David,
I think you need to follow the link below and read up on JAMA's own statements on partial birth abortion.
ama-assn.org
Quoted from "Rationale for Banning Abortions Late in Pregnancy" (JAMA: Vol. 280, pp. 744-747, Aug. 26, 1998)
"Following President Clinton's April 1996 veto of a congressionally approved ban, conflicting information surfaced. Ron Fitzsimmons, executive director of the National Coalition of Abortion Providers, had stated in November 1995 that "women had these abortions only in the most extreme circumstances of life endangerment or fetal anomaly."[3] However, he later admitted that his own contacts with many of the physicians performing intact D&X procedures found that the vast majority were done not in response to extreme medical conditions but on healthy mothers and healthy fetuses.[3]"
"In newspaper interviews, physicians who use the technique acknowledged performing thousands of such procedures a year. One facility reported that physicians used intact D&X on at least half of the estimated 3000 abortions they perform each year on fetuses between 20 and 24 weeks' gestation.[3] In another report, Dayton, Ohio, physician Martin Haskell, MD, who had performed more than 700 partial-birth abortions, stated that most of his abortions are elective in that 20- to 24-week range and that "probably 20% are for genetic reasons, and the other 80% are purely elective."[4] The late James T. McMahon, MD, of Los Angeles, Calif, detailed for the US Congress his experience with more than 2000 partial-birth abortion procedures. He classified only 9% of that total as involving maternal health indications (of which the most common was depression), and 56% were for "fetal flaws" that included many nonlethal disorders, some as minor as a cleft lip.[5]"
"An extraordinary medical consensus has emerged that intact D&X is neither necessary nor the safest method for late-term abortion. In addition to American Medical Association (AMA) and ACOG policy statements, Warren Hern, MD, author of Abortion Practice has questioned the efficacy of intact D&X. "I have very serious reservations about this procedure....You really can't defend it....I would dispute any statement that this is the safest procedure to use." Hern states that turning the fetus to a breech position is "potentially dangerous."[15] In Illinois, a November 1996 survey of all physicians in Sangamon County (the city of Springfield and surrounding area) demonstrated that 91% of more than 180 respondents supported a ban of intact D&X (Perry M. Santos, MD, MS, written communication, November 5, 1996). In April 1997, more than 200 physician delegates who attended the Illinois State Medical Society annual meeting voted to support a ban on intact D&X. The AMA established its own committee to study partial-birth abortion and adopted the recommendations of that committee's report, as well as an official position of support for HR 1122, federal legislation banning partial-birth abortions that the AMA worked to improve and clarify prior to passage." |
