A partial-birth by any other name ...

By David Reinhard

Editor's note. The following first appeared October 26 in the Oregonian in a slightly different form and is reprinted with the author's permission.

Never mind that Congress has just passed for the third time a partial-birth abortion ban with bipartisan majorities that included pro-choice and pro-life lawmakers. Never mind that a president will soon sign a ban that 70 percent of the public favors. Never mind that partial-birth abortion describes perfectly what happens when an abortionist partially extracts a live fetus from the womb, pierces its skull and sucks out the brains.

No, the act that Congress and President Bush would ban is "a late-term abortion." It's "a type of late-middle and late-term abortion." It's a "type of abortion." It's "an abortion procedure" or "a certain abortion procedure." It is, you see, "a procedure doctors call `intact dilation and extraction.' "

It all sounds so medical, so professional - - so, well, antiseptic. And it all fits so well with the argument critics of the partial-birth abortion ban resorted to in their bitter end: Lawmakers shouldn't meddle in medical decisions or outlaw medical procedures.

Alas, it's the only argument partial-birth backers had left. All other claims they made over the past years proved bogus. Partial-birth abortion is an rare, late-stage emergency procedure and done only when the life of the mother was at risk or the baby damaged. The media - - the Washington Post, PBS and the Bergen Record - - and the statements of partial-birth pioneers themselves made plain the falsity of these claims. The live baby feels no pain in the procedure. The professional societies of anesthesiologists and medical experts debunked the no-pain claims.

In 1997, the head of the National Coalition of Abortion Providers admitted "the party line" was all bunk. Ron Fitzsimmons said he "lied through my teeth," and told the New York Times that "in the vast majority of cases, the procedure is ...