What Gonzales v. Carhart Says About Accidental Births During Abortion

Why do we need to explicitly say we are against infanticide when a child is born during the process of an attempted abortion? Critics claim that it never happens and there is already legal protection.

The Born Alive Infant Protection Act signed by George W. Bush in 2002 has no enforcement arm. It condemns without the ability to punish. This wouldn’t be a problem if the determination to achieve a successful abortion didn’t clearly corrupt the decision making of the doctors performing abortions. Read the following from Gonzales v. Carhart (2006), the Supreme Court case responsible for upholding a ban on the abortion procedure “Intact D&E” (Intact Dilation and Extraction), otherwise known as Partial Birth Abortion:

“They contend—relying on the testimony of numerous abortion doctors—that D&E may result in the delivery of a living fetus beyond the Act’s anatomical landmarks in a significant fraction of cases. This is so, respondents say, because doctors cannot predict the amount the cervix will dilate before the abortion procedure. It might dilate to a degree that the fetus will be removed largely intact. To complete the abortion, doctors will commit an overt act that kills the partially delivered fetus. Respondents thus posit that any D&E has the potential to violate the Act, and that a physician will not know beforehand whether the abortion will proceed in a prohibited manner.”[1]

In layman’s terms, the doctors expressed concern that in the process of dilating a woman for the purpose of delivering specific body parts into the vagina to rip them from the rest of the unborn fetus until the entire body has been retrieved the whole of the child might pass into the birth canal beyond the point they can legally kill it.

Notice their concern, WHEN they complete the abortion in this scenario they WILL have committed an overt act that kills the partially delivered child. Partially delivered in this case is defined as breach up to the neck and base of the skull (the whole body is out except the head) or delivered head first beyond the navel (the whole body is delivered from the head to the waist). Those are the anatomical markers that make it impermissible to kill the child.

The Supreme Court assures the doctors as long as their intention was to tear the fetus apart in pieces and it only slipped out by accident they will face no legal repercussions. Only doctors that want to deliver them for the purpose of killing them will get in trouble. The same Supreme Court case also includes a description of a doctor holding the head of a child in the uterus as it slips out to assure it had not been born. I honestly have no idea how this coheres with the language of the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act that states the complete expulsion or extraction as the moment when a doctor is legally required to act to save the child. The anatomical markers in Gonzales v. Carhart are still there meaning the child can’t be delivered to that point for the purposes of abortion. Abortion law in the United States is often a jumbled mess of inconsistency. Minimally Gonzales v. Carhart offers up direct testimony from abortion providers how such a thing as an accidental birth in the process of abortion can happen.

In his debate with Dr. Mike Adams, abortionist Dr. Willie Parker questioned the medical information in a Supreme Court decision.[2] The information in Gonzales v. Carhart is taken directly from medical professionals performing abortions. Four years after the Born Alive Infant Protection Act, doctors were still arguing they should be allowed to kill a child almost entirely out of the mother.

Dr. Parker claimed to be willing to perform abortions to the 25^th week, past medical viability, without questioning the mother as to her reason for seeking an abortion because her conscience is sacred in this matter. We can then determine that an abortionist like Dr. Parker would abide by these laws, perhaps accidentally allow a child to slip through an overly dilated cervix and in their zeal to honor the sacred conscience of the woman paying them for an abortion consider what they could legally get away with assuming their intentions were right under the Gonzales v. Carhart definition.

It sure would be helpful if we could clear it up once and for all for these doctors. If the child slips through their grip and out of the mother they are not allowed to actively or passively cause its death under the threat of criminal prosecution. They must attempt to save the child. This would obviously represent a jarring course correction from the destroyer to the saver, but if this is too confusing for them they might want to put down their forceps and vacuum aspirators and find another job anyway.

This information ought to be horrifying for anyone even marginally morally sensitive. It ought to make us angry about what abortionists do. That is understandable, and the moral nature of abortion, if the unborn are full members of the human family, demands strong correction. As a Christian, I have other duties to the abortion doctor as well. Dr. Adams, whom I am honored to call a friend, posted the following on Facebook after his debate. I couldn’t express it better: