Abortionists Reveal Inhumanity in Testimony on Partial-Birth Abortion 4/2/2004
By Wendy Wright
Extraordinary testimony in the trials to overturn the Partial Birth Abortion Act ...
This excerpt is from an examination by Judge Richard Casey of the Southern District of New York of Dr. Timothy Johnson on March 31, 2004.
WARNING: CONTAINS GRAPHIC DESCRIPTIONS.
(Editor's note: This is from the public record. Please be aware that there may be errors in the transcript.)
FROM DR JOHNSON TESTIMONY IN NEW YORK 3/31:
Q. Did you make any observation of the way the physician performing that intact D&E effected the incision into the skull?
A. In the situations that I have observed, they either-actually, the procedures that I have observed they all used a crushing instrument to deliver the head, and they did it under direct vision.
Q. Thank you, Doctor.
THE COURT: Can you explain to me what that means.
THE WITNESS: What they did was they delivered the fetus intact until the head was still trapped behind the cervix, and then they reached up and crushed the head in order to deliver it through the cervix.
THE COURT: What did they utilize to crush the head?
THE WITNESS: An instrument, a fair, a large pair of forceps that have a round serrated edge at the end of it, so that they were able to bring them together and crush the head between the ends of the instrument.
THE COURT: Like the cracker they use to crack a lobster shell, serrated edge?
THE WITNESS: No.
THE COURT: Describe it for me.
THE WITNESS: It would be like the end of tongs that are combined that you use to pick up salad. So they would be articulated in the center and you could move one end, and there would be a branch at the center, and the instruments are thick enough and heavy enough that you can actually grasp and crush with those instruments as if you were picking up salad or picking up anything with-
THE COURT: Except here you are crushing the head of a baby.
THE WITNESS: Correct.
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THE COURT: If you are all finished let me just ask you a couple questions, Dr. Johnson. I heard you talk a lot today about dismemberment D&E procedure, second trimester, does the fetus feel pain?
THE WITNESS: I guess I-
THE COURT: There are studies I'm told that says they do, is that correct?
THE WITNESS: I don't know. I don't know of any-I can't answer your question, I don't know of any scientific evidence one way or the other.
THE COURT: Have you heard that there are studies saying so.
THE WITNESS: I'm not aware of any.
THE COURT: You never heard of any?
THE WITNESS: I'm aware of fetal behavioral studies that have looked at fetal responses to noxious stimuli.
THE COURT: Did it ever cross your mind when you are doing a dismemberment?
THE WITNESS: I guess whenever I –
THE COURT: Simple question, Doctor did it cross your mind.
THE WITNESS: Does the fetus having pain cross your mind?
THE COURT: Yes.
A. No.
THE COURT: Never crossed your mind.
THE WITNESS: No.
THE COURT: When you have done D&Es or when you have done abortions do you tell the woman various options that are available to her?
THE WITNESS: Yes, sir.
THE COURT: And do you explain what is involved like in D&E, the dismemberment variation? Do you tell her that?
THE WITNESS: We would describe the procedure, yes.
THE COURT: So you tell her, the arms and legs are pulled off. I mean that's what I want to know, do you tell her?
THE WITNESS: We tell her the baby, the fetus is dismembered as part of the procedure, yes.
THE COURT: You are going to remove parts of her baby.
THE WITNESS: Correct.
THE COURT: Are you ever asked does it hurt?
A. Are we ever asked by the patient?
THE COURT: Yes.
THE WITNESS: I don't ever remember being asked.
THE COURT: And although you have never done an intact D&E do you know whether or not the incision of the scissors in the base of the skull of the baby, whether that hurts?
A. Well I guess my response would be I think that the baby feels it but I'm in the sure how pain registers on the brain at that gestational age. I'm not sure how a fetus at 20 weeks or 22 weeks processes and understands pain.
THE COURT: You have never done one of these procedures but did you ever strives what-you say you know about it clinically, did you ever strives one of those who perform them whether it hurts the fetus?
THE WITNESS: No, sir.
THE COURT: When you describe the possibilities available to a woman did you describe in detail what the intact D&E or the partial birth abortion involves?
THE WITNESS: Since I don't do that procedure I wouldn't have described it.
THE COURT: Did you ever participate with another Doctor describing it to a woman considering such an abortion.
THE WITNESS: Yes. And the description would be I would think descriptive of what was going to be, what was going to happen, the description.
THE COURT: Including sucking the brain out of the skull.
THE WITNESS: I don't think we would use those terms. I think we would probably use a term like decompression of the skull or reducing the contents of the skull.
THE COURT: Make it nice and palatable so that it wouldn't understand what it's all about?
THE WITNESS: No. I think we want them to understand what it's all about but it's, I think it's, I guess I would say that whenever we describe medical procedures we try to do it in a way that's not offensive or gruesome or overly graphic for patients.
THE COURT: Can they fully comprehend unless you do? Not all of these mothers are Rhodes scholars or highly educated, are they?
THE WITNESS: No, that's true. But I'm also not exactly sure what using terminology like sucking the brains out would-
THE COURT: That's what happens, doesn't it?
THE WITNESS: Well, in some situations that might happen. There are different ways that and after coming head could be dealt with but that is one way of describing it.
THE COURT: Isn't that what actually happens? You do use a suction device, right?
THE WITNESS: Well there are physicians who do that procedure who use a suction device to evacuate the intercranial contents, yes.
THE COURT: It is so much nicer to say evacuate but now you told me also, which I am trying to comprehend, that some women prefer this procedure so that it helps in the grieving process this they can hold this fetus, that they have just a short while prior to this, ordered the physician to kill this baby by this procedure?
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THE COURT: In some affidavit I saw earlier said sometimes I take it the fetus is alive until they crush the skull sometimes?
THE WITNESS: That's correct, yes, sir.
THE COURT: In one affidavit I saw attached earlier in this proceeding the fingers of the baby opening and closing?
THE WITNESS: It would depend where the hands were and whether or not you could see them.
THE COURT: Were they in some instances?
THE WITNESS: Not that I remember. I don't think I have ever looked at the hands.
THE COURT: The feet moving?
THE WITNESS: Feet could be moving, yes.
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From Dr. Amos Grunebaum's testimony in NY:
THE WITNESS: What you usually do is you take the forceps, you grasp part of the fetus, and you can either pull it down directly or, after you grasp the portion of the fetus, you can do a rotating motion, either clockwise or counterclockwise, to pull off the portion of the fetus.
THE COURT: Does that pull it away from the body?
THE WITNESS: At the same time that you do the rotating motion, you pull it away.
THE COURT: That pulls it, dismembers it from the body of the fetus?
THE WITNESS: Correct. It makes it easier sometimes.
THE COURT: On whom?
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