Thousands of Late-Term Abortions Will Continue Following Death of George Tiller
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
June 5, 2009
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — The killing of late-term abortion practitioner George Tiller has focused the nation’s attention on abortion, but it hasn’t shown the spotlight on the number of late-term abortions done every year. Even after Tiller’s death, which pro-life groups have thoroughly condemned, late-term abortions will continue.
According to the Centers for Disease control, 1.3 percent of all abortions — nearly 9,000 a year — are done after 21 weeks into the pregnancy.
That’s 8,482 babies who, in 2005 alone, could have potentially survived outside their mother’s womb, according to the very latest medical research.
The Alan Guttmacher Institute, which is formerly the research arm of Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion business, has been noted by both sides as having more accurate figures than the CDC. It notes 13,000 late-term abortions annually done after 21 weeks of pregnancy.
Some have said that Tiller’s death makes it so relatively few late-term abortions practitioners exist, but, as Father Frank Pavone of Priests for Life points out on his blog, late-term abortions are done in several states.
The CDC, in its most recent statistics, finds 2,956 late-term abortions done in New York, 1,094 in Georgia, and 950 in New Jersey. With the state of California not reporting its figures, the national numbers are likely much higher.
And the leading list of states don’t include Kansas, where Tiller was based, or Colorado, the location of much media focus of late on Boulder-based Warren Hern, or Nebraska, the location of LeRoy Carhart.
In fact, of the 40 states that reported their abortion data to the CDC, 32 indicates abortions done after 21 weeks of pregnancy.
Jill Stanek, a pro-life nurse who exposed late-term abortions done at her hospital in Chicago, focuses on these numbers in a new editorial at WorldNetDaily.
"It is falsely claimed Tiller was one of only three late-term abortionists in the U.S.," Stanek says.
She points to a New York Times article saying some described Tiller as "one of about only three doctors in the country who had, under certain circumstances, provided abortions to women in their third trimester of pregnancy."
The Guardian newspaper in England also quoted Tiller himself saying "he owns one of only three clinics in the U.S. that perform late-term abortions."
The Los Angeles Times went as far as quoting Hern saying he is now "the only doctor in the world" who performed very late-term abortions.
"Well no," Stanek replies. "The fact is second and third trimester abortions are committed rampantly in hospitals and abortion clinics across the country on a daily basis. If were true only three doctors nationwide committed them, they did a lot of flying. Kansas, where Tiller practiced, accounted for ‘only’ 459."
Stanek says when she found out that her place of employment, Christ Hospital, was doing abortions as late as 28 weeks into pregnancy, she also learned other hospitals were doing them, too.
"These others in the Chicago area also confessed to same: Good Samaritan, Lutheran General, Illinois Masonic, Loyola, Northwestern, and Rush-Presbyterian St. Lukes. That’s just Chicago, and that’s just those who fessed up," she explained.
"Not much later the Providence Health System, which owns a chain of 26 hospitals in Alaska, California, Montana, Oregon and Washington, admitted to committing late-term abortions," she added.
Stanek says there is no medical reason for any of these 13,000 annual late-term abortions to be done.
"The third trimester begins at 28 weeks of pregnancy , when healthy babies have more than a 90 percent chance of surviving," she explains.
"There is no health reason for a mother to abort in the third trimester. Her baby can be delivered alive as easy as or easier than aborted dead," Stanek adds. "In an event I can’t imagine, that a mother would die in her third trimester were her baby not aborted, it has always been legal in every hospital in every state to do so to save a mother’s life, and it always will be."
Stanek concludes, in her WorldNetDaily editorial, "The reality is late-term abortions are committed pretty much in every pocket of the country, contrary to claims by the other side."
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