18,000 Sacrificial Lambs

An opinion piece written by Christie Zink, and published in The Washington Post, tells of

“a real live, breathing woman who terminated a much-wanted pregnancy at almost 22 weeks, when her baby was found to have severe fetal anomalies of the brain.”

Ms. Zink begins her article with this:

Introduce me to the woman who has an abortion after 20 weeks because she is cruel and heartless. Introduce me to the lazy gal who gets knocked up and ignores her condition until, more than halfway through her pregnancy, she ends it because it has become too darn inconvenient for her selfish lifestyle. If such a woman exists, I have never met her. Sadly, however, she appears to have influenced the thinking of even savvy, politically informed people in this country. Otherwise, how could they argue that carrying to term is always the right decision late in pregnancy? In fact, the myth of such callous women has been compelling enough to push along a bill that would ban abortion in the District after 20 weeks of pregnancy; the bill was approved this month by the House Judiciary Committee, moving it forward for consideration by the full House, perhaps as soon as Tuesday.

Perhaps Ms. Zink never heard of Kermit Gosnell, the notorious abortionist from Philadelphia. From Slate:

In 2004, a 27-year-old woman went to Gosnell, pregnant with her first child. She testified that she was surprised when Gosnell told her she was 21 weeks pregnant. On the first day of what was to be a two-day procedure, Gosnell inserted dilators in the woman's cervix. After Gosnell had finished inserting the laminaria, the woman asked him what happened to the babies after they were aborted. She testified that Gosnell told her they were burned.
At home, thinking over how Gosnell disposed of the fetuses, the woman had a change of heart. She called her cousin and the cousin called Gosnell to tell him that they wanted him to take the laminaria out. Gosnell said that he could not do that once the procedure was started. And he did not want to return the $1,300 that the patient had already paid. The pregnant woman ended up going to the Hospital at the University of Pennsylvania to have the laminaria removed. It was determined at the hospital that she was 29 weeks pregnant. A few days later, the 27-year-old delivered a premature baby girl. She was treated at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and is today a healthy kindergartener.

Clearly there are women who abort their babies after 20 weeks of pregnancy. Most, but not all, for fetal anomaly. From the website of abortionist Warren Hern MD:

Patients coming in for very late abortion - over 26 menstrual weeks' gestation - are almost always seeking services for termination of a desired pregnancy that has developed serious complications. This usually means the discovery of a catastrophic fetal anomaly or genetic disorder that guarantees death, suffering, or serious disability for the baby that would be delivered if the pregnancy were to continue to term. Occasionally a woman presents at this stage for pregnancy termination because of her own severe medical illness or a psychiatric indication. [emphasis is mine]

Almost, usually, occasionally.. means ‘not always’. The 'psychiatric indication’ could be as simple, and as temporary, as depression caused by the mother being dumped by her no good boyfriend. Clearly, there are many healthy babies who are viable at the time of the abortion.

Even one healthy baby killed for no reason other than the woman changed her mind, is one baby too many. Aborting healthy babies, later term or otherwise, doesn’t matter to pro-aborts. If they fought for the life of even one of these babies, they would have to fight for the rest of them as well. So they use them as sacrificial lambs instead, by saying things such as “only 1.5% of abortions are performed after 20 weeks”, not seeing 18,000 babies destroyed and often dismembered. These are the sacrificial lambs rarely mentioned by the proponents of choice.