Half-fetus, half-child
Fr. Frank Pavone, National Director

In one of his few remarks during the two hours of arguments in the
Supreme Court today about partial-birth abortion, Justice Scalia responded
to Justice Stevens' assertion that we should say "fetus" rather than
child.. Justice Scalia said, "half-fetus, half-child."

The point was clear. This is not simply about abortion. This is a
hijacking of the delivery process for the purpose of killing the child. This
is infanticide. I don't know why Justice Scalia was otherwise so quiet,
and Justice Alito completely silent during the arguments, but I know
one reason I would be. The barbarity of partial-birth abortion is so
self-evidently wrong that it is beyond dispute, beyond discussion, that it
should not be legal in our country - or anywhere else, for that matter.
Silence in this matter speaks volumes.

In the course of the two hours of oral arguments, the Court considered
three key reasons why abortion advocates want the Court to strike down
the Federal ban on partial-birth abortion: a) the ban lacks a health
exception; b) the ban is too broad, that is, by its wording it actually
bans most if not all second and third trimester D&E (dismemberment)
abortions rather than just partial-birth abortion, and c) the ban is vague,
and because the language is not clear and specific enough, doctors
won't know if it really applies to them.

Having listened carefully to the oral arguments and having read all the
briefs, I don't think the abortion advocates made their case, and I
don't think a majority of the Justices think they did either.

One of the most important admissions made in the arguments by the
pro-abortion side was that we really have no measurements about what kind of
a health need is met by partial-birth abortion. Their key argument,
after all, is that the procedure must be allowed for the sake of women's
health. They admitted that the Court could ban this procedure if its
health advantages were minimal rather than significant, yet they could not
establish, by statistical measurement, the assertion that the health
advantages of partial-birth abortion are significant.

In regard to safety, one of the key questions from Chief Justice
Roberts was that if, as the abortionists claim, partial-birth abortion is
safer because it requires fewer insertions of instruments into the woman's
body, why would it not then also follow that the safest method is live
birth altogether, with the killing of the child outside the womb? The
pro-abortion side did not have an answer to that specific question,
which proves the point that Congress and the Bush Administration make,
namely, that this procedure must be banned so that society has a clear
barrier against infanticide.

Isn't it just amazing that in our highest court in this great nation,
this debate occurred today about the legality of "dismemberment" and
"pulling the arms and legs off" a child. In the end, it's not a matter of
which version of killing should be used. It's a matter of stopping the
killing altogether.