Hear The Babies Cry

One of Senator John Edwards' favorite campaign themes these days is the high cost of healthcare. This is a little like John Dillinger sitting down with the local townsfolk and complaining about the lack of security in small town banks.

John Edwards likes to claim that he's just the son of a hard-working mill worker, the first person in his family ever to attend college, who made lots of money as a trial lawyer looking out for the "little guy." The fact is, Edwards got rich by winning large jury awards against doctors, hospitals, and corporations, in spite of the lack of fairness of the awards or evidence of the defendants' guilt. His specialty was cases in which children were born with cerebral palsy, which he blamed on mishandled deliveries. In each instance, the birth defect was blamed on doctors who had "waited too long" to perform
C-sections, a claim that doctors and medical researchers describe as "junk science."

In his most famous jury summation, Edwards was pleading the case of a child named Jennifer Campbell, a child born brain-damaged because of oxygen deprivation during labor. As Edwards summed up the case for the jury, he said, "(Jennifer) speaks to you through me. I have to tell you right now – I didn't plan to talk about this – right now I feel her. I feel her presence. She's inside me and she's talking to you… She said at 3:00 o'clock, 'I'm fine.' She said at 4:00 o'clock, "I'm having a little trouble, but I'm okay.' 5:00 o'clock, she said, 'I'm having problems.' At 5:30, she said, 'I need out!' And this is what she says to you. She says, 'I don't ask for your pity. What I ask for is your strength. And I don't ask for your sympathy, but I do ask for your courage.' "

What Edwards was claiming was that the doctor allowed the labor to go on too long before delivering the baby by caesarian section. Baby Jennifer's umbilical chord was wrapped around her neck, depriving her of oxygen, and she was born with brain damage.

But let's imagine that just down the street from that hospital, in an abortion clinic, another child was being denied to right to be born, whole and healthy, in part because of Senator Edwards' support of abortion rights, even to the extent of supporting late term, or partial birth, abortions.

Between conception and fourteen weeks, fetuses are aborted by suction curettage (aspiration), a process in which the abortionist guides a suction device through the cervix and into the uterus. The suction machine then sucks the placenta and fetus parts through the tube and into a collection bottle. In other instances the abortionist may scrape the inside of the uterus with a loop-shaped knife, cutting the fetus and placenta into pieces and removing them through the cervix.

After sixteen weeks, abortionists inject either salt solution or the hormone prostaglandin into the amniotic sac, killing the fetus. In either case, the uterus contracts and the dead fetus is forced out through the cervix. In most instances, with appropriate medical care, such babies could survive outside the womb during this stage of gestation.

In later term abortions, after six months of gestation, the cervix is dilated for two days. On the third day the abortionist grasps a leg of the fully-formed fetus with an obstetric forceps. He then pulls first the leg, and then the body, out through the birth canal. The head remains inside. The abortionist then makes a small incision at the base of the skull, inserts a suction tube, and sucks out the contents of the skull. The shrunken skull is then easily removed.

Can Senator Edwards not hear those babies crying? Can he not hear them say, at 3:15, "I'm doing okay! At, 3:30, "I'm not ready yet!" And at 3:45, "Leave me alone!" Can he not hear the steady rhythm of their fetal heartbeat? Can he not hear them crying, as the abortionist's instruments end their lives, "I want to live! I deserve to live?"

Because of men like John Edwards, who receive anywhere from 25 to 40 percent of jury awards, malpractice insurance premiums have increased from 20 to 400 percent in just the last few years. In many instances, doctors are closing their practices and moving to states where legislatures have acted to curb such excesses, some are cutting their patient load in half, and others are merely retiring early. In many rural communities, women are going without prenatal care because it is no longer available to them.

If Senator Edwards could hear the voices of his small clients speaking through him when there was a multi-million dollar paycheck waiting at the end of the day, why can't he hear the voices of those millions of babies each year who are not given the chance to live? But John Kerry and John Edwards turn a deaf ear to them. Neither of them can hear the babies cry – unless there's something in it for them.