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 Anyone who doubts that America is losing its sense of shame should download the website of abortionist George Tiller, accessible at http://www.drtiller.com. The experience is certain to sicken any cyber surfer still in possession of a functioning conscience. After browsing through morbid photos of his "operating suite" you can read Tiller's bland acknowledgment that he kills babies at 37 weeks gestational age. For the arithmetically challenged, that's the ninth month of pregnancy. I call his victims "baby" (his term) because Tiller has now abandoned all pretense that they are otherwise. He even calls them "child." More alarming than his outrageous admission is its failure to provoke discernable public outrage.
Tiller is by no means the only abortionist killing near full term babies and he has plenty of company among abortionists on the net. But none of his colleagues showcase their handiwork with such self-promotional audacity. He is either contemptuous of public opinion or convinced that the public is beyond caring. Either way, his global ads seem to be reaching their target audience because Tiller's market penetration is deepening daily. German and Japanese television teams recently visited Wichita in search of interviews concerning the European and Asian women who are making the long journey to engage his grisly services. He recently doubled the size of his abortion clinic and in so doing, likely tripled his killing capacity.
It is difficult to confer clinical respectability on the killing of a neonate but Tiller takes a shot, so to speak, with the "Orwellian" term "fetal indications termination of pregnancy." Whew. That's Tiller-speak for the systematic extermination of developmentally "defective" babies. He also lists disorders which he says are among the conditions which justify killing these children. Several of these maladies are non-fatal and some may be only mildly disabling. He names "encephalocele," for instance, which The Merck Manual says "can be repaired and the prognosis is good for many of these patients." He also cites "hydrocephalus," concerning which the text, Diseases of the Newborn, Schaffer & Avery, Saunders, 6th Ed., 1991, says that with few exceptions ". . . every infant with neonatal hydrocephalus should be treated surgically . . . [and] 86% of infants survived following their shunt placement. Of these infants, 46% were reported normal on follow-up." Although Tiller denies performing these "terminations" without appropriate diagnostic evaluations, any intellectually honest clinician will concede the difficulty in predicting the severity of disorders whose very existence can be misdiagnosed.
Tiller also matter-of-factly observes that the average age of the more than 1,000 late term babies he had killed is 27 weeks (or the seventh month of pregnancy). A recent call to the neonatal intensive care unit at Via Christi Hospital in Wichita revealed the presence of preemies born at 24 and 25 weeks gestation -- nearly a month younger than the average age of the disabled babies Tiller routinely kills. Hospitals frequently and successfully treat children born with some of the same disorders for which Tiller is killing them. In fact, The New York Times, May 16, 1997, citing the National Center for Health Care Statistics, reports that approximately 15% of babies born at 22 weeks will survive, 25% at 23 weeks, 42 % at 24 weeks and 57% at 25 weeks.
These babies survive because they receive intensive care, but Tiller apparently thinks a baby which can’t survive without help, isn’t entitled to survive at all. Tiller spokeswoman Peggy Jarman said in an interview appearing in the August, 26, 1991 edition of The Kansas City Star that "elective abortions should be considered acceptable into the 26th week because these fetuses are not capable of surviving outside the womb without artificial life supports. ‘You’re talking about the difference between natural survival and intensive care . . . .’" Perhaps Tiller has professional reasons for disliking neonatal intensive care. If, for instance, he were to botch a late term abortion by accidentally failing to kill the baby before he induced labor, some of his victims would no doubt "survive" at least long enough to give their mothers a theoretical cause of action to sue him for medical negligence. Such a mishap would, after all, produce a live birth instead of the dead baby for which the mother had contracted.
In the same interview, Jarman admitted that "about three-fourths of Tiller’s late term patients are teen-agers who have denied to themselves or their families that they were pregnant until it was too late to hide it." Since his website lists the average age of the mothers on whom he performs his fetal abnormality abortions as 29 years, there can’t be much overlap between this older group and the late term teen-age mothers Jarman describes as aborting assumedly "healthy" babies. This admission raises the possibility that Tiller could be killing as many as three healthy late term babies, of healthy mothers, for each "disabled" child he aborts. It can at least be observed that he is an "equal opportunity" abortionist who is no more inclined to savage "disabled" than "healthy" late term babies.
Trisomy 21 is the scientific name for Downs Syndrome and it is one of the conditions for which Tiller says he "terminates." I have a good friend who has Downs. He is a great guy. I bet even George Tiller would like him. I admit that in some respects, he's a little slow. But is that anything for which to kill someone? He is quicker than Leo Buscaglia to give you a hug and really mean it. Surely that should count for something.
According to World magazine, January 18, 1997, the current population of Americans with Downs Syndrome is more than 250,000. People with this condition generally score in the "mild to moderate" range of mental retardation. Most can learn to read, hold jobs and live independently. Would their executions be more justifiable if they could do none of these things? Who among us is perfect enough to decide who among us is not?
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report that in the 1980's, abortion reduced the number of children with Downs Syndrome born to white women over 35 in the metro Atlanta area by about 70%. Of the 30% who did bear children with Downs, most weren't tested for the disorder. As one wag recently put it, eugenics is still a dirty word but it has become a common practice.
Tiller also includes Trisomy 18 on his hit list. This condition generally means a life span measured in months, weeks or even days following birth. But we all die sooner or later. Does that mean those who will die later have the right to kill those who will die sooner?
The National Committee for Adoption says in a recent press release that "there is a waiting list of screened families who want to adopt seriously disabled newborns, including babies born with Downs Syndrome and spina bifida." The latter disability is also among Tiller's intolerable conditions. Most of the parents who don't want these children could place them for adoption by having them delivered alive, like the Via Christi preemies, at the same points in pregnancy at which Tiller is killing them. Parents of younger unborn children could do the same by merely waiting a few more days or weeks. Why must they die when medical science is now able to abort a late term pregnancy without killing the baby?
The Board of Trustees of the American Medical Association says they shouldn’t. In May of 1997 the Board approved a report finding that:
Except in extraordinary circumstances, maternal health factors which demand termination of pregnancy can be accommodated without sacrificing the fetus and the near certainty of the independent viability of the fetus argues for ending the pregnancy by appropriate delivery.
But part of the reason these children are being killed is that newborn babies in intensive care pose major legal risks for treating physicians. University of Chicago neonatologist William Meadow reports in the May 6, 1997 Pediatrics Electronic Pages that most U.S. doctors treating preemies will be sued for medical malpractice at some point in their careers, no matter how competent they are. It is simply easier to refer high risk, late term unborn babies for abortion than it is to treat them and risk a law suit.
Another factor is the large number of parents who would rather kill their disabled unborn child, no matter how near full term, than allow them to raised by anyone else. Many rationalize this virtual infanticide as a desire "to spare my baby a life of hardship." But as noted earlier, people with Downs are universally acknowledged to be among the happiest, most fulfilled people on the planet. And The Merck Manual also says of spina bifida, "with proper care, many children will do well." An article appearing in The New England Journal of Medicine, 312:1589, 1985, said of these "many children" that following surgery, "72% were ambulatory and 79% had normal intellectual capacity." Perhaps some of these parents are more concerned about their own "hardship" than that of their "disabled" children.
"Fate" has killed their dream, so they will kill their child. Their obsession with the eradication of this humiliating "mistake" consumes them. The delusion that killing their baby will somehow kill their pain, blinds them to the joy this child and its adoptive parents could bring to one another's lives. If they can't have the child they wanted, no one else can have the child they got.
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