetus dies of a heart attack because of the injection. I suspect the needle in the heart by itself can kill him.

Another problem with the notion that an injection of digoxin causes a painless abortion is that the abortionist doesn't always hit the heart. Abortionists have been known to hit the muscle mass or the brain. One late-term abortionist, Dr. Katherine Sheehan in the Partial Birth Abortion trials that took place in the US a few years back testified she only hit the heart about half the time.

A third problem is that even if many abortionists do use digoxin to cause fetal pain in an allegedly painless manner, not everyone does. I read in Congressional Judiciary Committee testimony that the Royal College and Physicians of Alberta adopted as a guideline in the year 2000 that in some circumstances fetuses past 20 weeks should be injected with potassium chloride to cause fetal demise. Guidelines are nice, but who's to say they're adopted? There was one well-publicized case of a baby a few years back who was stillborn after a late-term abortion. The mother said the abortionist had not given the fetus an injection of digoxin.

So once the baby is injected with the digoxin, he may or may not be dead at this point. The abortionist uses a speculum and a dilator to further open the woman up, and then he uses a long clamp with teeth to reach in and grab the baby. In the interview with Fr. Frank Pavone that I mentioned, the abortionist says this is a blind procedure, but it is possible to use an ultrasound. I've recently been on the website of a New York abortion clinic that touted its use of ultrasounds during the procedure. I suspect that doing it blind is still common.

The clamp sometimes grabs the baby by the brains and squishes it. The abortionist in the interview with Frank Pavone said that if he saw white liquid coming down the vagina, he knew he had caught the brains. He then pulls the baby out, bit by bit, dismembering him. The smaller bits that are leftover are suctioned out.

The abortionist then attempts to reconstitute the baby on a tray to make sure he has all the pieces, limbs, head, torso and including all the innards like intestines and other organs. If any piece of the baby is left in the uterus, there is a risk of the woman developing an infection. Plus, the mother could very well pass the missing body part and end up having an arm or a leg in her toilet.

You can see a diagram here.