Political Quotes

“as I was saying, quoting Mr. Cohen: I didn't know at the time-- Mr. Cohen, who, again, previously wrote that he was in favor of allowing this procedure to be legal, says: I didn't know at the time, of course, and maybe the people who supplied my data--the usual pro-choice groups--were giving me what they thought was precise information. And precise I was. I wrote that ``just four one-hundredths of one percent of abortions are performed after 24 weeks'' and that ``most, if not all, are performed because the fetus is found to be severely damaged or because the life of the mother is clearly in danger.'' It turns out, though, that no one really knows what percentage of abortions are late-term. No one keeps figures. But my Washington Post colleague David Brown looked behind the purported figures and the purported rationale for these abortions and found something other than medical crises of one sort or another. After interviewing doctors who performed late-term abortions and surveying the literature, Brown--a physician himself--wrote: ``These doctors say that while a significant number of their patients have late-term abortions for medical reasons, many others--perhaps the majority--do not. Brown's findings brought me up short. If, in fact, most women seeking late-term abortions have just come to grips a little bit late with their pregnancy, then the word ``choice'' has been stretched past a reasonable point.…”