Supreme Court Says No to Intact Infanticide in Partial-Birth Abortion Case 
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by La Shawn Barber
April 29, 2007
LifeNews.com Note: La Shawn Barber is a freelance writer and national columnist.
In 1996, registered nurse Brenda Pratt Shafer told the House Subcommittee on the Constitution about a partial birth abortion she’d witnessed.
A woman was six months pregnant with a baby diagnosed with Down Syndrome. She chose death for the child. Shafer testified that she saw the baby’s beating heart on the ultrasound monitor. The so-called doctor pulled the baby into the birth canal with forceps, partially delivering his body while leaving the head inside.
“The baby’s little fingers were clasping and unclasping, and his feet were kicking. Then the doctor stuck the scissors through the back of his 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 …
"The doctor opened up the scissors, stuck a high-powered suction tube into the opening and sucked the baby’s brains out. Now the baby was completely limp. I was really completely unprepared for what I was seeing. I almost threw up as I watched the doctor do these things.”
Shafer added that the abortionist pulled the baby out and threw him into a pan. She continued, “I saw the baby move in the pan. I asked another nurse and she said it was just ‘reflexes.’” Shafer, who is now pro-life, said two other partial birth abortion procedures she’d witnessed involved healthy women and healthy babies.
Congress attempted to end this gruesome procedure. Both houses passed bans on partial birth abortion, but former President Bill Clinton twice vetoed the measures before President George Bush signed the Partial Birth Abortion Ban into law in 2003. Several federal judges ruled it unconstitutional and contended that it provided no exception for a woman’s health.
Last week, the Supreme Court disagreed, upholding the ban.
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