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A Good Journalist May Be Hard to Find, But Not a Late-Term Abortionist

By Peter J. Smith

WICHITA, Kansas, June 3, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) – In the aftermath of the murder of late-term abortionist, George Tiller, a number of media stories have reported that Tiller was one of only three remaining late-term abortionists in the United States. However the claim does not square up with numbers released by the Alan Guttmacher Institute and further evidence that indicates that  late-term abortion has plenty of willing practitioners across the country.

The Associated Press called Tiller “one of the nation's few providers of late-term abortions” on May 31. The AP stated, “Tiller's Women's Health Care Services clinic is one of just three in the nation where abortions are performed after the 21st week of pregnancy.”

According to the New York Times, “Some described Dr. Tiller as one of about only three doctors in the country who had, under certain circumstances, provided abortions to women in their third trimester of pregnancy, and said his death would mean that women, particularly in the central United States, would have few if any options in such cases.”

The Los Angeles Times called Tiller, “One of the few American physicians who performed late-term abortions.” The Times added that “the doctor had always overcome the daunting legal and physical challenges of his work, terminating pregnancies of women and girls who were in the 22nd week of gestation or beyond.”

However the fact is that statistics show that many doctors perform such late-term abortions in the United States. Tiller, on the other hand, was actually notorious for being among the few doctors willing to perform very late-term abortions, way past the point of viability, right up until birth.

Although no week demarcates the precise beginning of what is defined as a late-term abortion, the procedure is regarded as beginning in the second trimester, around the point of fetal viability outside the womb. In general, viability begins 21 weeks – although advances in medical technology and a number of cases show this number might actually be lower. If this figure is taken as a benchmark, then the statistics of the Alan Guttmacher Institute, the research arm of Planned Parenthood, indicate that late-term abortion is a very busy industry indeed.

Fr. Frank Pavone yesterday drew attention to this data on his blog where he wrote: “The Alan Guttmacher Institute (the research arm of Planned Parenthood) reports that abortions of pregnancies at 21 weeks or later comprise about 1.1 percent of the nation’s abortions, which that same institute also indicates are in the area of 1.21 million.”

A quick crunching of the numbers means that for the year 2005 (the latest available data from Guttmacher), 13,310 late-term abortions were performed in the United States. A corresponding CDC report (which does not include data from California and several states) reported that in Kansas – where Tiller conducted his grisly business - only 452 abortions of unborn children were performed at 21 weeks and beyond. This is a mere fraction of the total number, despite the fact that aborting children late in pregnancy was Tiller's avowed specialty.

The rest of these late-term abortions are performed at other abortion centers and hospitals across the country, which pro-life columnist Jill Stanek says are hardly an endangered species.

“The reality is late-term abortions are committed pretty much in every pocket of the country, contrary to claims by the other side,” said Stanek on WorldNetDaily.com.

While a number of abortion facilities and hospitals perform late-term abortions, Tiller was among a handful who offered to perform very late-term abortions, even right before birth. One non-exhaustive listing of abortion providers listed at least six facilities that would perform abortions beyond 24 weeks, which is twice the number of late-term abortion providers the mainstream media have reported, whom they define as those performing abortions beyond 21-22 weeks.

Guttmacher spokeswoman Rebecca Wind told LifeSiteNews that while she had no specific information on Tiller’s abortion practice, she stated, “the other two physicians who have been cited as performing abortions very late in pregnancy are Dr. Carhart in Nebraska and Dr. Hern in Colorado.”

That may explain the media misapprehension that Tiller was one of three doctors providing simply late-term abortions, while in fact they were very late-term abortions in very advanced pregnancies.

Despite Tiller's death, his abortion facility in Wichita will once again be open for business. Dr. Leroy Carhart, a friend of Tiller and the abortionist behind two Supreme Court cases, Stenberg v. Carhart, and Gonzales v. Carhart, has said that he is leaving his abortion practice in Nebraska temporarily to continue providing very late-term abortions at the Tiller facility.

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