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From the court transcript:
Quote:
Dr. Timothy Johnson, a plaintiff in the case, is chair of the department
of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Michigan Medical School.
He has performed second-trimester dismemberment abortions and observed
partial-birth abortions, and was offered as an expert witness for the plaintiffs.21
Dr. Johnson testified from his own experience about performing dismemberment abortions, and gave his opinion about the partial-birth abortions he had observed. Dr. Johnson described observing how doctors who did partial-birth abortions “used a crushing instrument to deliver the head.”22 This provoked further questions from Judge Casey:
THE COURT: Can you explain to me what that means.
THE WITNESS: What they did was they delivered the fetus intact until the
head was still trapped behind the cervix, and then they reached up and crushed
the head in order to deliver it through the cervix.
THE COURT: What did they utilize to crush the head?
THE WITNESS: An instrument, a large pair of forceps that have a round,
serrated edge at the end of it, so that they were able to bring them together
and crush the head between the ends of the instrument.
THE COURT: Like the cracker they use to crack a lobster shell, serrated
edge?
THE WITNESS: No.
THE COURT: Describe it for me.
THE WITNESS: It would be like the end of tongs that are combined that
you use to pick up salad. So they would be articulated in the center and you
could move one end, and there would be a branch at the center. The instruments
are thick enough and heavy enough that you can actually grasp and
crush with those instruments as if you were picking up salad or picking up
anything with—
THE COURT: Except here you are crushing the head of a baby.
THE WITNESS: Correct.23
Another of plaintiffs’ expert witnesses was Dr. Marilynn Fredriksen, an
associate professor in clinical obstetrics and gynecology at Northwestern
University Medical School. In establishing her expertise on the issue of abortion, plaintiffs’ attorney asked her how many dismemberment abortions she has done in her career. She answered, “I really don’t know, but probably
thousands.” “Thousands, plural?” Judge Casey queried. “Thousands, plural,”
she answered.24
Dr. Fredriksen has also done partial-birth abortions, and in her testimony
about performing a partial-birth abortion she described how she does not
always need to pierce the baby’s skull before completing delivery; sometimes
“grasping forceps” will do the trick. Judge Casey inquired further:
THE COURT: Excuse me. Grasping forceps, does that mean you crush the
skull?
THE WITNESS: You compress the skull, yes.
THE COURT: You crush it, right?
THE WITNESS: Yes.
THE COURT: Yesterday you mentioned sometimes you use your finger,
right, rather than using scissors?
THE WITNESS: No, that is not my testimony.
THE COURT: Isn’t that what you said?
THE WITNESS: No, that is not. I said the scissors would be important to
make an incision at the base of the skull, but I don’t use suction. I use my
finger to disrupt the contents of the cranial cavity, to thereby collapse the
skull and allow delivery of the fetus.
THE COURT: So you use your finger to get the contents of the skull out
rather than sucking the contents of the skull out, is that correct?
THE WITNESS. Yes.25
Dr. Cassing Hammond, another plaintiff in the case who has performed
“thousands” of abortions,26 is an assistant professor in obstetrics and gynecology at the Northwestern University School of Medicine. According to his own testimony, Dr. Hammond does use his finger—or scissors, or anything
else on his table that will get the job done—to puncture the baby’s head:
Q. Dr. Hammond, do you always use scissors or other instruments to breech
the fetal head or the fetal neck in the course of doing an intact D&E of this kind?
A. Not always. It depends on the fetus. If you’ve got a fetus that is earlier
in gestation, the skull, or calvarium, it is soft. It isn’t as firmly formed. So in
those cases you can often do this just with your finger, you can do this digitally.
In some cases the scissors probably after 20 weeks I am more likely to
use them. We actually have a number of instruments on the table that I can
use, whatever seems like it is going to be most effective.27
Dr. Stephen Chasen, another plaintiff, is associate professor of obstetrics
and gynecology at the Weill Medical College of Cornell University. He has
done 500 abortions in his career, including 200 dismemberment and 75 partial-
birth abortions.28 In his expert testimony he described the way he finds
the place on the baby’s head to puncture: “I place a clamp on the front part of
the cervix and, applying mild traction to this, it exposes the skin at the back
of the fetal neck at the site through which I place the scissors. So I can in
almost all cases actually visualize the spot through which I place the scissors.29
On cross-examination, counsel for the Government walked him through
the steps he takes in a partial-birth abortion:
Q. You wrap a small sterile towel around the fetus, because it is slippery,
and after the legs are out you pull on the sacrum, or the lower portion of the
spine, to continue to remove the fetus, right?
A. Right.
Q. When the fetus is out to the level of the breech, you place another,
larger towel around the first small towel, right?
A. Right.
Q. You gently pull downward on the sacrum until the shoulder blades
appear, right?
A. Right.
Q. Then, with your hand on the fetus’s back, holding it with the towel,
you twist in a clockwise or counterclockwise motion to rotate the shoulder,
right?
A. Right.
Q. The shoulder in front or the arm in front is swept out with your fingers,
and then you rotate the other side of the fetus to sweep out the other arm,
right?
A. Right.
Q. Then the fetus is at a point where only the head remains in the cervix,
correct?
A. That’s correct.
Q. That is when you make the decision based on the gestational age and
the amount of cervical dilation, whether the head will fit out intact, whether
you can tuck the head of the fetus to its chest, or whether you have to decompress
the skull to remove the fetus’s head, right?
A. It is based on the size of the fetal head and the cervical dilation. I don’t
directly consider the gestational age.
Q. If you are able to deliver the head by flexing the chin against the fetal
chest—and you have been able to do this several times . . . Doctor?
A. There have been a few occasions, yes.
Q. Then you remove the fetus with the towel, you put it on the table, and
you turn back to the woman to deal with the placenta, right?
A. That’s right.
Q. If you can’t do that, you know you are going to have to crush the head,
and so you take a clamp and you grasp the cervix to elevate it, and then your
assistant there in the operating room will pull down on the fetus’s legs or back,
gently lowering the fetus’s head toward the opening of the vagina, right?
A. Right.
Q. That is when you put two fingers at the back of the fetus’s neck at the
base of the skull where you can feel the base of the skull, and then you
puncture the skull with the scissors, right?
A. I usually can see it as well as feel it. But yes.
Q. At that point you see some brain tissue come out, and you are 100
percent certain that you are in the brain, so you open the scissors to expand
the hole, remove the scissors, and put the suction device in the skull, right?
A. Correct.
Q. You turn on the suction, and typically the fetus comes right out with
the suction device still in its skull, right?
A. Right.30
Dr. Gerson Weiss, a plaintiff and expert witness at trial, is chair of the
department of obstetrics and gynecology and women’s health at the UMDNJ New Jersey Medical School. He claims to have done approximately 1,500 to
2,000 abortions, including 300 to 500 dismemberment and partial-birth abortions.
31 Dr. Weiss testified that, not only is the baby’s neck visible in a partial-
birth abortion, but also a portion of the baby’s head: “Visualize in your
mind this. The cervix has to be dilated enough to allow the entire trunk of the
fetus to pass through it. The neck of the fetus is much smaller than the shoulders
and the trunk but a larger thing, the shoulders and the trunk have passed
through. So, not only is the neck through but a portion of the skull which is
vividly, you know, exactly where it is and you see it, it’s above the neck.”32
Judge Casey questioned Dr. Weiss about finding the place on the baby’s
head to puncture:
THE COURT: You do it by feel, don’t you?
THE WITNESS: You always feel it. It’s right there where your finger is.
THE COURT: If you feel it you can’t see it.
THE WITNESS: Usually you see it. So, when it’s right there you can usually,
under direct vision, insert a sharp instrument into the skull or, at worst,
by feel, not blindly, because you know exactly where it is and you feel it
with your finger.33
The fact that the baby is alive during the partial-birth procedure—a fact
formerly contested by abortion activists—was confirmed by a number of
plaintiffs’ witnesses.
Dr. Carolyn Westoff, a plaintiff and expert in the case, is a professor of
epidemiology and population and family health in the School of Public Health
at Columbia University. She has performed hundreds of abortions including
dismemberment and partial-birth abortions, fifty of which she performed or
supervised in 2003.34 Dr. Westoff testified that there is “usually a heartbeat”
when she commences delivery in a partial-birth abortion, and that when she
collapses the skull, the fetus is living.35
The fact that the baby is still living at this point in the abortion was also
confirmed vividly here by Dr. Johnson in a series of questions from Judge Casey:
THE COURT: An affidavit I saw earlier said sometimes, I take it, the fetus
is alive until they crush the skull?
THE WITNESS: That’s correct, yes, sir.
THE COURT: In one affidavit I saw attached earlier in this proceeding,
were the fingers of the baby opening and closing?
THE WITNESS: It would depend where the hands were and whether or not
you could see them.
THE COURT: Were they in some instances?
THE WITNESS: Not that I remember. I don’t think I have ever looked at the
hands.
THE COURT: Were the feet moving?
THE WITNESS: Feet could be moving, yes.36
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