Dr. Harold Pease

Contributing Columnist

Last January 2019, Americans were stunned when they heard Virginia Lt. Governor Ralph Northam (D-Va.) ex-physician casually infer infanticide after a botched abortion. After birth, he said, “the infant would be kept comfortable. The infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired, and then a discussion would ensue between the physicians & mother.” Until that moment few thought abortion could degenerate to infanticide.

But infanticide is back on the front lines in the weeks-long trial of pro-life journalists David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt of the Center for Medical Progress (CMP). They are charged with filming casual conversations of Planned Parenthood practicers in the Summer of 2015, without their permission, regarding the selling of aborted body parts. In it the desire to have the baby born with a heart beating is preferred. The two face 15 felony counts which, if convicted, could result in up to ten years in prison. Sadly, this story is mostly ignored by the national presses but LibertyUnderFire views it as a giant sign of national moral decay when a population is willing to accept infanticide at all. Many believe the wrong people are on trial.

Daleiden and Merritt argue that “California’s penal code, enacted under the California Invasion of Privacy Act, excludes any conversation that can be reasonably overheard or recorded.” (Brandon Showalter, “Daleiden hearing: Planned Parenthood staffer admits to supplying aborted body parts to broker,” Sept. 5, 2019) They also site Section 633.5 which “allows the covert taping of confidential information when collecting evidence of violent crimes.” To them abortion is a violent crime to the one being killed, more especially, babies with heartbeats outside the womb.

When fetuses are known to be for sale, measures are taken to preserve them in the best sellable condition possible. In one audio clip an “abortion consultant is heard saying that abortionists will dilate the cervix to get an intact baby if they know a researcher wants a whole body.” Another “shows a former medical director for Planned Parenthood in Los Angeles flippantly talking about prices of fetal remains while sipping wine and joking about wanting a ‘Lamborghini.’ She also spoke about adjusting abortion procedure technique to make it less ‘crunchy,’ therefore keeping baby body parts better intact” (Deborah Bunting, “Abortionist Testifies That Babies Likely Born Alive in Abortion to Harvest Their Body Parts for Sale,” Sept. 20, 2019).

But the most damning testimony came from Dr. Forrest Smith, an obstetrician gynecologist, admitting having performed at least 50,000 abortions over 25 years of practice. Called by the defense as an expert on the subject, he said that “not only did Daleiden’s and Merritt’s now-famous videos expose the gruesome truth about the abortion industry’s trade in fetal body parts, but that things are even worse than they knew.”

Smith told the San Francisco court that “it is almost certain that some of the abortionists featured in the undercover videos deliberately altered abortion procedures in a way that both led to the birth of living babies with beating hearts, and put women at risk. The goal in these cases would be to obtain fresher, more intact organs.” Adding: “There’s no question in my mind that at least some of these fetuses were live births.”

One reason for such certainty was that the safest normal way to abort was to get in and out as quickly as possible. Changing procedures is risky to the mother. Normally one uses digoxin to stop the babies heart before abortion as that defines death. “The baby’s heart will continue to beat for six-and-a-half to seven minutes.” Most abortionists want to ensure that the baby is fully dead before extraction. Intentionally failing to use digoxin signals that they want the baby born live. Another is the over use of misoprostol which shortens delivery from three days to one by the enlargement of the cervix. This apparently is what Planned Parenthood was doing which is sometimes referred to as fetus falling or fetus expulsion—this often live.

Smith testified that “the proper standard of care for babies born alive during an abortion was to institute promptly all resuscitative care.” Adding, “If this was not done, the fetus dies by neglect.”

Dr. Therese Deisher, confirmed Smith’s testimony. “They want those babies coming out with beating hearts,” she said, adding that Smith’s testimony made it “very clear that this is intentional” (“Abortionist testifies at Daleiden hearing: ‘No question…some of these fetuses were live births,’” Sept. 18, 2019). Fetus expulsion is the easiest way to get a whole body intact and alive.

Why the importance of a beating heart to researchers? “The babies’ hearts have to be harvested while still beating … as otherwise the organ would have no research value because once in ‘contracture,’ the heart’s cells would no longer be capable of regenerative growth.” Institutions receiving beating hearts, like Stanford University, must immediately place them on a Langendorff perfusion machine to insure their continued beating ((Stephen Wynne, “Daleiden, Merritt trial reveals beating hearts cut from abortion survivors,” Oct. 11, 2019).

The trial is expected to continue through mid-November and the issue is not getting the coverage a “civilized” nation deserves. One thing is clear. Infanticide for profit, now more common place than imagined, would never have been tolerated by any generation in American history prior to our own.

Dr. Harold Pease is a syndicated columnist. He taught history and political science from this perspective for more than 30 years at Taft College. To read more, visit www.LibertyUnderFire.org.