PRI Weekly Briefing: About F.A.C.E: Forced Abortions Now Legal In the U.S.

Dear Colleague:
 
A federal court has ruled that an abortionist can perform an abortion on a
woman even if she does not want one, setting a dangerous precedent for
forced abortion in America.
 
Warning: The following report contains graphic descriptions of an abortion
performed on a young woman against her will.
 
Steven Mosher
President

PRI Weekly Briefing
27 February 2004
Vol. 6 / No. 8
 
About F.A.C.E: Forced Abortions Now Legal In the U.S.
 
The Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act makes the violation
of a woman's right to receive reproductive health care a federal crime. It
is hard to imagine a worse violation of reproductive rights than forced
abortion. Yet the Eleventh Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals apparently
disagrees.
 
On 23 January 2004, in Jane Roe II vs. Aware Women Center for Choice,
Inc., the Eleventh Circuit Court ruled that an expectant mother can be
aborted by force if the abortionist argues that it is necessary to
"protect the health of the mother."
 
The story begins on 29 March 1997, when a young, pregnant mother entered
the Aware Women Center for Choice clinic in Florida. She was there for an
abortion.
 
Awaiting her was the abortionist, William P. Egherman, who has committed
over 10,000 abortions and who has, perhaps not surprisingly, been addicted
to alcohol and opiates.  He began the procedure by attempting to dilate
the woman's cervix with a 12 millimeter dilator.
 
"My God, you're hurting me" the woman began to scream. "You're killing me,
I'll never be able to have babies.. Stop!"
 
The woman had had a change of heart. She did not want an abortion. She
wanted to keep her baby. And she wanted to leave. Immediately. "Stop. Let
me out of here," she cried.(1)
 
Instead of respecting the woman's wishes and stopping the procedure,
Egherman called for assistance. Clinic workers held the woman down as
Egherman, ignoring the woman's screams, continued to dilate her cervix.
Then he entered the victim with a pair of forceps-"the bear" Ehgerman
called them (2)-and began probing and pulling.  He mistakenly pulled out
part of the woman's intestines. For the woman, said her attorney, Chris
Sapp, it was like being drawn and quartered.
 
Realizing what he had done, Egherman heavily sedated the woman. Then he
called for an ambulance. He instructed the ambulance to come slowly,
without lights or sirens, in order to give him "time to pack the woman
with gauze."
 
Egherman was also worried that his regular flow of business would be
interrupted by "all the hoopla." "Saturday's our big day," he explained,
"and I didn't want to generate a lot of. any more confusion, any more
panic than was already present at the time. She was loud, and as I said,
she was shrill, and there were a lot of patients who were hearing what was
going on, and the normal rhythm of the day was interrupted. The other
patients must have been terrified, and I didn't want the ambulance showing
up with all the lights and sirens."
 
At the hospital, the woman was operated on and the damage to her internal
organs repaired. Her baby was found to be dead, and was removed.

There the matter would have ended, if not for the intervention of
attorney, and former judge, Chris Sapp. Sapp filed suit on her behalf in
the federal courts, arguing that the abortionist had violated the Freedom
of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (FACE).  FACE was passed to guarantee
the right of women to receive reproductive health care. But if a woman had
a right to enter a clinic to get an abortion, Sapp argued, she also has a
right to leave a clinic in order to protect herself and her baby.
 
In calling for the abortionist to stop the procedure, Sapp argued, the
woman was clearly invoking her rights under the FACE Act. By forcing the
abortion procedure on her, and by preventing her from going immediately to
a hospital where her pregnancy could have been saved, the abortionist
violated her reproductive rights.(3)
 
Egherman's defense attorney's maintained that "if he [Egherman] had to go
back in" in order to protect the woman's health, then this would not
constitute a violation of the FACE Act. On a summary judgment, the appeals
court agreed, even though the evidence shows that the abortion had
scarcely begun when the woman called for the abortionist to stop the
abortion, and that he went "back in" to perform the abortion against her
will.
 
According to Sapp, "This ruling does establish a precedent for forced
abortion." An expectant mother receiving a routine gynecological exam, for
example, could be held down and forcibly aborted. The abortionist would
merely have to argue that the abortion was necessary to protect the
mother's health or life, and this would not be a violation of the FACE
Act.
 
PRI has recently learned of another forced abortion in America. A
25-year-old Maryland woman, four months pregnant, changed her mind about
having an abortion after being taken to the procedure room. She ran back
to the clinic entrance where her boyfriend stopped her. You have to get an
abortion, he told her. I've already paid for it. Three clinic workers and
the abortionists surrounded the women, sedated her by injection, and then
took her back into the procedure room. After the forced abortion, she
awoke in a closet.

Chris Sapp is determined to fight on. He is prepared to petition the U.S.
Supreme Court for a writ of certiori acknowledging that a woman's right to
say "no" to an abortion, at any point in time, is absolute, and that this
right is found in the FACE Act.
 
To make a tax-deductible donation to Chris Sapp and his valiant effort to
stop forced abortions in America, please go to PRI's secure site at
https://pop.org/donate.cfm

Please be sure to write "for Chris Sapp" in one of the three available
address fields on the on-line donation form.
 
ENDNOTES
 
1. DEPOSITION TESTIMONY OF WILLIAM P. EGHERMAN, M.D., UNITED STATES
DISTRICT COURT MIDDLE DISTRICT OF FLORIDA, ORLANDO DIVISION, AUGUST 28,
2002: JANE ROE, II, PLAINTIFF, VS. AWARE WOMEN CENTER FOR CHOICE, INC.,
EDWARD W. WINDLE, JR., PATRICIA B. WINDLE, WILLIAM P. EGHERMAN, M.D.,
DEFENDANTS; CASE NO.:  6:99-CV-850-ORL-19KRS.
2. Ibid., Deposition of William Egherman.
3. United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, Jane Roe II
vs. Aware Woman Center for Choice, January 23, 2004.

_________
Steve Mosher is the president of Population Research Institute, a
non-profit organization dedicated to debunking the myth that the world is
overpopulated.
__________
© 2004 Population Research Institute. Permission to reprint granted.
Redistribute widely. Credit required.

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__________
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abuses committed in the name of "family planning," and to ending
counter-productive social and economic paradigms premised on the myth of
"overpopulation."
 
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