The Partial-Birth Abortion Trials: Casey at the Bench.

Like the "collective amnesia" that is said to occur when a culture forgets a common experience, abortion in this country requires a kind of collective blindness. Where abortion is concerned, Roe v. Wade rendered the Constitution blind to the personhood of children not yet born.

This was demonstrated vividly in the recent trials on the 2003 Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act in New York, Nebraska, and California federal district courts. The lead witnesses for the plaintiffs, an assembly of seasoned abortionists, took the stand to describe under oath what they do to infants in the 5th and 6th months of pregnancy. The testimony was callous, even brutal, and astonishingly frank. (Full transcripts are available at www.usccb.org/prolife.)

All three trials have now drawn to a close, and one judge has ruled. California Judge Phyllis Hamilton in Planned Parenthood v. Ashcroft declared the ban unconstitutional. Her lengthy opinion shows that, to her, the case wasn't even close.

She bought wholesale the testimony of eight abortionists, recognizing their "vast experience" - - one had done 5,000 abortions, another claimed 30,000 - - but questioned the credibility of four OB/GYNs who supported the ban because they were "pro-life" and had not, themselves, aborted thousands of children. An expert in fetal neurobiology and fetal pain had testified that abortion at 20 weeks causes "severe and excruciating pain" to the child. Judge Hamilton ruled this testimony "irrelevant."

Any veteran of the pro-life movement will have an ingrained aversion to federal judges. This is only natural, given that they are the ones who first forced on our nation unlimited abortion and who have protected its constitutional status for 31 years.

But in the midst of these historic trials there was a pleasant surprise. That surprise came in the form of Judge Richard Conway Casey of the Southern District of New York. Judge Casey, though legally blind, appeared to see the humanity of the child where the Judge Hamiltons of the world see only "choice."

The plaintiffs in the New York case were the National Abortion Federation and several individual abortionists. Early in the trial Judge Casey interrupted the direct examination of Dr. Cassing Hammond, a witness for the plaintiffs, and said, "Excuse meEYou don't feel any obligation whatsoever to protect the life of the fetus?"