Planned Parenthood Abortionist Suffocated Unborn Baby
June 17, 2017
In 1975, Dr. Kenneth Edelin told the New York Times, “Nobody likes to do abortions, but the least we can do is make it safe and humane.” Keep that in mind as we go forward today.
Old timers like me have a much different understanding of Dr. Edelin [pronounced EE-da-lin], the abortionist who passed away in December 2013. Edelin was the defendant in one of the earliest (and stomach turning) cases in which he was first convicted of manslaughter in the death of a baby born alive on October 3, 1973, and then exonerated by the Supreme Judicial Court (Massachusetts‘s highest judicial body). The legal case began in 1975, just two years after Roe v. Wade was handed down.
Why bother to bring up his name at all lo these many decades later? Because “Friends, family, and colleagues of Dr. Kenneth C. Edelin assembled on the lawn outside Boston Medical Center Thursday afternoon to dedicate a public square in his memory, ” according to Emily Sweeney of the Boston Globe. “[M]ore than 100 people gathered under a white tent at Boston Medical Center to celebrate Edelin’s achievements and unveil a sign that will mark the intersection of Harrison Avenue and Worcester Square as Dr. Kenneth C. Edelin Square.”
The story is filled with tributes to Edelin, PPFA’s chairman from 1989 to 1992 and a member of the National Abortion Federation, described by The Rev. Liz Walker as “an extraordinary man who lived a life with extraordinary purpose.”
Simply because she explained the case so well, let me first quote extensively from a post written by Sarah Terzo. I will then add a brief comment.
Sarah’s 2013 column about Edelin was sparked by the case of abortionist Kermit Gosnell who eventually was convicted of three counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of three late-term babies he delivered alive and then slit their spinal cords, and involuntary manslaughter in the death of a female patient.
In 1973, Edelin was an abortionist at Boston City Hospital. A 17-year-old girl came in for a routine abortion. She claimed she was 17 weeks pregnant. One doctor examined her and said that she was closer 20 weeks. Later she was estimated to be 24 weeks along. Yet another doctor estimated her pregnancy as 22 weeks.
Despite the confusion, Dr. Edelin and Dr. Penza (the abortionists on staff) chose to perform a saline abortion on her. A saline abortion is performed by injecting caustic saline solution into the woman’s uterus. The solution burns and poisons the baby over a period of several hours, and then labor is induced, with the woman “giving birth” to her dead child. This abortion procedure is seldom used today because of its risks to the mother and the large number of live births that were attributed to it.
The abortion went wrong from the beginning. Dr. Penza was to perform the saline abortion. After two attempts to inject the saline solution Dr. Penza gave up. Edelin took over and decided to perform a hysterotomy. A hysterotomy is a little used abortion procedure which is performed like a cesarean section – the womb is cut open, and the baby is removed. What happened next is still in dispute.
Edelin’s legal team made the case that the baby was killed while still inside the uterus. According to pro-choice author Marion Faux:
“He [Dr. Edelin] “had run his finger around the uterine wall to separate the fetus from the placenta and then stood looking at a wall clock for three minutes before removing the fetus from the uterus.”
In this way, Faux said [Dr. Edelin] suffocated the infant. Other witnesses, however, claimed that the baby was born alive and then suffocated. After an autopsy of the baby, a medical examiner and pathologist testified that the baby could have been born alive after examining the baby’s lungs to determine whether or not he had taken a breath outside the womb.
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