c.1997 The Boston Globe
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It was news that Ron Fitzsimmons decided to tell the truth. Butthe truth that he decided to tell was not new.
Fitzsimmons, the executive director of the National Coalition ofAbortion Providers, figured prominently in last year's debate overpartial-birth abortions. Like other pro-choice spokesmen,Fitzsimmons insisted that such abortions take place only a fewhundred times a year, and only when the mother is gravely ill orthe unborn baby terribly deformed. President Clinton 
echoed thoseclaims when he vetoed the congressional ban on partial-birthabortions last spring. These abortions, the president said, are``potentially lifesaving, certainly health-saving'' measures,restricted to ``a small but extremely vulnerable group of women andfamilies in this country, just a few hundred a year.''
There was only one thing wrong with that argument. It was false.
Last week, breaking ranks with his pro-abortion allies,Fitzsimmons confessed the truth. He admitted that thousands—nothundreds—of partial-birth abortions take place each year, withthe vast majority performed on healthy mothers and healthy fetuses.He acknowledged having ``lied through my teeth'' when the ban wasbeing debated, recalling one ``Nightline'' appearance withparticular chagrin. ``I just went out there and spouted the partyline,'' he told The Washington Post. ``I'm not proud of it.''
Anyone who repents a lie and embraces the truth deserves creditfor his honesty. And there is a measure of bravery in Fitzsimmons'scoming clean, for he is sure to be ostracized by pro-choiceextremists.
But as Fitzsimmons himself makes clear, he is not having secondthoughts about the practice of aborting healthy pregnancies. Heworries, rather, that by lying about it, pro-choice leaders do adisservice to those who perform abortions.
``When you're a doctor who does these abortions and the leadersof your movement ... say these procedures are done in only the mosttragic of circumstances,'' Fitzsimmons told American Medical News,the newspaper of the American Medical Association, ``how do youthink it makes you feel? You know they're primarily done on healthywomen and healthy fetuses, and it makes you feel like a dirtylittle abortionist with a dirty little secret.''
Dirty, yes. But secret? Hardly.
Partial-birth abortion, or, in medical jargon, ``intact dilationand extraction,'' is an especially grisly way to end a pregnancy.The nearly fully-formed fetus is pulled, feet first, through thebirth canal until all but the head has been delivered. The doctorthen forces a sharp instrument into the back of the skull. Acatheter is inserted, and the brain suctioned out. That allows theskull to be crushed, so the head can be easily extracted. ``It isas close to infanticide,'' US Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan observes, ``as anything I have come upon.''
No wonder the pro-choice camp swore up and down thatpartial-birth abortion is exceedingly rare, resorted to only when apregnancy has gone heartbreakingly wrong. Had the truth gotten out,Clinton would never have vetoed the ban. And if he had, Congresswould have overturned it in a minute.
Ah, but the truth (ital) did (unital) get out. For those whocared to look, it was in plain view.
Pro-life activists told anyone who would listen thatpartial-birth abortion was widely practiced. They circulated the1993 testimony of Dr. Martin Haskell, an Ohio physician well-knownfor performing late-in-pregnancy abortions: He said that 80 percentof those abortions were ``purely elective.'' C. Everett Koop, theformer surgeon general (and a famed pediatric surgeon), decried``the misinformation campaign conducted by the advocates ofpartial-birth abortion.'' Even the AMA's Council on Legislation, anadvisory panel, voted unanimously support of a ban.
But in the nation's newsrooms, the facts were ignored. With rareexceptions, the prestige media recycled the abortion lobby'swhoppers unchallenged. Becaue most mainstream journalists areunshakably pro-choice, most of them never thought to question thepro-choice line on partial-birth abortions.
There were a few exceptions. Unwilling to take the abortionadvocates' claims on faith, David Brown of The Washington Postinterviewed doctors and checked the medical literature himself.What he found was ``that the majority of these abortions areperformed on normal fetuses,'' and that ``in most cases where theprocedure is used, the physical health of the woman ... is not injeopardy.''
Meanwhile, Ruth Padawer of the Bergen Record demolished thepro-choice lobby's claim that no more than 500 partial-birthabortions take place in the United States each year. In just oneclinic in New Jersey, she reported—Metropolitan Medical ofEnglewood—1,500 such abortions are performed annually. ``We havean occasional amnio abnormality,'' one physician told her, ``butit's a minuscule amount.... Most are for elective, not medicalreasons: people who didn't realize, or didn't care, how far alongthey were.''
In a free society, almost anything is open to debate—evenwhether the law should permit a healthy fetus, five or six or sevenmonths along, to have its brains sucked out by an abortionist. Butof what use is a debate if one side peddles lies, or if the presswon't set the record straight? This week, a bill banningpartial-birth abortions will be re-introduced in Congress. It wouldbe nice, this time around, if everyone told the truth.
(Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for the Boston Globe. His e-mailaddress is jacoby(AT)nws.globe.com).
The New York Times said in an editorial on Monday, March 3:
Republicans in Congress are expected to reintroduce legislationthis week to ban the abortion procedure that they describe as``partial birth abortion'' but whose technical name is ``intactdilation and extraction.'' Both houses of Congress passed the billlast year, but it was vetoed by President Clinton after a heateddebate that pitted the gruesomeness of the procedure against theright of women to choose the best means of abortion in consultationwith their doctors.
The debate last year was marred by distortions and evasions onboth sides, and recent comments by Ron Fitzsimmons, executivedirector of the National Coalition of Abortion Providers, havereignited the controversy. Fitzsimmons now says that he lied in1995 when he claimed that the procedure was used very rarely andonly in cases where the mother's life was in danger or in cases offetal abnormalities.
The anti-abortion forces will no doubt use his comments to tarpro-choice advocates who fought the bill last year. PresidentClinton is now in the awkward spot of having to justify last year'sveto, which he defended on grounds that the procedure was used onlyrarely and only for critical health reasons. But no one can claimhonesty here. Both sides manipulated the facts.
The procedure is one of a few that doctors use to abort fetusesafter 20 weeks of gestation. It involves dilating the cervix,pulling the fetus partially into the birth canal and collapsing theskull. There is no firm count, but it is likely that a few thousandabortions using this method are performed every year on women withhealthy fetuses. The great majority of those abortions are donebefore 24 weeks of gestation—in other words, in the secondtrimester—before the fetus is viable outside the womb. Abortionsperformed in that time frame are legal and constitutionallyprotected from undue state intrusion, which would seem to precludebanning an accepted medical procedure.
However, neither anti- nor pro-abortion groups chose to focus onthe use of the procedure in the second trimester. Instead,supporters of a ban consistently preached against its use in theeighth and ninth months of pregnancy in blatant attempts to misleadthe public into believing that healthy babies were being abortedjust before birth with this procedure. They also presumably wantedto downplay the fact that the greatest impact of a ban would occurduring the period when women have a constitutionally protectedright to an abortion.
The pro-choice groups responded by arguing that only a fewhundred of these ``late term'' abortions—by which they apparentlymeant third-trimester abortions—were done each year, to protectthe mother's health or because of fetal abnormalities. They werecorrect in that respect. But they were silent on the thousandsperformed in the second trimester, perhaps because they feared thatthe public would find using this method to abort a 23-week-oldfetus equally distasteful.
The less-than-honest quality of the debate has beendisheartening. But the squabbling over numbers should not obscurethe principle at stake. A ban on the procedure is still anunacceptable political invasion of private medical decisions and anattempt to limit access to abortion.
c.1997 The Boston Globe < WASHINGTON—Seble Dawit was born in Africa, grew up in Africaand has dedicated much of her life to defending the rights ofAfrican women. These days, one of the most divisive issues she has faced abroadis confronting her in the United States, where she runs a nonprofitgroup in Jamaica Plain, Mass. A new US law will soon ban thepractice known as female genital mutilation—the cutting away ofgirls' genitalia in a ritual that imperils their health anddeprives them of sexual pleasure as women. ^@ Although few social workers, police, doctors or communitiesin which the practice is common realize it, the law takes effectMarch 29. It calls for up to five years imprisonment for anyone whocarries out female genital mutilation, sometimes called femalecircumcision, on a girl younger than age 18. In many ways, Dawit has found, fighting the practice in theUnited States is as complicated as it is in Africa. No one can sayhow the law will be enforced or who, if anyone, it will affect. TheCenters for Disease Control and Prevention says at least 150,000girls and women of African descent in the United States risk beingcut or have already undergone the procedure. Dawit has worked with women's groups and elders in Africa sothat communities, not governments, changed their customs. She wouldhave preferred to take the same approach in the United States. Butlast fall, Patricia Schroeder, a Colorado Democrat who was leavingCongress, pushed through a bill outlawing the practice. ``You cannot legislate culture,'' Dawit said during a visit toWashington last week. ``The idea of hauling people off to jail forpractices that are 5,000 years old is counterproductive.'' Dawit, a lawyer, says the legislation is rife with ironies andcontradictions. It is meant to protect children, yet it could sendparents to jail. It is meant to help Africans as they assimilate inthe United States, yet it could stereotype them. Then, too, the US government has barely publicized the law. Anearly draft of the legislation called for immigration authoritiesto give pamphlets about the prohibition to all Africans arriving inthe United States. But Dawit, who was asked to comment on thedraft, objected. ``A lot of African women don't even know about this practice,''she said. ``You don't go handing out pamphlets about the Mafia toItalians because they come from Italy.'' Although female genital mutilation is widely portrayed as aMuslim custom, Dawit stresses that it crosses religious and ethnicboundaries in the 28 African countries where it is practiced.Nigerian women call it ``having your bath.'' In Sudan they say``going behind the house.'' In Ethiopia it's known as ``having yourear clipped.'' Activists are divided over whether to call thepractice ``mutilation,'' ``circumcision,'' or, to avoid a negativeconnotation, ``cutting.'' The practice, which dates back hundreds of years and is oftenperformed without anesthesia by a community elder, takes severalforms. These range from cutting the clitoral hood to infibulation,which involves removing the entire clitoris and surrounding genitalarea and stitching together the vulva. The World HealthOrganization estimates that 85 million to 114 million girls andwomen have undergone the procedure. The reasons for the practice vary from one community to another.For some it has religious significance. For others it is part of acoming-of-age celebration. For many women, Dawit says, it is achance to exercise the little control they have, in this case overtheir daughters. Dozens of women's rights groups have denounced the practice inAfrica. But they disagree about what to do about it in America.They cannot even agree on whether it is even a problem. Dawit, who was born in Ethiopia and underwent the procedure asan infant, says she has no idea how common it is in the UnitedStates. But she does know of immigrants who—straining to hold onto some traditions amid the turbulence of a new country—havedecided to continue the practice. But others are skeptical. ``The fact remains that there's not a single case in the UnitedStates,'' said Nahid Toubia, a surgeon from Sudan who is anassociate professor at Columbia University. ``I'm not talking aboutabout what somebody said in a meeting or a publication. I'm sayingshow me a single case.'' Susan Rich, a program officer for the Wallace Global Fund, aprivate foundation in Washington, said, ``If there had been casesof (mutilation) here, they could have been prosecuted ... If youcut off your child's hand, can't you be charged with child abuse?'' Schroeder, who now teaches at Princeton University and workswith the Institute for a Civil Society in Boston, rejects thecriticism. ``The man who used to run my office in Denver used to say thelegislation was the stupidest thing,'' she said. ``Then we went toa school and a teacher pulled us aside and said, `Guess whathappened to these little girls?' Boy, did he flip.'' Writing the legislation took months, and it involved debatesamong advocates of women's rights. Some felt that putting anyrestictions on women would open the door to other restrictions,such as legislation against abortions. Others worried thathospitals or police would interpret the law too literally andprosecute women for body-piercing. For that reason, the law waswritten so that it covers only minors. Toubia, the surgeon, has her own doubts about the law. ``We want women to be treated as equals and we want Africanimmigrants to be treated the same as everyone else in the US, whichmeans they have the right to harm themselves if they want to,'' shesaid from her office in New York. Susan Rich's brother, Dr. Michael Rich, specializes inadolescent medicine at the Children's Hospital in Boston andteaches pediatrics at the Harvard Medical School. He hasn't seen acase of a girl who has had the procedure in the United States. Butlast year he treated a pregnant 19-year-old Somalian immigrant.Before coming to the United States, she had undergone infibulation.Her birth canal was blocked and he and other doctors realized theywould have to undo the procedure. They faced an ethical, and possibly legal, dilemma: what if thewoman insisted on another infibulation after giving birth? Rich was relieved when she said she did not want to undergo theprocedure again. Still, such cases have made Rich wonder how farthe new law will reach: ``Who should be punished? Is it theperformer? Or the parents? Suppose I am the visitor in someone'shome and I hear they are going to circumcise a girl. Am I legallyto be found guilty for not reporting it?'' Dr. Jo Ivey Boufford, principal deputy assistant secretary atthe Department of Health and Human Services, said the JusticeDepartment is reviewing the wording now. ``The law is a littleunclear and part of it has to be clarified,'' she said. Others sayit applies only to the person who performs the procedure. Michael Rich has another criticism: many groups have customsthat seem unseemly, or even barbaric, to outsiders. The more thosegroups overlap, the harder it is to draw the line about what isright and wrong. ``Our culture has people injecting collagen into their lips orputting implants into their breasts or doing tummy tucks,'' hesaid. ``We accept that, and we don't want anyone to even considerfloating a bill making breast implants illegal even though there isgood medical evidence that silicone has deliterious effects on theimmune system.'' As the director of Alliances—An African Women's Network, Dawittries to balance these arguments. ``We, as activists, are in apredicament,'' she said. ``We are vilified for airing dirty Africanlaundry. But we're saying, `there's a law coming, you're going tohave to be able to deal with it.' `` Dawit rarely talks about her experience with the practice, butshe does say that her mother and stepfather, who live in Virginia,agree with her campaign against its continuation. So does hersister, who is a college student in Toronto, and her brother, asound engineer in Paris. Some of her relatives in Ethiopia are not convinced, though. Sheremembers an aunt telling her that female circumcision needs tocontinue. She hears such comments fairly frequently, even in the UnitedStates. Not long ago, Dawit was telling a group of women about theban on female genital mutilation. ``One of them said, `What kind ofa lawyer are you. What does this have to do with the law?''' Go back to SOCIOLOGY 260 -- Sociology of Marriage and the Family Page If you have any questions or comments please email:GENITAL MUTILATION BAN SPURS DEBATE
By DAVID L. MARCUS