By Dave Andrusko

Today’s final post picks up on yesterday’s final post. I wrote about, on the one hand, a second-rate attempt to minimize the reality of a survey that demonstrated conclusively that the impact of horror stories about New York’s new abortion law and Virginia’s failed attempt had significantly increased the percentage of people who identify as pro-life. On the other hand, I briefly discussed a New York Times story in which the reporter channeled the talking points of those who did not want a vote on legislation to require that a born-alive abortion survivor receive the same medical care any other baby of a similar gestational age would receive.
I had intended to pick up on the later until I read Margot Cleveland’s terrific post at The Federalist. It is must reading about the same subject, so I thought it made more sense to highlight her devastating conclusions and encourage you read the entire post for yourself.
Unlike what I addressed on Wednesday, Ms. Cleveland’s subject matter is not a news story filled with facts and factoids and fabrications. She is writing about a very personal op-ed from a former abortionist who tragically lost one of her triplets who was born at just 22 weeks gestation.
But, unfortunately, Dr. Jen Gunter (who before she retired performed late term abortions) does what so many of those who opposed the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act did before last Monday, on Monday, and probably forever onward. Confuse the tragedy of a baby not targeted for abortion who is born prematurely with the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act which is about requiring equal treatment for a baby who survives an abortion.
To quote the bill’s language, the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act is about babies born alive following “an abortion or attempted abortion.”
The difference between that and what happened to Aidan, one of Dr. Gunter’s preemies, cannot be more absolute.
But melding the two, as Dr. Gunter does, allows her to “attempt to manipulate the sympathy the public feels for her loss.” Here are four key paragraphs from Cleveland’s terrific post.
1.
Gunter’s loss is tragic. But it has nothing to do with abortion. Gunter didn’t have an abortion; her water broke at 22 weeks and three days gestation. Doctors were unable to delay Aidan’s birth, and he died shortly after Gunter delivered him. Physicians apparently succeeded, however, in delaying Gunter’s delivery of her other two babies, because she notes in passing that Aidan’s two siblings survived.
Dr. Gunter writes about the need for readers “to know the truth, because stories like mine are being perverted for political gain.” Cleveland responds,
2.
“No one is talking about stories like Gunter’s. …And try as she might to equate her situation to the focus of the legislation, which concerns abortion survivors, Gunter did not have an abortion. The only one perverting anything for political gain is Gunter!
Cleveland’s essay would be must reading even if she didn’t get to a crucial third ingredient in Dr. Gunter’s narrative: the myth of fetal anomalies.
3.
In her op-ed, Gunter adds another dubious but oft-repeated claim, stating that abortions “at or after 24 weeks of gestation, the time largely accepted as viability, are typically performed because of severe fetal anomalies or fetal anomalies combined with maternal health problems.” But a Congressional Research Service report from April 2018 looked at that question and cited an expert in the field (and an abortion apologist) Dr. Diana Greene Foster, who “believes that abortions for fetal anomaly ‘make up a small minority of later abortion.’”
As Cleveland then immediately adds, occasionally a pro-abortion publication will include a story that is representative of the overwhelming number of late abortions.
4.
Anecdotally, we also have Beth Vial’s op-ed for Teen Vogue from earlier this month. In “What It Was Like To Get A Later Abortion,” Vial recounted her trip to New Mexico to abort her healthy, viable unborn baby at 28 weeks of gestation. Not quite the typical scenario Gunter would have readers believe, which just goes to show that Vial is too young, too naïve, or too indoctrinated by the “shout your abortion” crowd to realize her story horrifies ordinary Americans.
Cleveland’s conclusion is devastatingly. The Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act “isn’t about Gunter or her son Aidan, or about any of the other moms who bear children only to bury them. The bill is about the Vials of the world, and the vile doctors who attempt to abort viable fetuses—and when they fail, leave the infants to die.