3 infamous partial-birth abortionists give cash to Democrat
[This article appeared on World Net Daily on October 12, 2004.]
(c) 2004 WorldNetDaily.com
Three abortion doctors who specialize in partial-birth abortions – two of whom actually advertise their willingness to perform the grisly procedure – are all contributors to John Kerry’s presidential campaign.
George Tiller and Warren Hern may be the only two abortionists in the U.S. who openly advertise that they perform third-trimester abortions, writes Douglas Johnson in the Weekly Standard. Johnson is legislative director for the National Right to Life Committee.
The third doctor is Martin Haskell. Together, the three have contributed a total of $7,000 to help put Kerry in the White House.
“These contributions are worth scrutinizing because of what they reveal about John Kerry,” writes Johnson.
“Although Haskell, Tiller, and Hern have been controversial figures for many years in national debates about late abortions (as anybody can ascertain by entering their names into Google), the Kerry campaign apparently readily accepted the contributions – money that might very well have originated in fees charged to perform partial-birth abortions or other late abortions.”
Despite his declaration that he thinks “life begins at conception,” Kerry likely attracts dollars from abortionists due to his consistent record of voting against any restrictions on the procedure, Johnson writes.
During Friday’s presidential debate, Kerry defended his votes against the ban on partial-birth abortions, saying, “I’m against the partial-birth abortion, but you’ve got to have an exception for the life of the mother and the health of the mother under the strictest test of bodily injury to the mother.”
Haskell wrote Kerry a check for $2,000 in June.
A nurse who worked briefly at one of Haskell’s clinics, Brenda Pratt Shafer, witnessed close up the partial-birth abortion of a baby boy who she said was at 26 and a half weeks, Johnson writes.
“I stood at the doctor’s side and watched him perform a partial-birth abortion on a woman who was six months pregnant,” Shafer said. “The baby’s heartbeat was clearly visible on the ultrasound screen. The doctor delivered the baby’s body and arms, everything but his little head. The baby’s body was moving. His little fingers were clasping together. He was kicking his feet.
“The doctor took a pair of scissors and inserted them into the back of the baby’s head, and the baby’s arms jerked out in a flinch, a startle reaction, like a baby does when he thinks that he might fall. Then the doctor opened the scissors up. Then he stuck the high-powered suction tube into the hole and sucked the baby’s brains out. Now the baby was completely limp. I never went back to the clinic. But I am still haunted by the face of that little boy. It was the most perfect, angelic face I have ever seen.”
Haskell was asked by Cincinnati Medicine whether or not it bothered him that a second-trimester fetus so closely resembles a baby.
He replied, “I really don’t think about it. … Many of our patients have ethical dilemmas about abortion. I don’t feel it’s my role as a physician to tell her she should not have an abortion because of her ethical feelings. … I’m not to tell them what’s right or wrong.”
Tiller, whom pro-life activists have dubbed “Tiller the Killer,” runs an abortion clinic in Wichita, Kan., and gave $1,000 to Kerry. Johnson notes Tiller, in a 1995 speech, spoke of performing abortions as late as 36 weeks.
Hern made three donations to two different Kerry accounts, totaling $4,000.
Johnson says Hern “wrote that pregnancy should be regarded not as a normal state but as an illness which ‘may be treated by evacuation of the uterus.’ Elsewhere he wrote that pregnancy is most appropriately compared to infestation by a parasite. He is a strong proponent of population control, who has written that population growth has made the human race itself an ‘ecotumor’ or ‘planetary malignancy.'”
Kate Michelman, the longtime president of the National Abortion Rights Action League, told the New York Times, “Even on the most difficult issues, we’ve never had to worry about John Kerry’s position,” Johnson wrote, noting, “Like Kate Michelman, Doctors Haskell, Tiller, and Hern know their man.”