On the tail end of the fracas kick-started by the third and final presidential debate Wednesday night, late-term abortion is in the headlines, and for good reason.
Questioned by moderator Chris Wallace as to her support of abortion in virtually every conceivable case, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton defended her opposition to a federal partial-birth abortion ban in 2003, saying she does “not think the United States government should be stepping in and making those most personal of decisions.”
Following Republican nominee Donald J. Trump’s answer, where he characterized the brutal procedure of partial birth abortion as “rip[ping] the baby out of the womb in the ninth month on the final day,” Clinton replied:
Well, that is not what happens in these cases. And using that kind of scare rhetoric is just terribly unfortunate. You should meet some of the women that I have met with, women I have known over the course of my life. This is one of the worst possible choices that any woman and her family has to make.
Pivoting from the Democrats’ massively unpopular position on late-term abortion—only 13 percent of Americans favor abortion past 6 months according to a July 2016 poll—Clinton essentially changed the subject to cases where the mother’s health or life is endangered during pregnancy.
According to former abortionist Anthony Levatino, it’s actually Clinton who is employing “scare rhetoric.” In his 33 years as an obstetrician, including nine years as an associate professor of Ob-GYN at Albany (NY) Medical College, Dr. Levatino has testified before Congress that he never once encountered a case where abortion was necessary to save the life or advance the health of a mother.
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The reason, he says, is simple: there are better, more efficient ways to end a pregnancy than abortion.
“We hear all the time how abortion—especially late-term abortion—is necessary to save lives. Nothing could be further from the truth,” he tells Live Action founder Lila Rose in a YouTube interview. “I saved hundreds of women from life-threatening pregnancies, and I did that by delivering them, by ending their pregnancy by delivery—either induction of labor or cesarean section.”
Dr. Levatino, who serves on the medical advisory council for Heartbeat International and is the former medical director of a local pregnancy medical clinic in Las Cruces, New Mexico, goes on to explain in the interview that, since the dilation process prior to an abortion takes anywhere from 24 to 72 hours, a one-hour C-section is a much more efficient way to end the pregnancy.
Tweet This: Late-term #abortion never necessary, says ex-abortion doc. @LiveAction @HeartbeatIntl #prolife
Add to that the fact that ending a pregnancy via labor or C-section gives the child a fighting chance to survive and abortion’s obsolescence comes into full view.
Citing a real-life example where a woman came into his hospital with severe toxemia and just an hour later, had delivered via C-section, Dr. Levatino says abortion would have been no answer in that, or any other situation involving the health or life of a mother.
“You never need late-term abortion to save a woman’s life,” he said. “If necessary, you accomplish the delivery.”
Sadly, what is—in Clinton's words—"terribly unfortunate" isn't Trump or anyone else's "rhetoric." Rather, it's Clinton and her party's blind commitment to abortion, even when it is—as she says—the "worst possible choice."
