Over thirty years ago, the Supreme Court ruled in Roe V. Wade that women have the right to choose whether or not to terminate a pregnancy through abortion. Since then, the issue has continued to produce conflict and anger. Both sides fight, determined not to lose an inch of ground; the pro-choice side is intent on giving the woman another option while the pro-life side pleads for the unborn child.

Last Wednesday, the Court heard oral arguments on Gonzales v. Carhart and Gonzales v. Planned Parenthood. Both cases challenged for the first time in our nation’s highest court the constitutionality of the Partial-Birth Abortion Act of 2003, which calls the procedure “gruesome and inhumane.” Opponents claim the ban is trampling on the intent of Roe. The National Organization of Women claims conservatives in Congress “desire to control woman’s bodies.” NOW does Congress an injustice in implying that only conservatives care about protecting unborn children; newly-elected Bob Casey, D – PA, is just one of dozens of pro-life Democrats, and the 2003 act passed with plenty of support from both sides of the aisle.

If NOW would be honest with itself as well as America, it would admit that banning partial-birth abortion is not about controlling women’s bodies. The issue at hand is recognizing partial-birth abortion for the abhorrent and despicable procedure it is.

Partial-birth abortion takes many different forms, but the most commonly used method involves the doctor partly delivering the child, jamming a sharp instrument into the skull and pulling brain matter out. The procedure can also involve collapsing the skull, crushing it with a metal implement similar to salad tongs, and even severing the head from the body. In her essay “Partial-Birth Abortion on Trial,” Cathy Cleaver Ruse compiled court testimony from experienced abortion doctors. I challenge anyone to read this document and not feel at least a pang of grief for these piteous children who are allowed to experience mere moments of life outside the womb before being callously disposed of. With chilling detachment, these doctors spoke of the various techniques they used to commit this barbaric act and admitted that outside of the womb the child often had a heartbeat, kicked his feet, opened and closed her tiny fists and undoubtedly felt terrible pain.

A fetus aborted within the womb is yet firmly sheltered beneath Roe’s umbrella; a child murdered entirely outside of the womb is doubtless a victim of infanticide. The ban in question seeks only to put an end to this particular approach. Partial-birth abortions account for less than 0.5% of abortions annually performed in the U.S. The ban includes a caveat for the life of the mother, although, as the National Review Online points out “nobody has ever shown an instance in which partial-birth abortion was necessary to save the life or health of a woman.” It is never the only choice; abortion doctors know other equally viable and safe procedures.

Partial-birth abortion is typically used in the second and third trimesters, most commonly at five and six months – just about the same time the baby becomes able to survive outside the womb. If these children were expelled from the womb naturally, statistics show that at least 30-50% would survive long-term.

Opponents have been slandering the ban as prohibiting late-term abortions; this is emphatically false. The law permits a woman to have an abortion anytime, provided the termination occurs within the womb.

Partial-birth abortion is a contemptible and cruel procedure wherein “a premature human is deliberately pulled to within just a few inches of being, medically and legally,” writes National Right to Life Committee Legislative Director Douglas Johnson.

Those against this ban – the militantly pro-choice – like to present themselves as the underdogs, fighting for the poor, oppressed millennium woman who has a “right” to borderline infanticide. That is a calculated and cold-blooded lie. Those women have other options; their half-born suffering children do not.

It is one thing to give women an option with unwanted pregnancy. It is quite another to allow them to carry the child for months only to violently and cruelly murder it as the child straddles between womb and world.