Boston Area Abortion Doctor's Attempt to Skirt Law is Sickening

A recent Boston Globe reported on a disturbing trend involving abortions conducted in Boston-area hospitals. The report said three major hospitals in the city routinely administer a lethal injection to a fetus before a traditional abortion is performed. This is done, the story said, so that doctors don't accidentally open themselves up to prosecution with an "accidental" live birth that would then require a "partial-birth abortion" to terminate the fetus.

A narrow U.S. Supreme Court decision earlier this year upheld a federal ban on the grisly procedure, which involves partially delivering a viable fetus feet-first as the head remains inside the mother. The skull is then punctured and the brain is sucked out.

To think that medical practitioners are now devising new ways to continue killing unborn babies is flabbergasting. The Globe report made a couple of Boston-area doctors sound down right stupid.

"No physician even wants to be accused of stumbling into doing one of these procedures, Dr. Michael F. Greene, the director of obstetrics at Boston General, told the newspaper.

That's a troubling statement from a presumably well-educated man. How on earth can somebody stumble into performing a banned medical procedure? Can I stumble down the street and accidentally rob a liquor store or commit some other serious crime? If the good doctor is worried about crossing the legal line, maybe he should dissociate himself from such an abhorrent practice and return to actually healing people. The answer is not to find new ways to kill babies to save yourself from the two-year prison sentence violators face.

And then there was Dr. Mark Nichols, who told the Globe he no longer allows medical and nursing students to observe abortion procedures, fearing someone might file a legal complaint. Again, if you don't walk a legal tightrope by flirting with the illegal, there is no reason to fear trouble.

It's disheartening that when pro-lifers get a rare court decision in their favor, the medical community goes out of its way to make sure late-term pregnancies can still be terminated. Congress needs to act, eliminating all late-term abortions, no matter what procedure is used. With everything we now know about prenatal development and the viability of a fetus outside the womb, to do otherwise would be turning their backs on a key issue. The doctors have already demonstrated they don't want to violate the law, so Congress needs to keep creating more laws to limit this ghastly practice.