LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — A doctor who specializes in high-risk pregnancies testified yesterday that a type of abortion banned by a new federal law is never necessary to preserve the health of the mother.
“There are better, safer options available,” said Dr. Curtis Cook of Grand Rapids, Mich., testifying as a government witness in one of three trials across the country testing the constitutionality of the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act.
The law bars a procedure doctors call “intact dilation and extraction,” or D&X critics call it partial-birth abortion. During the procedure, generally performed in the second trimester, a fetus is partially removed from the womb, and its skull is punctured.
Doctors who use the procedure have said it is sometimes the safest method of abortion when the mother’s health is threatened. Dr. Cook disputed those statements.
“I know of no such condition … that would warrant that situation,” he said.
In passing the law, Congress declared that “a partial-birth abortion is never necessary to preserve the health of a woman” and is “outside the standard of medical care.”
The law was signed last year by President Bush but has not been enforced because judges in Lincoln, New York and San Francisco agreed to hear evidence on whether it violates the Constitution.
Dr. Cook said medical advances have made it possible to deliver a viable fetus as early as 23 weeks — late in the second trimester — through Caesarean section. A viable fetus is one that can survive outside of the womb.
“Both [the mother and the child] are our patients,” Dr. Cook said. “Our goal is to have an optimal outcome for both.”
A total of 1.3 million abortions are performed in the United States each year, almost all in the first trimester.
A more common second trimester procedure is called “dilation and evacuation,” or D&E, in which a woman’s cervix is dilated and the doctor removes the fetus with a combination of suction and pulling with forceps. About 140,000 D&Es take place in the United States annually, compared with an estimated 2,200 to 5,000 D&Xs.
Abortion providers have argued that the ban is so vaguely worded that it also could prevent D&E abortions.
The ban would be the first substantial limitation on abortion since the Supreme Court legalized it 31 years ago in the landmark case Roe v. Wade.
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