Political Quotes

“Ron Fitzsimmons' admission is really not all that surprising. Even at the time of the debate in the Senate last year, the preponderance of evidence suggested that the procedure was more common than some of its defenders wanted the public and Congress to believe. Consider, for example, that Dr. Martin Haskell, who authored a paper on the subject for the National Abortion Federation, said in a 1993 interview with American Medical News, ``in my particular case, probably 20 percent--of the instances of this procedure--are for genetic reasons. And the other 80 percent are purely elective.'' He suggested at the time that an estimate of about 4,000 partial-birth abortions a year was probably accurate. Another doctor, Dr. James McMahon, who acknowledged that he performed at least 2,000 of the procedures, told American Medical News before he died that he used the method to perform elective abortions up to 26 weeks and nonelective abortions up to 40 weeks. His definition of ``non-elective'' was expansive, including ``depression'' as a maternal indication for the procedure. More than half of the partial-birth abortions he performed were on healthy babies. The Record of Bergen County, NJ published an investigative report on the issue last year and reported that in New Jersey alone, at least 1,500 partial-birth abortions are performed annually, far more than the 450 to 500 such abortions that the National Abortion Federation said were occurring across the entire country.”